Author: Jim McLennan

Dir: Rudolf Zehetgruber
Star: Adrian Hoven, Ann Smyrner, Peter Vogel, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a Die Schwarze Kobra

This was a real struggle to get through. As in, within about five minutes, I found myself idly staring at my phone instead of the screen. Okay, let’s rewind and start again. This time, I made it almost ten minutes in before getting bored and drifted away. Rewind. Third time’s the charm, right? Well, I did get to the end. But I would have to admit, that had I been quizzed about the film’s content, I would have been unable to answer in more than the broadest details. So, here we are, making attempt #4, with the film playing on my second monitor as I write this. Is it that “bad” a movie? No, probably not. It is, however, almost entirely unremarkable, the presence of Klaus Kinski – specifically, a “with Klaus Kinski” movie – being its sole redeeming feature.

It begins with the hijacking of a truck being driven by Peter Karner (Hoven). It’s executed b thugs operating on the instructions of the mysterious, sword-stick wielding “Mr. Green”, who believe there are narcotics hidden in its cargo. They shoot Peter’s Corsican co-driver, Martinez Manuzzo, which is unfortunate, since he’s the one who actually knows about the drugs. They’re initially unable to pry any information from the driver, and Peter is able to escape. He hides out at a road-house owned by his girlfriend, Alexa Bergmann (Smyrner), while the truck and Manuzzo’s corpse come to the attention of the cops. This means that the authorities and both sets of criminals – Green’s and Manuzzo’s – are now on his trail. The former think he was responsible for the death of Manuzzo, though newly-appointed Kriminalassessor Dr. Alois Dralle (Vogel) has his doubts; the latter still want to retrieve the drugs.

This is mostly Hoven’s movie, as his hero tries to solve the case on his own, either bravely or stupidly walking right into the club out of which Mr. Green’s gang operates. He’s rescued only thanks to the convenient arrival of Manuzzo’s wife, Paola, and her henchmen. She at least runs her criminal endeavors out of a novel cover – a recording studio. This is where we first meet Kinski’s character, a coke-addicted pianist called Charly. He overhears Paola negotiating with the Green gang, and goes behind her back to them, offers to trade Peter’s location for drugs. The resulting visit is where the titular cobra shows up, being part of a roadside zoo which sits next to Alexa’s establishment. It slithers away, only to be fought by a conveniently passing mongoose, which I did not realize was native to central Europe. Actually, it’s just an excuse for some stock footage of a mongoose/snake fight, which seems to have strayed in from a mondo movie.

The film eventually ends up chasing its own tale (sic), in a slew of murders, betrayals and kidnapping, with Alexa being abducted by Mr. Green, in order to force Peter to show up at the club. He does, and a reasonably impressive bar-brawl breaks out, with copious property damage, as Peter and his large ally, the roadsize zoo owner Punkti (Ady Berber), rush to the rescue. Only, Alexa has already been whisked away to another location. This is where the film’s plot collapses entirely under its own weight, with four separate groups of people – two gangs, the police and Peter’s – whizzing around. It feels like you need some kind of diagram, involving a whiteboard and copious amounts of red string, to keep track of who is doing what to whom, where and why.

Punkti gets to brawl with someone even larger and uglier than himself, and it all ends at the junkyard owned by Stanislas Raskin, Green’s #2. There’s a fairly grisly, if not explicitly depicted end for someone there: although this is utterly contrived and implausible, it does lead to a rare moment of black humor before the credits roll. Once more my attention, which had already been wavering for a while, truly struggled to get across the finishing line. There aren’t many movies I have to start watching from the beginning four separate times to get to the end. To be honest, if this had not been part of Project Kinski, I sincerely doubt I would have bothered more than once.

Hoven was a long-term actor, who got into producing and directing later in his career: he’s probably best-known for the Mark of the Devil franchise, though in 1974’s Dandelions, also directed Rutger Hauer early in the Dutch actor’s career. Like Hoven, this movie is Austrian rather than German: it seems to be trying to ape the look and feel of the Rialto krimis, not least by bringing Kinski and others, such as the hulking Berber, in for guest appearances. The end result is just unsatisfying, like a wax model of a chocolate cake, compared to the real thing. It may not have helped that I wasn’t able to locate a subtitled version, and had to go with an English dubbed one. However, the voice they used for Kinski does at least seem in approximately the same timbre as the actual actor. This can’t help the script though, which never manages to rise above the pedestrian.

I did still like Kinski’s performance, which is as loose as Charly’s dangling necktie, at times functioning closer to a belt. It probably offers the only element in the entire film that will stick in the memory. Even by his standards, it’s a remarkably twitchy performance, with Charly alternating between slimily ingratiating (when he needs a fix) and flat-out creepy (when he’s in possession of his cocaine). His eyes never seem to look in the same direction for two consecutive shots, on occasion (as shown at the top), appearing to break the fourth wall and stare directly into the camera. This isn’t something commonly seen in mainstream sixties thrillers. Having committed one too many betrayals in the cause of his habit, Charly comes to an ignominious end, naturally, meeting the pointy end of Mr. Green’s sword-cane in a secret room at his club. My interest in the movie died alongside him, with twenty minutes still to go.

