George C. Scott's Murders in the Rue Morgue

George C. Scott's role as Auguste Dupin in the 1986 adaptation of Poe's "Murder in the Rue Morgue," was one I fondly remember. I considered it to be his finest role I had yet seen, second only to Scrooge in A Christmas  Carol, which he had done only two years earlier. It also stars Val Kilmer and Rebecca De Mornay. 

   "Rue Morgue" was the first E. A. Poe story I came in contact with. A selection of the work was printed in a book I had about--well, that would give away the end. I first read an abbreviated version of Poe's original in a junior high issue of either Scope or V.oice. The story was first printed in Graham magazine in 1941; I was certain it first saw print in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, but I was apparently wrong, as modern reprintings often include it within stories from that 1940 collection. Poe's detective Auguste Dupin, who would go on appear in "the Purloined Letter," may well have been a forerunner of the more famous Sherlock Holmes. Before "Rue Morgue", detective fiction didn't really exist as a genre, so Poe's tales of Dupin may represent the genesis of the modern detective story. 

The story involves the macabre murders of two women, mother and daughter in the Rue Morgue district of Paris. The real mystery is that  killer would have had  to possess near super-human strength and agility to have entered and exited their apartment, and to have severed the head of one victim with a thin razor, and stuffed the other body up the chimney. The baffling case seems to point to a supernatural killer or perhaps a madman, until Dupin fingers the killer when all the clues are put together. 

Skip the following paragraph if you don't want to know the killer's identity, as it might give it away. 

"Rue Morgue", like A. C. Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles, involves the severe mistreatment of animals. The one less than positive thing about the George Scott's adaptation is that the killer's makeup is rather cheesy, a poor imitation of what a theatrical release could of done. It doesn't resemble a real orangutan, possibly because real orangs are by nature basically gentle animals, and don't even look fierce. In the story though, this particular one was whipped and beaten severely during the voyage from Borneo before he escaped. 

Other than that one quibble it's a very solid production by all involved, not to mention very faithful to Poe's original story.