Loosely based on a story by Edgar Allen Poe, Murders in the Rue Morgue is among the most visually sophisticated and intellectually dubious films of Universal's horror cycle. Bela Lugosi stars as Dr. Mirakle, a sideshow spieler with a fanatical drive to demonstrate his idiosyncratic grasp of evolutionary biology by mixing the blood of hairy old gorillas and beautiful young women. Frenchman Robert Florey brings a continental sensibility to the material, lifting many ideas from European horror classics, particularly The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.