Dir: Alfred Vohrer
Star: Joachim Fuchsberger, Brigitte Grothum, Elisabeth Flickenschildt, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. The Inn on the River

This is reported to be the most successful, commercially, of the 37 Edgar Wallace adaptations released in Germany from 1959 on. Numbers supposedly indicate that over four million tickets were sold during its theatrical run there, beginning in September 1962. This would have made it among the top five biggest local movies of that year. It was also the first in the series to have the famous “Hello, hier spricht Edgar Wallace” voice-over near the beginning, albeit not quite in the smooth way into which the intro would eventually develop. It’s hard to see exactly why this one would achieve such success. It was the twelfth such adaptation, so there wasn’t much novelty to it by that point, and nor is there anything particularly outstanding about the plot, performances or overall execution. Oh, it’s competent enough. There’s just nothing that makes it stand out from the other thirty-six.

Like many, it supposedly takes place in London, mostly on and around the banks of the River Thames. Someone has taken to wielding a spear-gun with extreme menace. They have been named The Shark by police, for their ability to slide away through the water in a wet-suit after committing their crimes, which also include jewel heists. Scotland Yard are largely baffled, and are coming under increasing pressure to solve the case. In charge of the investigation is Inspector Wade (Fuchsberger) of the Greenwich river police, and he focuses his investigation on the dubious riverside bar called the Mekka. It’s run by Nelly Oaks (Flickenschildt), who is well known to have her finger in a variety of criminal pies, such as whisky smuggling. She denies knowing anything, but her teenage foster daughter, Leila Smith (Grothum) provides Wade with valuable information to move his investigation forward.

There are a whole slew of suspicious characters in the mix. These include Captain Brown, who seems to regard Leila as his personal property – this would be rather more creepy, if it wasn’t for the romance between middle-aged Wade and “teenage” Leilia, Quotes used advisedly, since the age gap is not as bad as it seems on-screen. Grothum was actually 27 when this was shot, so less then eight years Fuchsberger’s junior – rather than the half his age she appears to be. There’s also Gregor Gubanow (Kinski), a Russian import-export businessman; Willy, Nelly Oaks’s bouncer, who looks like an accordion-playing version of Ron Swanson; and not even above suspicion as far as I was concerned, was Eddi Arent’s comic relief rower, Barnaby. He harbours dreams of competing in the Oxford/Cambridge boat race, although his actual prowess falls far short of that level.

It’s up to Wade to pick through the various suspects, and figure out their connection to the Seals of Troy, a ship moored on the river not far from the Mekka. As if matters weren’t involved enough, it turns out that Leila’s background might not be as poor and downtrodden as she believes, since she has a scar which matches that of the heiress to a large family fortune. After her birth mother tries to speak to Wade, she becomes the next victim of The Shark. Wade stages a stakeout at the lawyers handling the family fortune, only for not one, or two, but three wet-suit clad individuals to be involved in subsequent proceedings. So, will the real Shark please come forward? Naturally, Wade successfully solves the case, though I’d probably have to watch the movie again, to try and figure out to what extent the resolution makes sense.

It’s the usual mix of elements: not just a whodunnit, but also a whydunnit and perhaps even a whatdunnit. The heiress elements never quite gel with the rest of the proceedings, and I remain unsure as to how Nelly and her accomplices were going to profit from this arrangement. It was clearly some kind of a long game, dating back seventeen years to the end of World War II. There’s quite enough going on in the main plot, to be honest, and it could probably have benefited from some trimming. I’d have been more than happy to see all of Arent’s scenes left on the cutting-room floor. While I usually have quite a high tolerance for his goofy charms, in this case, he simply seem to be trying far too hard, and the results are thoroughly grating, and definitely add nothing of significance. The scene where he’s doing the Twist at the Mekka is simply top-tier cringe.

A couple of things to note about Kinski’s character. The name Gregor Gubanov is a nod to the film’s producer Horst Wendlandt, whose name at birth was Horst Otto Grigori Gubanov. This joke is entirely lost in the English dub, where he is called “Govino” instead. It’s also a rare case where his character sports facial hair. I don’t think I realized how rare this was until seeing it here. Even though we’re only talking little more than a pencil mustache, I’m hard pushed to think of many other cases where Kinski was not entirely clean-shaven on screen. There’s also a twist, only revealed after Gubanov’s death at the hands – or rather, the harpoon – of the Shark: I might call that a spoiler except his fate is revealed in one of the lobby cards (above). It’s then announced he was actually an undercover cop, working for Scotland Yard. Wait, what? Have to say, he was a largely ineffective one, providing little information of use to Wade.

Hamburg and the Elbe stood in for London and the Thames during shooting, and you can occasionally see local landmarks in the background, such as the four smokestacks of the now demolished Tiefstack power plant. But it generally is a reasonably well-assembled piece, with some surprisingly impressive spear-gun moments. As noted already, I’d be hard pushed to identify any factors which led to its unprecedented success at the box-office. Maybe Eddi Arent’s comedic stylings were regarded as riotous entertainment by the locals.

Dir: Josef von Báky
Star: Brigitte Grothum, Joachim Fuchsberger, Edith Hancke, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. The Strange Countess

We don’t have to wait long for Klaus to show up in this one. Indeed, the very first shot of the movie, as the opening credits roll, see his character lurking suspiciously in a doorway. From there, he moseys his way slowly along the “London” streets, although like almost all Edgar Wallace krimis, any English elements were largely faked with stock footage, Here’s the Britishness is established with a phone box and a close-up of the London telephone directory. For Klaus is about to make a threatening telephone call to Margaret Reedle (Grothum). And even at this early stage in his career, nobody can issue a not-so veiled threat, quite like Mr. Kinski. “This will be your last quiet night,” he calmly tells her, before pausing to enjoy an almost orgasmic post-call cigarette (top).

