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Chris Scott
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Chris
Post Number: 1047
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, March 11, 2004 - 10:46 am: |       |
Thought the attached might be of interest - especially to Gary!!!
It's from the Mansfield News (Ohio) 27 November 1927
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Jeffrey Bloomfied
Inspector
Username: Mayerling
Post Number: 322
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 22, 2004 - 10:29 pm: | |
I don't know if this film still exists (many silent films disintegrated in the last century because of the film stock, which had nitrates in them). But two thoughts cross my mind regarding this 1927 movie.
First - an obvious connection to Poe, and his
"gorilla" murderer in "THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE". Oddly enough, the other day a gorilla injured several people in the zoo in Dallas, Texas, and had to be killed as it threatened a baby. But gorilla killers became a running subject in horror and "B" features in the sound period. In 1935 the Poe story was the basis of a horror film (with the same title) starring Bela
Lugosi as a mad professor named "Mirakle" (a name borrowed from the opera "TALES OF HOFFMAN"), and Leon Ames (here using his real name of Waykoff) as C. Auguste Dupin.
The second is a thought linking this film, with the title character strangling women - in 1927 the
whole of North America was following the hunt and
capture of Earle Nelson, a drifter who went around the midwest and Canada strangling women. Nelson was eventually captured and tried in Winnipeg, and hanged there in 1928 (after conviction). Nelson was nicknamed "THE GORILLA MAN" due to his supposed strength and physique.
Possibly the film was made to capitalize on this
serial killer's career.
Jeff |
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