Category: Filmography

Dir: Rolf Olsen
Star: Mario Adorf, Edmund Purdom, Walter Giller, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. Der Letzte Ritt nach Santa Cruz

The Euro-western is one of the movie types most closely associated with Klaus, and this was his first entry in the field. Indeed, this manages to pre-date what’s commonly regarded as the “patient zero” of the spaghetti Western, Sergio Leone’s A Fisftul of Dollars, which came out later the same year. It seems a bit unfair this one has been almost forgotten, since there are a number of aspects which would become mainstays of the spaghetti sub-genre. Of course, this isn’t Italian: being German (technically, a West German-Austrian co-production); maybe we need to call it a sauerkraut Western? Though it’s far from the first Euro-western, or even the first German entry. With this being Klaus’s debut though, it seems a good point for a brief history of them.

As early as 1906, director Jean Hamman made Le Cowboy, later claiming in his autobiography that this was the first Western film. The first Italian entry was, of all things, a vampire Western, La Vampira Indiana, made in 1913. What’s particularly noteworthy is, it was directed by Sergio Leone’s father, Vincenzo Leone, and starred his mother, Bice Waleran, in the title role. The Germans weren’t far behind. Indeed, the country had been fond of the Western setting since before cinema, with the novels of Karl May being extremely popular at the end of the 19th century. In 1920, Bela Lugosi, of all people, played the Mohican chief Chingachgook, in two-part Western Lederstrumpf, based on the works of James Fenimore Cooper.

However, it took until 1962 for any of May’s Western novels to become a film, with Der Schatz im Silbersee the first to feature the Winnetou character. Kinski, of course, would appear in a subsequent franchise entry, Last of the Renegades, also later in 1964. However, most of these more or less followed the same kind of stories which were being made in the Hollywood westerns. Film-makers like Leone (For a Few Dollars More (1965)), Sergio Corbucci (The Great Silence (1968)) or Anthony Dawson (And God Said to Cain (1970)), all took the Western and twisted it in new, typically darker directions. While earlier than these, Olsen appears to be doing something similar, with this film spending more time with the supposed villain of the piece, and giving him attributes more befitting an anti-hero, something not often seen in Euro-westerns to that point.

This central character is Pedro Ortiz (Adorf), an outlaw who has just got out of prison after serving a two-year sentence. It’s not long before he and his colleagues Fernando and Jose (Kinski) breaking the law again, busting young gang member Carlos out of jail, killing seven men in the process. That done, they look to reclaim the proceeds from their last robbery, which was hidden near the Mexican border by Pedro before his capture. The gang head off, accompanied by Pedro’s girl Juanita, and saloon piano-player Woody (Giller), unfortunate enough to stumble into their activities. However, the outlaw also has revenge on his mind, against sheriff Rex Kelly (Purdom), the man who put Pedro behind bars. He’s no longer in law enforcement, but is a bank manager.

Determined to destroy Rex’s reputation as much as anything, Pedro kidnaps Rex’s wife and young son, holding them in order to force Rex to hand over the contents of his bank’s safe. They then high-tail it towards the border, keeping their hostages to ensure safe passage. Rex, however, is made of sterner stuff and tracks Pedro and the gang on their route, even after losing his horse in a shoot-out with Fernando. Pedro, meanwhile, is becoming more prone towards violence, in particular killing in cold blood the inhabitants of a hacienda where they take shelter. Carlos and Juanita begin to have second thoughts about their association, especially when Jose also falls to the relentless pursuit of Rex, and the others with reason to take Pedro down.

Despite all of the above, Pedro is not without redeeming features. According to the stories told by Woody, the outlaw is something of a Robin Hood figure to Mexican peasants: okay, he may not give to the poor, but he’s definitely robbing the rich, making him a folk hero for the common man. His word is his bond as well. Yet, in another bleak twist foreshadowing those of the Italian successors, this proves to be his eventual downfall. In contrast, once the movie has established Rex’s credentials as a family man, it seems to lose interest in any further development of his character. Kinski isn’t the only one here who would go on to “proper” spaghetti Westerns either. Rex’s wife is played by Marianne Koch, the female lead in A Fistful of Dollars, among others [she had previously appeared alongside Klaus in Ludwig II: Glanz und Ende eines Königs].

Klaus’s character is certainly unpleasant, though is the most competent of Pedro’s team. Jose sports an elegant headband below his Stetson, and sleazes his way in an appropriately creepy manner towards the captive Mrs. Miller, with predatory intent, though Pedro stops it going too far. His eventual fate is also memorable. After the hacienda massacre, Pedro sends Jose back to take care of Rex, unaware the former lawman is no longer acting alone. There’s a posse with him, and Jose rides right into them. Attempting to flee, he takes refuge in a church, and it looks like he may escape, with the priest being adamant that Jose gets sanctuary. However, when the priest goes in, Jose – presumably mistaking him as an attacker – guns him down. Sanctuary no longer applies, and a fire is set, smoking Jose out, where he’s killed by Rex after drawing on him.

It finishes, as you’d expect, with a confrontation between Jose and Rex, at the site where Jose hid his ill-gotten gains, though only after a twist which was quite effective. They end up having to rely on each other to get out of a tricky situation, though that’s where Jose’s keeping his word ends up a fatal weakness. I liked this one. It definitely feels ahead of its time, and has a grittier feel than the other sauerkraut Westerns I’ve seen, which works in its favor.