He certainly tries to make good on his promise. Miss Reedle is about to leave her position at a solicitor’s to become the private secretary to nobility – albeit one with the very unfortunate name of Countess Moron, I kid you not. I can only guess something was lost in translation there. [The Countess is played by legendary German actress Lil Dagover, who was the female lead in The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, and was still acting into her nineties.] However, Margaret may not live to see her new job. In just one day, there are three attempts on her life. First, a building site accident, then a car bomb and finally, a box of chocolates with enough Prussic acid to kill ten people. Fortunately, she has a guardian angel in Mike Dorn (Fuchsberger), a detective from Scotland Yard, called in by her current employer, Mr. Shaddle, because he fears for her safety.

Margaret proceeds with her new employment, only for the assassination attempts to continue, such as a balcony collapsing under her. The threatening phone calls from Stuart Bresset (Kinski) are ongoing as well, from the asylum where he is confined. According to Bresset’s mad ravings, he was promised his freedom by Dr. Tappat, director of the institution where he is incarcerated, in exchange for killing Margaret. This does at least explain the rather lax security, allowing Bresset to come and go as he pleases. However, I’m still not sure why he is allowed to make those calls – at one point, even using a phone in the asylum. It’s a bit of a giveaway, and I’d have said warning your potential victim also decreases substantially the chance of success. I guess this is what happens when you contract with a madman to do your dirty work.

The key question is, of course, why is Margaret a target? It seems to be related to the case of Mary Pinder, a woman who was convicted of poisoning her husband. Initially sentenced to death, the term was commuted to 20 years in prison after it was found that Mary is pregnant. She has just been released from prison, and been hired by Countess Moron (sorry, it just does not get any better with repetition) as a housekeeper. Looking through the case’s paperwork, courtesy of Mr. Shaddle, Margaret discovers her late mother was the only defense witness at Mary’s trial. Turns out, there’s even more of a connection, though I’d better leave that for the film to reveal. Dorn, doing his own investigation, finds out that the Countess’s son, Selwyn (Eddi Arendt, in a more restrained role than his usual comic relief), is the heir to the family fortune. However, this is only due to the disappearance of her elder brother, some twenty years previously.

Needless to say, this is all tied together, with one of those typically messy and convoluted plans, which I suspect no criminal in the real world would ever attempt. Yet, if you can suspend your disbelief, this should still make for a decent bit of entertainment. The performances are winning across the board; I have a particular fondness for Edith Hancke as Margaret’s plucky and loyal friend, Lizzy Smith. She sticks by her pal, when many less-resolute associates would be wishing them all the very best in their future endeavours. Dagover, too, gets a chance to demonstrate why she was such an icon. In particular at the end, when all the schemes come crashing down around her ears, and leave the Countess Moron (nope…) with only one credible way out.

Though credited to von Báky, he fell ill during shooting, and had to hand over the reins to Jürgen Roland. You can’t tell, and both men deserve credit for managing to handle what could well have become a confusing plot with some skill, stopping it from becoming incomprehensible. We are, however, here to see Klaus Kinski playing a madman, and he delivers in a way that renders almost all flaws, big and small, close to irrelevant. Right from the start, it’s clear there’s something not right about Bresset, even if it’s not initially apparent whether he is responsible for the attempts on Margaret’s life, or trying to save her from them. [The answer turns out to be, I would say, a little from Column A, and a little from Column B]

Likely in line with the somewhat murky nature of the film as a whole, his fate remains uncertain. He does certainly make it to the final 10 minutes. There, he engages in a brawl with Dorn in Tappat’s surgery, after the policeman has broken into the asylum, in search of Margaret, and finds Bresset about to complete his mission with a scalpel (above). It’s strikingly filmed, shot from both ends of the hospital table around which they are struggling. The fight finishes with Dorn despatching his opponent, using a couple of (let’s be honest, fairly woeful) karate chops. He exits with Margaret, leaving Bresset unconscious on the floor, and that’s the last we see of Klaus. I feel somewhat sorry for him: the character may be a psychopathic, failed wannabe killer, yet there’s no denying Bresset did his best, and certainly put in a lot of effort. Got to respect a lunatic with a work ethic.

Dir: Douglas Sirk
Star: John Gavin, Liselotte Pulver, Jock Mahoney, Klaus Kinski

Of late, I’d been wondering if my attention span had been shot, perhaps as a result of too much social media. It seemed like I could hardly get through a film without being compelled to reach for my phone to check my email, surf Facebook or look up sports scores. On seeing that this movie had a 131-minute running-time, it felt like it was going to be a problem. However, on the evidence of this, the problem is more likely the movies I’ve been watching – which, to be honest, have largely been a bit crap. I’d kinda drifted away from “good” movies, to ones which were viewed simply because they fitted the criteria for one or other of my projects. This one had no trouble holding my interest for the full duration, despite it also being older than I am.

The story takes place in the later stage of World War II, with the German army being relentlessly pushed back on the Eastern Front by the advancing Russians. Ernst Graeber (Gavin) is an infantry soldier there, though as the film starts, his company has about three-quarters of its men killed or missing, Morale is understandably low, and some are quietly beginning to question the whole point of being there. Matters isn’t helped when the group are ordered to execute civilians who have been found guilty of being partisans, an incident which pushes one young colleague of Graeber into taking his own life. Good news does arrive, in Ernst’s long-delayed furlough, giving him three weeks away from the front, at home with his family.

