Tonight's Movie: Mystery of Marie Roget (1942) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

It's a joy that the Kino Lorber Dark Side of Cinema Blu-ray collections keep coming, most recently Volume XVI! It's just been released.

I dove into this set with MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET (1942), which is also known under the reissue title PHANTOM OF PARIS.

It's just the kind of movie I love to explore, a short and sweet 61-minute "B" movie with a fun cast, directed by Phil Rosen.

The film, based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe, is set in Paris of the late 1800s. Maria Montez plays the title character, who plots with her lover Marcel (Edward Norris) to murder her sister Camille (Nell O'Day), who is on the brink of inheriting a large sum of money.

The girls' grandmother (Maria Ouspenskaya) overhears the plans and calls in police scientist Dr. Pierre Dupin (Patric Knowles) to protect Camille. Dupin is also working to solve the murder of another woman which may or may not be connected.

Nothing goes exactly to plan and Dupin works to find a killer, with the Rogets' old family friend Beauvais (John Litel) being an additional suspect.

While the movie is necessarily lacking much depth, I found it a fun hour thanks to the cast, the somewhat unusual plotting, and some extremely effective black and white cinematography by Elwood Bredell. The winding Parisian streets of the Universal backlot never looked so good.

I've always had a soft spot for Knowles and enjoyed him here as the Holmes-like Dupin, though his performance admittedly isn't particularly compelling. Still, I like him and he comes off well compared to Dupin's dimwitted police sidekick Gobin (Lloyd Corrigan).

Montez is fun as the wicked sister, with O'Day charming as the "good" girl of the piece. And Ouspenskaya is as feisty as one might expect.

It's an atmospheric hour which can't help but entertain. I haven't even mentioned that the murder victims of the piece are missing their faces...!

As a side note for those who care about such things, some posters for this film give the title as THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET, which also appears on the Blu-ray case and disc. However, the title card simply reads MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET, or to be more complete, EDGAR ALLAN POE'S MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET. My practice is to always use the opening credits title when writing about a film.

The lovely print is from a 2K scan of the 35mm fine grain.

This disc is loaded with extras in the form of not one but two commentary tracks. One track is by Kim Newman and Stephen Jones and the other is by Tom Weaver, Gary L. Prange, and Tom Zimmerman, author of THE QUEEN OF TECHNICOLOR: MARIA MONTEZ IN HOLLYWOOD, which I reviewed here.

The disc also includes the original trailer, newly mastered in 2K, plus two additional trailers for other films available from Kino Lorber.

I'm really thrilled by the inclusion of such a fun little "B" movie in this set and hope there will be more to come in future collections.

I'll be taking a fresh look at the other two films in the set, CHICAGO DEADLINE (1949) and IRON MAN (1951), but having seen them at film festivals in the past I can definitely recommend this latest Dark Side of Cinema set.

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray collection.

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