It stars Jason Robards, Christine Kaufmann, Herbert Lom, Adolfo Celi, Michael Dunn and Lilli Palmer.

The screenplay by Christopher Wicking and Henry Slesar is a loose adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's 1841 short story of the same name.

However, it departs from Poe's version in several significant aspects, at times more resembling Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera,[2] and incorporating the historical character Eugène François Vidocq.

[3][4] In early-20th century Paris, a theatre troupe is specializing in gory, naturalistic horror plays in the fashion of the Grand Guignol, under the direction of Cesar Charron.

Cesar's wife, the actress Madeline, whose mother had been murdered by axe, is haunted by nightmares of an axe-wielding man.

Then, suddenly, Rene Marot, a former lover of Madeline's mother thought long dead after being horribly disfigured on stage, mysteriously returns and begins murdering members and ex-members of the acting troupe, confounding the Paris police, who initially suspect Cesar.

Hessler said that he felt the story was so familiar it needed to be changed, so he and writer Christopher Wicking decided to do it as a play-within-a-play, with a mystery happening around a theatre that was putting on a production of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue".

[5] In a DVD interview, Hessler said that he felt it necessary to reinvent the plot as he believed the majority of audiences were too familiar with Poe's story.

Murders in the Rue Morgue was released in the United States in the summer of 1971, premiering in Philadelphia on July 21.

[10] Donald Guarisco from Allmovie gave the film a negative review, criticizing the film's substandard pacing, convoluted plot, performances, and lack of actual tension, writing "This riff on the famous Edgar Allen [sic] Poe story has an intriguing, experimental edge to it but is not fully successful at reinventing the Poe subgenre".