On arrival, however, he finds the street has been flattened by Allied bombs, with no indication of whether his parents are alive or dead. Seeking information about them, he goes to see the family physician, and meets the doctor’s daughter, Elizabeth Kruse (Pulver). Her father has been placed in a concentration camp for telling the wrong person the war is lost, and she has been forced to board Nazi officials in her house. The two lost souls begin a relationship, frequently interrupted by air-raid warnings, but eventually get married after overcoming problems caused by the status of her father, as well as a summons for Elizabeth to visit the Gestapo. But nothing can be done about the impending end of Ernst’s furlough which will require his return to the frozen hell of the war against the Russians.

Coming out a scant thirteen years after the end of the war, the most impressive thing is how sympathetic the story is to the German people as a whole, although the actors’ accents are far from uniform. Germans are depicted as victims, even the likes of Graeber, who is portrayed as a genuinely decent person, pushed into actions from which there is no escape. It was based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, who also appears in the film himself, in the role of fugitive teacher Professor Pohlmann. Remarque is best known for another war (more correctly, anti-war) novel, which also became a film in All Quiet on the Western Front, but had personal experience of the horrors of World War II as well. His sister was arrested, like Dr. Kruse, for saying the war was lost, and was beheaded while Remarque lived in exile in the US. The German-born Sirk did too: his teenage son died in the Ukraine while part of the army there.

If the violence is limited by the time (little is shown beyond bombing), there’s no pulling of punches in regard to the emotional impact, enhanced by shooting largely in war-damaged locations. And it’s something felt most intently by the everyday people. There’s a scene where Ernst and Elizabeth finagle an evening at an upper-class restaurant, somewhere that shouldn’t still exist, and it’s as if the war simply isn’t happening. After the air-raid siren goes off, the carousing continues in the hotel’s shelter… right up until a bomb hits. Turns out the rich are not invulnerable to the horrors of war, after all. But perhaps the most chilling scene sees Ernst seeking help with Elizabeth’s Gestapo issue, calling on a school friend, now a high-ranking official. He has a guest, commandant of the concentration camp, whose casual description of the atrocities therein, so revolts Ernst, he leaves with his original need for assistance forgotten.

Gavin and Pulver were both relative unknowns when cast here, though their career thereafter went in sharply diverging directions. Pulver was already well-known in German cinema at the time (she had previously appeared alongside Kinski in Hanussen), and that’s where she largely remained, not making much of her Hollywood opportunity. She’s still alive, having turned 92 just a couple of days ago. Gavin, however, went on to play key roles in both Spartacus and Psycho, and was almost cast as James Bond not once but twice, in Diamonds are Forever + Live and Let Die. He was President of the Screen Actors Guild after Spartacus colleague Charlton Heston, and became the US Ambassador to Mexico in the early eighties.

Kinski appears in just a single scene, towards the end of the movie. This shouldn’t be a surprise, since he’s well down the credits, not being known at the time. Klaus merits a position two slots above the guy credited as ‘Mad Air Raid Warden’, and that’s about right. He appears when Ernst ventures into Gestapo HQ, seeking more information about Elizabeth’s summons, playing the Lieutenant to whom he must speak. He’s officious and distant, especially given the purpose of the warrant, yet is not necessarily cruel. It’s simply business to him – something to be done, and he is more interested in making sure the proper documentation is filed than anything else. Again, this could be chilling, or it might simply be the inevitable, numbing impact of years of brutal conflict. The end of a human life has become a bureaucratic exercise.

Given his brief appearance (the IMDb used to refer to it, incorrectly, as “uncredited”), no wonder Kinski opted not to mention it in his autobiography. At this point in his career, he seemed more committed to his stage career. A Time to Love seems to have been the only film in which Klaus appeared for a three and a half year period, from Geliebte Corrina (released in West Germany in December 1956) and Der Rächer (August 1960). Despite this, it’s an effective piece of work, and one with which Kinski should be proud enough to be associated, even if only for a couple of minutes of screen time. Below you can find his appearance in its entirety: there was a version up already, but the aspect ratio was horribly borked, so I figured it deserved an upgrade. Sorry to those in Germany, etc. where it’s blocked.

Dir: Roger Vadim
Star: Susan Sarandon, Klaus Kinski, Stephen Elliott, Anjelica Huston

Shelley Duval’s Faerie Tale Theater was a series of 26 episodes over six seasons (plus one reunion special) which were made for the Showtime cable channel between 1982 and 1987. Duval came up with the idea, and acted as host for the show, introducing each story, and the talent involved was startling, on both sides of the camera. Other directors include Eric Idle, Tim Burton and Francis Ford Coppola, while virtually every episode had known faces, such as Robin Williams, Mick Jagger, Malcolm McDowell, Liza Minnelli, Paul Reubens, Carrie Fisher, Christopher Lee, Jeff Goldblium, Leonard Nimoy and Peter Weller. Beauty and the Beast was the sixth episode of the third season, airing on August 13th, 1984.

The story dates back to a French fairy-tale by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, first published in 1740. It has been adapted into at least a dozen movies, and this is at least one of as many again television versions. The story should likely be familiar. A merchant (Elliott) stumbles into a mysterious castle and, on taking a rose for his daughter, Beauty (Sarandon), is confronted by its beastly owner (Kinski). The Beast imposes a death sentence on the merchant, but gives him seven days to settle his affairs. On hearing this, Beauty takes her father’s place, returning to the castle to become the Beast’s companion. Every night, he asks her to marry him; every night, she declines. She is eventually given permission to visit her father, only for her absence to cause the Beast to fall into decline. Beauty returns, too late, but her final admission of love breaks the spell and he turns into a handsome prince*, and they live happily ever after**.

