The Scarlet Plague that biographers and critics have called a "professional decline", from September 1912 to May 1916. In this period, he stopped writing short works and shifted to longer works including "The Abysmal Brute" (1913), "John Barleycorn" (1913), "The Mutiny of the Elsinore" (1914), "The Star Rover" (1915), among others. "The Scarlet Plague" was later reprinted in the February 1949 issue of "Famous Fantastic Mysteries". Jack London was inspired in part by Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 short story "The Masque of the Red Death". Both Poe's story and London's fall into a genre of apocalyptic fiction featuring a universal plague that nearly
Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932 film) film was produced as a compensatory package for Lugosi and Florey, after both were dropped from 1931's "Frankenstein". Lugosi had originally been cast as Dr. Frankenstein, and the film was to be directed by Florey, who had been developing the coveted project. Lugosi was subsequently demoted to play the mute monster, however, which he claimed to have turned down. Florey was replaced as director by James Whale, as producer Carl Laemmle was both unsatisfied with Florey's work on the project, and had given Whale first choice of any Universal property at the time. The box office results for "Murders in