a 1986 television version to other adaptations, stating Florey's 1932 version "remains the best" of them. Legacy Long after its release, members of the cast and crew commented on Murders in the Rue Morgue. Florey hoped the film would start his career and thought it would have been better if the villain was written out of the script. Florey left Universal after the film's release and signed to Warner Bros., where he maintained a four-or-five pictures a year work flow. Florey made only one more feature-length horror film, The Beast With Five Fingers, which also features Caligari-like shadows and dark figures. Florey also later directed episodes of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. Leon Ames also disliked Murders in the Rue Morgue, saying in an interview in Famous Monsters of Filmland it is "a perfectly awful film which still pops up on TV to haunt me". Lugosi starred in several more adaptations of Poe stories, including The Black Cat and The Raven, in which he again played scientists. Lugosi was often cast as either a mad scientist or a doctor in future films, including The Phantom Creeps, The Devil Bat, The Corpse Vanishes, The Ape Man, Return of the Ape Man, Mother Riley Meets the Vampire and Bride of the Monster. Lugosi also appeared in other Poe-related works outside of film, such as an adaptation of "The Cask of Amontillado" for the television series Suspense and a radio performance of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart". Later adaptations of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" include Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954), a color 3D film that was produced by Warner Bros. This version of the film also includes Charles Gemora, who appears as an ape that terrorizes 19th-century Paris. Gordon Hessler directed a 1971 adaptation of Murders in the Rue Morgue, which is closer to being an adaptation of Phantom of the Opera than of Poe's tale. According to Hessler, "the problem with the original story, which is a mystery where the 'monkey' did it, was not the kind of story you could do anymore". A 1986 television adaptation of the story was directed by Jeannot Szwarc and stars George C. Scott as Auguste Dupin. See also Bela Lugosi filmography List of American films of 1932 List of horror films of the 1930s List of Universal Pictures films (1930–1939) Rejection of evolution by religious groups References Footnotes Sources External links