* for some loose definition of “handsome”. This is Klaus, who was approaching sixty and a full two decades older than Sarandon at the time. You may prefer the Beast version. I won’t judge you
** for some very loose definition of “happily ever after”. No, really: take a look at this expression on Belle’s face in the final shot, which screams Stockholm Syndrome***. It gives a whole new meaning to her final line, “I love to be afraid… with you.”
*** Probably unsurprising. According to producer Bridget Terry, “We had a hard time with Klaus Kinski… At one point, he was walking down the hallway carrying [Sarandon] for a scene, and Roger Vadim, our director, yelled “cut,” and he just dropped her. It was really tense between them.”

If you have seen Jean Cocteau’s renowned 1946 adaptation of the story, La Belle et la Bête, then large chunks of this will seem quite familiar. For example, the animated arms coming out of the wall in the Beast’s castle are clearly taken from the Cocteau version, and the same goes for other visual elements, including the costumes and make-up. It’s one of the reasons why Kinski agreed to take on the role, having worked on multiple theatrical performances of Cocteau’s works including The Typewriter and The Human Voice. According to Kinski’s autobiography, the writer sent a telegram to the producer, expressing happiness at Kinski taking on his work. Later, Kinski wrote to Cocteau for money, and was told, “I would share everything with you. Unfortunately, I own nothing. I live off the generosity of others.”

This might have been Kinski’s way of honoring his friend, Cocteau having died in 1963. It’s certainly a different choice: as noted, Klaus was almost a senior citizen and hardly a conventional handsome prince. Then again, I’ve never found Sarandon “beautiful” in the traditional sense either, so that helps balance the casting: both rely on their undoubted charisma, though Kinski as a romantic lead is always going to be a bit of a tough sell. Even as a fan, I’ve seen so many of his other roles that it’s difficult to buy into Beauty falling for him. Not that it’s a bad performance at all: what’s especially good is how much emotion Klaus is able to get through, despite being buried under extremely heavy make-up. His eyes do a lot of the talking, yet I was also impressed how little the prosthetics and fangs interfered with the delivery of his lines.

I have seen a number of Faerie Tale Theater episodes, and this one definitely does not quite fit in with the others, being notably darker in tone. The whole idea definitely plays out as if it were intended for mature viewers, which may be a result of using Vadim as a director – not exactly a man noted for children’s television! The Beast’s pain is palpable, for example, the first time that Beauty declines his marriage proposal, and there is not a great deal of light to be found until the very end. There are no dancing candlesticks or comic-relief cutlery to be found here, and the cultural dissonance resulting from the contrast to the Disney version is real: Indeed, I just realized I had called the heroine “Belle” throughout, and had to revise this. Though in fairness, calling one of your three daughters “Beauty”, while the other two are Marguerite (Huston) and Georgette (Nancy Lenehan), would appear to be asking for severe familial strife!

These elements are rather underplayed, and I feel the whole thing would have benefited had most of the scenes in Beauty’s homes, been used instead to develop her relationship with the Beast to a greater degree. At only 50 minutes long, time is of the essence, and it’s that romance which is at the story’s core, rather than the fraught relationship with her sisters, or their bickering over the best way to cook potatoes. It has been a good number of years since I saw the Cocteau version, and I’m not sure how much of this was present there. It’s either an unwarranted addition, or something that should likely have been cut in the interests of the episode as a whole. In the end, this could fairly be described as a condensed, colorized remake in English of La Belle et la Bête, which is a bit of a double-edged sword. I’ve no doubt most of the family audience on Showtime will be unaware of that version, and on its own merits, this stands up reasonably well. The more you like the original, however, the more this will likely seem superfluous at best, and bordering on blasphemy at worst.

I think of Cocteau’s magical film.  I can’t think of anything else, not even when I read the hair-raising script, which degrades the most beautiful of all fairy tales to banal Hollywood trash. They promised to get Jessica Lange to costar.  Instead they want to force some New York actress on me.  They do give me the right to translate Cocteau’s words verbatim, from French into English – but all the other characters speak the unimaginative, proletarian, idiotic dialogue of the American TV version.  The shooting is indescribable.

Kinski Uncut, p.309-310.

Dir: Ulli Lommel
Star: Suzanna Love, Barry Hickey, Ulli Lommel, Klaus Kinski

Is this the worst film in Klaus Kinski’s long filmography, spanning forty years? There’s certainly a case to be made for that, not least that of all his feature credits listed in the IMDb, the 2.6 rating for this movie is ranked 137th out of 137. And it’s not even close, with the next lowest a relatively respectable 3.0. Director Lommel made his name in the low-budget horror field, in particular for The Boogeyman, a 1980 slasher also starring Love, which gained some notoriety for being officially declared a “video nasty” in the UK a few years later. Like most such movies, it’s hardly worth the tape on which it was recorded, by most accounts. Certainly, on the basis of Stars, Lommel fully deserves his reputation as a talentless hack, managing the admirable feat of making a “comedy” without any actual laughs.

