Tag line: "Beautiful beast! Maddening...with her soft caress! Murdering...with steel-clawed terror!"
In late 19th century Paris, the musical comedy star Marie Roget (Maria Montez) goes missing and Prefect of Police Gobelin (Lloyd Corrigan) is under pressure to solve the case. On the very day a woman's body is found floating in the Seine with her face torn off, Marie suddenly re-appears. Her half-sister Camille's (Nell O'Day) fiancé, Marcel (Edward Norris), an attaché to the Department of the Navy, is having a secret affair with Marie who's involved with Beauvais (John Litel), Marcel's boss. Overhearing a sinister plot hatched by Marie to kill Camille, the girls' grandmother, Cecile (Maria Ouspenskaya), hires police chemist Dr. Paul Dupin (Patrick Knowles) to escort Camille to a welcome back party for Marie where the murder will supposedly take place. When Marie, and not Camille, disappears during the festivities and is later found floating faceless in the river, Dr. Dupin uses ratiocination to solve the mystery.
Edgar Allan Poe, the father of American detective pulp fiction, wrote "The Mystery Of Marie Roget" in 1842 as a sequel to his "Murders In The Rue Morgue" and was based on the real-life murder of "The Beautiful Cigar Girl", Mary Rogers, in NYC. Poe wrote the story in three installments for "Snowden's Ladies' Companion" magazine; after the second part was published, there was a suicide and a deathbed confession in the real-life case that flew in the face of known facts so Poe adjusted the third installment accordingly. The case is still unsolved and author Irving Wallace has offered up Poe himself as a possible suspect as he had a passing acquaintance with the dead girl. Very loosely based on the Poe, Universal's MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET is a fast-moving, atmospheric programmer set in 1889 Paris. Universal utilized the back lot villages from their horror films to recreate the city and some of the murky photography foreshadows the look of the "period noir" yet to come. Everyone's a suspect including Maria Ouspenskaya's pet leopard but the final outcome comes as no surprise. Patric Knowles' Dr. Dupin is reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes (he even has a Watson in the form of the Prefect of Police) and uses deductive reasoning along with some unorthodox science to solve the crimes; removing Marie's brain from the morgue, he examines it and later announces the star had a twisted criminal mind (?!). For a finale, there's a fast-paced chase and shoot-out across the roofs of Paris with barely a loose end tied up. Exotic Maria Montez' accent isn't out of place at all and she even gets to sing a (dubbed) song. Overall, not bad but strictly second feature.
In late 19th century Paris, the musical comedy star Marie Roget (Maria Montez) goes missing and Prefect of Police Gobelin (Lloyd Corrigan) is under pressure to solve the case. On the very day a woman's body is found floating in the Seine with her face torn off, Marie suddenly re-appears. Her half-sister Camille's (Nell O'Day) fiancé, Marcel (Edward Norris), an attaché to the Department of the Navy, is having a secret affair with Marie who's involved with Beauvais (John Litel), Marcel's boss. Overhearing a sinister plot hatched by Marie to kill Camille, the girls' grandmother, Cecile (Maria Ouspenskaya), hires police chemist Dr. Paul Dupin (Patrick Knowles) to escort Camille to a welcome back party for Marie where the murder will supposedly take place. When Marie, and not Camille, disappears during the festivities and is later found floating faceless in the river, Dr. Dupin uses ratiocination to solve the mystery.
Edgar Allan Poe, the father of American detective pulp fiction, wrote "The Mystery Of Marie Roget" in 1842 as a sequel to his "Murders In The Rue Morgue" and was based on the real-life murder of "The Beautiful Cigar Girl", Mary Rogers, in NYC. Poe wrote the story in three installments for "Snowden's Ladies' Companion" magazine; after the second part was published, there was a suicide and a deathbed confession in the real-life case that flew in the face of known facts so Poe adjusted the third installment accordingly. The case is still unsolved and author Irving Wallace has offered up Poe himself as a possible suspect as he had a passing acquaintance with the dead girl. Very loosely based on the Poe, Universal's MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET is a fast-moving, atmospheric programmer set in 1889 Paris. Universal utilized the back lot villages from their horror films to recreate the city and some of the murky photography foreshadows the look of the "period noir" yet to come. Everyone's a suspect including Maria Ouspenskaya's pet leopard but the final outcome comes as no surprise. Patric Knowles' Dr. Dupin is reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes (he even has a Watson in the form of the Prefect of Police) and uses deductive reasoning along with some unorthodox science to solve the crimes; removing Marie's brain from the morgue, he examines it and later announces the star had a twisted criminal mind (?!). For a finale, there's a fast-paced chase and shoot-out across the roofs of Paris with barely a loose end tied up. Exotic Maria Montez' accent isn't out of place at all and she even gets to sing a (dubbed) song. Overall, not bad but strictly second feature.