Murders in the Rue Morgue

Very loosely based on a tale by Poe, this is a pedestrian but still highly enjoyable account of a mad scientist (Lugosi) scouring Paris for young female victims to prove his rather unusual theory of evolution: experiments involve mixing the blood of the women with that of a gorilla. The perverse and sordid sexual implications of the story are rarely made explicit, although there are a couple of genuinely unpleasant scenes. Stylistically (it's beautifully shot by Karl Freund) the whole thing owes more to The Cabinet of Dr Caligari than to Poe.