Oh, it’s clearly intended as a breezy fantasy adventure of the type popular in the mid-eighties. A naive young man, Gene Macbride (Hickey), inherits a SE Asian plantation after the sudden demise of his uncle, Donald (Kinski). He travels to his new property, only to find a curse operating due to the theft of three special rubies, held sacred by the local tribesmen. With the help of Kelly (Love), he has to recover the stolen jewels, while fending off both the curse and those who have their own agenda. Oh, yeah. Donald returns from beyond the grave to provide words of advice for his nephew. Just the once though, for Klaus was only hired for two days’ work. shooting in Mexico. He made out, getting $75,000 for his work – contrast Hickey, who earned $1,200 for four months. However, he had been doing singing telegrams in Los Angeles before the audition.

The film is flat-out terrible. You feel like it’s trying to be a spoof of things like the previous year’s The Jewel of the Nile, except Lommel failed to realize that Jewel was never intended to be taken seriously to begin with. It’s the only way to explain things like the Euro-pudding of accents which infect the film, or dialogue which is clearly intended to be funny, yet every attempt simply lands with a leaden thump. For example, Gene’s reaction on hearing about the death of his relative: “He gave me my first tom-tom, when I was six years old!” Maybe that line had them rolling in the aisles in Lommel’s native Germany? It’s not helped by Hickey’s delivery. His performance is most at home in the tropical jungles, because it’s so wooden, it could easily be mistaken for mahogany. Gene barely reacts to anything, going through the entire movie as if in a trance.

The story-line is mind-numbingly dull as well, plodding from one ruby retrieval to the next, interrupted by minor characters – never anyone of genuine significance – being bumped off by the curse, in ways that are more laughable than terrifying. For example, a maid is supposedly killed by insects, though the execution makes it feel more like she was stalked and murdered by a cheap eighties synthesizer. It is truly a case that the film only comes alive when Klaus is on-screen, and that’s not very much. Indeed, it’s hardly an exaggeration that the (very nicely painted) portrait of Donald McBride gets almost as much screen-time. Kinski has two scenes: his death in a fight over a chessboard with a minion, and his spectral appearance to Gene, spouting nonsensical lines such as, “Most Americans think of Asian countries as… sort of house pets. But they are not kittens or puppies… They’re elephants.”

Given the movie itself is so thoroughly forgettable, it’s fortunate that the making of the film, and Klaus’s part in it, is a source of many anecdotes. There are a few main sources for these. Firstly, there’s an interview with director Lommel, included as an extra on the DVD release, and embedded in full below. I’m working on a full transcript of that, which I’ll add in the Kinskilaneous section when it’s completed. There are also interviews with Hickey on Du Dumme Sau and Exploitation Retrospect, as well as comments from Joycelyne Lew, who played the maid mentioned above. What follows are some of the most interesting and/or amusing quotes by the three, forming a brief oral history of Revenge of the Stolen Stars, in particular as it pertains to Kinski.

He wasn’t the original choice for the part. It was going to be Tony Curtis, but he checked himself into rehab, leading to a quick scramble for a replacement. Ernest Borgnine passed, and then word reached the director that Klaus was available. Lommel: I didn’t want to work with Klaus Kinski, because he had such a bad reputation, and I didn’t want to have to put up with somebody crazy on my set like him. But then his agent said, “Don’t worry, he has completely changed, he has mellowed he’s a different person.”I didn’t trust that, so I said, “Well, let me meet him,” and I met him at the Chateau Marmont Hotel on the Sunset Strip. And he was so nice, so sweet and so gentle, and I said. “Wow! You know, maybe he has changed,” and so we started shooting with him in Mexico.

Lew: We traveled in a town car and [Kiaus] had his hand on my lap. When we arrived at the hotel, I asked where my luggage was. It seems Mr. Kinski had it delivered to his room. I found the director and asked him to put me in a room far down the hall. and to not tell anyone where I was. I pretty much hid all night in my room and the next morning he asked what happened to me. I said, “Well, I was around.…”

As soon as they began filming, Klaus began making demands. He couldn’t act with all the lights shining in his face, even though they were perfectly normal movie equipment. Then, when that was fixed, the boom microphone became a distraction: that’s why the audio is so inconsistent during the scene, because of Kinski’s demands. Lommel: I knew we were in big trouble after the first take… We needed to shoot this from another angle, and I said to him, “Okay, Klaus – you have to sit down there again in the chair,” and I have all the cameras taking from a different angle now.” Oh,” he said, “I don’t want to sit down there again!” In the end, Lommel decided, rather than keep fighting Kinski over every element, just to make his character a ghost so that it didn’t matter if he went from sitting to walking to playing chess.

Klaus loved the idea, calling Lommel a “genius” for it. But Kinski’s wholesale adoption of his new spectral persona caused problems for the actor with whom he was supposed to interact. Hickey: Ulli comes over to me and says, “Barry, you have to leave the room.” “Why?” “Because you can’t see Klaus.” And he’s buying into this, he’s explaining to me Klaus’ logic. “Because Klaus is a ghost. “Yeah, I know, he’s my uncle.” “But you can’t see him and if you see him now it’ll destroy his performance.” “Help me out here Ulli. This is my comedic, fun-loving Irish uncle, now he’s a crazy German who whispers?” “That’s what he wants and that’s how he acts. I’m paying him all this money Barry.”

