By JOE WINTERS

The year 1841 saw the publication of Edgar Allan Poe’s pioneer detective story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," considered by some as an attempt by the author to keep from going mad. The young fictional sleuth C. August Dupin possessed some of Poe’s best traits in addition to qualities the author lacked. The result was a cool, logical thinking machine skilled in the art of deductive reasoning, decades before Sherlock Holmes and other detectives.

There were only three Dupin stories, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery of Marie Roget," and "The Purloined Letter." The first of these titles is best known to fans of horror cinema. Beyond the title, however, the similarities on celluloid are mostly slight.

Interestingly, a 1908 film entitled Sherlock Holmes In The Great Murder Mystery is said to have pitted the sleuth against a killer simian. An orangutan did figure into Poe’s story.

Little is known of the 1914 silent Murders In The Rue Morgue, and it appears the film and any prior screen treatments did not survive.

That brings us to 1932 and the most frequently seen version, produced at Universal. Intended perhaps as a consolation prize for star Bela Lugosi and director Robert Florey for missing out on Frankenstein, Murders In The Rue Morgue is a good example of hit-and-miss filmmaking.

The tale is set in 1845 Paris where strange deaths coincide with the appearance of sideshow scientist Dr. Mirakle (Lugosi), a character not in Poe’s original story. In the film, Paul Dupin (Leon Waycoff) is a young medical student in love with the lovely young Camille L’Espanaye (Sidney Fox, and yes, Sidney’s a female). Mirakle’s pet ape Erik takes a fancy to Camille, and the good doctor decides to make her the latest in a line of failed experiments to mix human with simian blood and thus prove Mirakle’s theories of evolution.

As the police close in, Erik decides to crush Mirakle and escape with the girl. A rooftop showdown sends the gunshot monkey tumbling into the river Seine. Camille is rescued, though in Poe’s story she and her mother are already dead when the mystery begins.

Besides Mirakle, other characters not in the author’s work include "Janos the Black One" played in white-face by black actor Noble Johnson. Also on hand, a victimized woman of the streets played by future TV game show regular Arlene Francis. Charles Gemora wore the ape outfit for most scenes while Joe Bonomo handled the stunts. Expressionist set designs of Paris include a shot of the Notre Dame Cathedral set used in Universal’s Hunchback Of Norte Dame (1923).

The atmosphere, the lighting and the camera work of Karl Freund give the movie a creepy, shadowy look. On the debit side there’s some bad comic relief by Bert Roach as Pierre’s whining roommate. Moreover, Mr. Waycoff (later Ames) and Miss Fox fall flat romantically. Also, some alternating footage of men in the ape costume and close-up shots of a real orangutan tend to distract. The movie’s major casting coup is, of course, Bela Lugosi projecting his unique brand of menace to the sometimes slow proceedings.

More than 20 years later Warner Brothers served up Phantom Of The Rue Morgue (1954) with the added treat of color and the debatable gimmick of 3-D. Professor Dupin (Steve Forrest) is among the suspects as well as Dr. Marais (Karl Malden), Rene the knife thrower (Paul Richards), Jacques the one-eyed sailor (Anthony Caruso), and…Merv Griffin? Yes, years before he became a staple of talk television and a multi-millionaire entertainment mogul, the dear boy himself was in this movie.

A bevy of beauties fall victim, with one stuffed up a chimney. The latter likewise occurred in Poe’s story and in the 1932 movie as well, as did an inquest that yielded diverging responses from men of diverse nationalities as to the native land of the killer.

Other similarities between the story and the 1954 film involved locked windows with spring catches, rusty broken nails and flagpoles. Also, the first "murder" in the film (off-camera) was an accident, and the simian belonged to a sailor, though in the film the sailor was employed by the real villain of the piece, masterminding the crimes of passion and revenge.

Charles Gemora, who donned the hairy suit for the 1932 film, again played the murdering monkey, a gorilla named Sultan, who had the hots for lovely Jeanette (Patricia Medina). This version, set around the early 20^th century, ascribes more to the teachings of Pavlov and Freud than to Darwin. Sultan responds violently to the light tinkling sound of charm bracelets locked onto the wrists of intended victims.

The next Murders In The Rue Morgue strays even further from Poe. Distributed in 1971 by Sam Arkoff’s American International Pictures, this version applies the title to the film and to the Grand Guignol theater play within the film. Paris is puzzled by the murder of a cast member portraying Erik the Ape and by subsequent slit throats and acid burned faces. Could the culprit be the dead Marot (Herbert Lom), come back to claim Madeleine (Christine Kaufman), the now-grown up daughter of the actress (Lili Palmer) who was axed years ago?

As other former members of the acting troupe die off, Madeleine’s dreams continue to torment her. Those dreams mingle with reality as the viewer, too, is challenged to separate the two. And that’s part of the appeal in this version under the direction of Gordon Hessler, whose credits include Scream And Scream Again and The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad. Hessler himself was recently said to be surprised to learn that his original cut of the film, long-considered butchered by the folks at A-I-P, has been restored by the folks at M-G-M. That version appeared recently on Encore’s Mystery Channel.

Rounding out the uniformly good cast are Jason Robards as Madeleine’s husband and new head of the troupe, Maria Perschy as a doomed lover, Michael Dunn as Madeleine’s secret admirer, and Adolfo Celi as chief inspector on the case.

While the film has next to nothing in common with Poe’s story, recurring themes such as madness, murder, premature burial and dreamlike quality do retain the spirit of the author’s work, as did many prior Poe films from the studio. Among the differences in the restored version is the ending where Madeleine is awakened (or not?) by footsteps moving toward her bedroom. Rather than hearing the voice of one of the dead characters as in the edited cut, the door opens to reveal the materializing image of another of the film’s characters. Both versions end with Madeleine’s terrified scream.

And so we come to the last version of the story to date, The Murders In The Rue Morgue, produced for airing in 1986 on CBS Television. George C. Scott stars as retired inspector Auguste Dupin, who has to prove his daughter’s fiancé (Neil Dickson) did not commit the title crimes. Besides the grisly murders of Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter, the details of which are true to Poe’s story, there are two other murders. A drunken derelict at the start of the film and a mousy middle aged man spying on lovers in a park are each dispatched by the unseen killer.

The main focus, however, is on the deaths of the two women, one strangled and stuffed up a chimney, and the other mutilated and decapitated with a razor! As in the original story, differing opinions as to the nationality of one of the voices heard at the murder scene add to the mystery.

While this version is closer to the story than any previous film, there are differences as well. In the original story, Dupin was a young man and not a member of the police force. Still, Scott does his customarily superb job. Rebecca De Mornay as his daughter and Val Kilmer as a young protégé, characters not in the original tale, provide a minor love interest that helps pad out a movie that’s a bit slow at times, but satisfying with location photography.