Lommel: Towards the end of the day, we’d shot already maybe 12-13 hours. He comes to me and says, “I’m feeling really good now,” and I say, “Well, that’s fine, Klaus.” I saw though that he’d finished one bottle after the other, of whiskey and champagne and vodka and cognac… He said, “I can’t stop right now, I need to continue, I’m just beginning to feel it… No, I need to continue! I can’t go home, you can’t have me tomorrow! Tonight! I want to shoot tonight.” So I went to everybody, I said, “Look, maybe we should just get it over with. We’ll shoot all the scenes with him until he’s done and then we never have to put up with him again,. We’ll take off tomorrow and if necessary the next day.” So we kept shooting and shooting and shooting, and he got more and more drunk. I think after about almost 30 hours of non-stop shooting with him, he just dropped dead.

There was, however, at least something of a happy ending to the tale. Lommel: I was really glad that it was over, because he was such a pain in the ass. Then we took two days off, and on the second day off, I was at the beach in Mexico and he came to me and said. “I just want to tell you, you know, it was really great working with you, and you have so much imagination.” And I said, “Well, thanks, Klaus. That’s kind of you.”

Dir: Adriano Bolzoni (as William McCahon)
Star: Michael Craig, Eva Renzi, Adolfo Celi, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. The Night of the Assassin

This certainly shines a bit of light on an area of European post-way history with which I was not very familiar. So let’s begin with a Cliff Notes discussion of Cyprus and its struggles for independence from the British Empire. Britain had offered Cyprus to Greece during World War I, if they entered the conflict on its side. The offer was declined, but through the end of World War II, the Greek Cypriot population continued to hope for enosis – a term that crops up frequently in the film, meaning (in the specific case of the island) a re-unification with Greece. However, the significant Turkish Cypriot population had no interest in this, and wanted the island instead to be divided into Greek and Turkish areas.

In 1955, a group called EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston).began a campaign against the British colonial powers, including bombings, attacks on police stations and UK forces, and against those Cypriots seen as collaborators. That’s more or less the period where the film joins proceedings. In the interest of completeness, I’ll tell you now that Cyprus became an independent state in 1960, though was hardly the end of the problems. Greece carried out a coup d’etat in 1974, which was followed five days later by Turkey invading and occupying the northern part of the island. That’s more or less where it stands today, though relations between the two communities have become more cordial of late.

Ok, so now you’re up to speed. The film starts with the arrival in Cyprus of Col. Stephen Mallory (Craig), a British officer who is tasked with keeping the peace in the troubled community. Virtually before he has unpacked, he’s embroiled in a potential crisis, when a young local boy steals a soldier’s gun and holes up in a well. After initially wanting to solve the problem with a grenade (!), Mallory thinks better of it, and takes the boy into custody. It’s to the mixed relief and anger of his mother, Helena (Renzi); but helped by Mallory arranging for the release of her son on parole, the two begin a relationship. This is a bit awkward, as she also has ties to EOKA. They want her to pump him for useful information; he is also keen to use her as a conduit to speak with its leader, Hermes (Celi), to agree to a ceasefire and peace talks.

Negotiations are of particular importance, as the Secretary-General of the United Nations is about to pay a visit to Cyprus, and could provide a breakthrough towards a negotiated settlement. However, not everyone is keen on the idea, notably Hermes’s second-in-command, the priest Evagoras (Kinski). The involvement of clergy in terrorism perhaps isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem. The first president of independent Cyprus was Archbishop Makarios, who certainly knew the leader of EOKA and had common goals with it, though the extent of his ties is uncertain. Evagoras doesn’t want peace on these terms, being engaged in negotiations of his own, and prepares a “false flag” attack on the Secretary-General, to be blamed on pro-British Cypriots. To that end, he kidnaps Mallory and Hermes when they are meeting, aiming to force Mallory into signing a “confession” for the attack. They need to escape and stop it from taking place.

I found the movie surprisingly decent, being more nuanced than I expected. All the various factions – Greek, Turkish and British – are presented with some degree of sympathy, and it’s made clear that none have a monopoly on good or evil. That is present at a personal level, e.g. Hermes vs. Evagoras, with the former being far more open to peace through negotiation, while the latter believes it can only be achieved by direct action, and will accept no compromise in this area. Helena, in particular, is caught in the middle, finding herself torn between what’s best for herself, best for her son, and best for her country. It’s a decision which may end up being mutually exclusive, forcing her to decide which loyalties are the most important. Bolzoni, best known as one of the writers on A Fistful of Dollars, does a good job of weaving a story out of the multiple threads, in a way that keeps the viewer interested. At least, for the majority of the film’s running-time.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite sustain this success to the end. The escape of our heroes from Evagoras’s underground lair is overlong, and degenerates into little more than lengthy bursts of automatic weapons, from one poorly-lit corner to another. What had gone before deserves a considerably better finale, even if the exploding boat is impressive (Bolzoni seems to have liked it too, going by the variety of angles from which we see the giant fireball!). As for Kinski’s role, it does come as a shock to see him sporting Greek Orthodox robes, with a large crucifix dangling in front. I kept wondering if he was going to all Jesus Christus Erlöser on us. Once it becomes clear this is not a “turn the other cheek” type of priest, however, you can settle down and enjoy Klaus’s performance, as part of a surprisingly decent thriller.

In a 2005 interview, co-star Renzi talked about her experience with Kinski. She wasn’t exactly complimentary, basically starting off by saying “He was a psychopath. He was a madman”, though in almost the next breath grudgingly admits, “He had a magnetism, there’s no doubt about it, he was very interesting in his mannerisms.” As for their relationship during filming, she said “I thought he was very, very unpleasant as a partner, very egomaniac[al].” She goes on to say that Klaus “blew himself up” in an unsympathetic way, and describes him “arriving in Yugoslavia [where I presume this was filmed] with twenty-five pieces of luggage and a Bentley.” She ends that section of the interview by making what can only be described as a retching sound!

Dir: Don Sharp
Star: Tony Randall, Senta Berger, Herbert Lom, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. Bang Bang, You’re Dead

In the sixties, the worldwide success of James Bond spawned any number of spy capers, from the serious through to the pure spoof. This likely skews towards the latter end of the spectrum, playing the “fish out of water” card heavily. However, the story is staggeringly dull, and the direction fails to do much to elevate things. The end result can only be considered a sad waste, both of the exotic and picturesque North African locations, and a cast which is full of faces you’ll probably recognize. In particular, Kinski gets hardly anything to do, and even less to say, in his role as Jonquil, the chief henchman of Mr. Casimir (Lom).

Casimir is awaiting the arrival in Marrakesh of a courier, bearing a payment of two millions dollars, which will be used to influence votes on behalf of “the People’s Republic” (presumably China, though it’s never made explicit) at an upcoming United Nations meeting. The problem is, he doesn’t know who the courier is, just that they are arriving on a shuttle bus from the local airport. There are a slew of potential candidates, and this is partly where the casting really takes off, as we meet them all on the way into the city. First up is sanitation salesman Arthur Fairbrother (Wilfred Hyde-White). Then here’s holiday company executive George C. Lillywhite (John Le Mesurier). Worker for Iranian Oil, Andrew Jessel (Randall). Vacationing model Kyra Stanovy (Berger). And last but not least, keeping an eye on them is Casimir’s moll, Samia Voss (Margaret Lee), with Jonquil following the bus.

On reaching the hotel, things settle down a bit, with Andrew finding a corpse stashed in his room. It appears it was intended for Kyra, and the pair team up to dispose of the body. It’s quickly clear that she is considerably more savvy than he about the murky world into which he has dropped, and together they navigate the shady doings of spy-craft in sixties Morocco, where just about nobody is who they claim to be. Casimir initially mistakes Jessel for the courier. When the truth comes out, Jessel escapes, but mistakenly picks up Casimir’s highly incriminating briefcase in the confusion. This leads to he and Kyra being pursued through the desert, as they initially try and make their way to Algiers, before doubling back to confront Casimir in a set of Marrakesh ruins, with the help of Bedouin El Caid (Terry-Thomas), as all is revealed.

To go through the cast and where you probably know them from:

• Lom was Chief Inspector Dreyfus in the Pink Panther films [Burt Kwouk, who played Clouseau’s man-servant Cato in the series, has a bit part here]
• Hyde-White was Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady
• Le Mesurier played Sergeant Arthur Wilson in long-running BBC sitcom, Dad’s Army
• Randall was half of The Odd Couple, a successful US sitcom
• Lee appeared perhaps more than anyone else with Kinski, appearing in 12 films together including Psycho-Circus (1966), Five Golden Dragons (1967) and Venus in Furs (1969)., many of them, like this, produced by Harry Alan Towers.
• Terry-Thomas may be best known for the St. Trinian’s movies, but was almost ever-present in British comedies of the sixties.
• Don Sharp directed some of the, frankly, less impressive Hammer films such as Kiss of the Vampire (1963) and The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964)

Most of the performers do reasonably well with their roles. Le Mesurier and Hyde-White in particular manage to capture the essence of the British Empire, while also giving the impression there’s something more under the surface (and without spoiling anything, in both cases that proves to be the case). Randall is decent enough as the wide-eyed innocent abroad, though the speed with which he agrees to help Kyra get rid of a corpse is pretty implausible. I know she’s pretty ‘n’ stuff, but I’d definitely be exploring other options. However, it’s also surprisingly progressive in that the character of Kyra Stanovy is a strong. independent woman, who leads Jessel more than she is led. It’s quite a sharp contrast to Bond girls of the time who, after an encouraging start in the franchise, were increasingly little more than eye-candy.

Unfortunately, none of the cast are able to make much impression on a plot which is established inside about ten minutes, then goes virtually nowhere until the final ten. In between, there’s almost nothing to keep you interest between some moderately pleasant scenery. The only bit which will stick in my mind is they’re being captured by El Caid, who turns out not to be a savage, but an Old Etonian with perfect manners. It’s a lovely bit of playing against stereotype, which renders the casting of Terry-Thomas in brownface nearly palatable. But almost everything else in an absolute trudge, and even Kinski is little more than well-dressed wallpaper, lurking in the background and waiting for something to happen. The audience will be doing the same, and I’d suggest bringing a cup of coffee and some snacks to this one.

While the film does not merit being mentioned by name, in his autobiography Klaus does spend several pages apparently discussing his adventures shooting this in Morocco. It’s mostly sex: he hails a passing women in the street like a cab, almost gets gang-raped by a pair of local men and (taking the usual caveat about believing Kinski as read) “fools around with” Lee, Berger and Towers’ wife at the time, Margaret Rohm (he call her Towers’ “steady girlfriend,” but they married in 1964). With all that going on, I’m surprised he found time to learn his lines. But I was amused by this passage:

When I piss on a palm tree, it stings like nettles. I’ve got the clap again. There’s no time for me to go to the doctor. He comes to give me an injection. We’re filming in a palace. Between sessions I slip out with the doctor to the gallery above the tea room. I let my pants down and get the penicillin right in the ass. The director is already calling me back.

All I Need is Love, pp 167-168.