Dir: Manfred Purzer
Star: Mel Ferrer, Klaus Kinski, Carlo de Mejo, Susanne Uhlen
a,k,a, The Net

This is about what you would expect from a German take on the quintessentially Italian genre, the giallo. It’s far too stodgy to be effective, and manages to miss the point in a number of ways. While not short on the exploitative element of female nudity, it manages to carry out all examples of the other key component, violence, off-screen. While multiple murders take place, we never see them. The same year this was made, the master of the field, Dario Argento,, released Deep Red. The contrast between its insanity and the plodding, almost procedural, nature of this could hardly be greater. Indeed, except for the fact we know who the killer is all along, this perhaps has more in common with the Edgar Wallace movies of the previous decade.

The focus is Aurelio Morelli, a writer in the twilight of his career, who is increasingly disgruntled with modern life, modern people and in particular, modern women – not least a result of the contemporary disdain for and disinterest in his work. On his birthday, he strangles a prostitute with a phone-cord, a crime which leaves the police under Inspector Canonica (Heinz Bennent) baffled. However, sleazy tabloid journalist Emilio Bossi (Kinski) has figured out Morelli’s connection to the case, and blackmails the author into writing his memoirs for Bossi’s publication, including details of the murder. In exchange, Morelli will get enough money to fund a new life in another country, which does not have an extradition treaty with Italy. Bossi, meanwhile, will get a nice, lurid scoop.

The execution turns out to be not that easy. Canonica brings the hear on Bossi, suspecting he knows more about the murder than he has told the authorities. The magazine publisher insists on his son, Francesco Vanetti (de Mejo), working with Bossi as photographer on the story, even though Francesco has an almost complete loathing for the magazine. Morelli, meanwhile, is writing the promised content, but what he delivers to the journalist includes descriptions of previous murders, suggesting that the call-girl was not the first victim of his wrath. However, the author meets and befriends Agnese (Uhlen), a young woman who both respects and admires Morelli’s work. Will that be enough to stop his apparently long, ongoing string of murders before his confessions are published?

There are a bunch of issues here, not the least being the almost creepy relationships between Morelli and a slew of young women. When this was released in 1975, Ferrer turned 58, and was approaching four decades older than Uhlen, for example, who was born in 1955. Of course, it was the seventies, where standards about such things were considerably laxer, but it’s certainly an element that has not aged well. An even bigger problem is that the story just isn’t particularly interesting. As noted, there’s no question about the “who” in this dunnit, which only really leaves the “why”. Outside of a couple of rants against modern society, one in particular suggesting Morelli is on a campaign to clean up society.(a year before Taxi Driver did a lot more with that idea), we never get any real insight into what triggers his psychotic outbursts.

The story tries to spread itself too thinly, and never succeeds in developing any of its characters to an adequate degree. They could have focused on the murderous writer. Or the publisher’s scion, torn between his family heritage and a strong distaste for the way in which their fortune was made. Or – and this would have been my preference, for obvious reasons – on Bossi, and the way he is prepared to make almost any moral compromise, in his quest to increase the magazine’s circulation. The journalist is probably the most interesting character in the film, even prepared to let a lunatic roam free, putting potential future victims at risk, for the sake of his story. Certainly, Kinski has the best hair of anyone here, his long, flowing blonde locks at or near peak Klaus coiffure.

It is the kind of role, best described as a driven sleazebag, for which Kinski was born, and at which he was consistently good. Unfortunately, the director doesn’t seem particularly interested in exploring his character, preferring instead to follow Morelli’s angst-ridden meanderings, up and down the Italian coast. Speaking of which, outside of some gratuitous Roman ruins at the beginning, there’s not much sense of location, and they might as well have stayed in Germany. Though I was amused to discover that Italian hippie chicks apparently have a fondness for keeping their fur coats in the refrigerator. Hey, it was the seventies, who am I to judge? This is definitely one of the more obscure films in which Klaus appeared during the decade and, to be honest, it being largely forgotten seems for reason. Perhaps in other hands than Purzer’s, it might have been memorable, or at least, less bland.

Elke Sommer has a relatively small role, playing another call-girl, who was a neighor of the initial victim, and whose relationship with Bossi kicks matters off. She’s not particularly relevant to the plot beyond that, but does appear to have some not particularly nice memories of her experience working with Klaus.

In my opinion, Kinski was a nutcase, seriously. We had a scene together in the movie where he had to pull me up by my hair. That’s relatively easy to achieve… But he yanked me up so roughly, that he was tearing out tufts of my hair… I said to him, “If you dare try that again, I will beat you up!” The director joined us too and said to him, “Mind what you’re doing.” After that, he became very angry.” We were shooting at a private house which was nicely furnished, and they had a really beautiful collection of ceramic plates on a rack. He took one of his shoes and smashed them to pieces. So, you can imagine I don’t remember my dear colleague very fondly!

Elke Sommer

Dir: Wolfgang Schleif
Star: Klaus Kinski, Brigitte Grothum, Marina Petrova, Sieghardt Rupp
a.k.a. The Red Pastures

Oh, look. Klaus Kinski is playing a serial killer. But before you roll your eyes and move on, this is actually considerably more subtle than it might appear from that sentence. This is the earliest film I’ve reviewed so far, in which Kinski is the genuine lead, rather than a supporting actor, and he is really good. It helps that the script is also solid, and the supporting performances back up Kinski’s surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of a man, who already has the murder of four women under his belt, when the film starts. But that’s getting well ahead of ourselves, for we don’t learn that until almost an hour into the movie.

That said, ot is clear from the start that something is up with him, because the movie opens with his character, Martin, escaping from a criminal psychiatric asylum. You don’t get put in one of those unless you have serious problems, and done some bad things. A subsequent conversation between Professor Lindner (Dieter Borsche) and an employee, puts a slightly different spin on the matter. “He has no idea of what he did. He forgot everything, and we have made every effort so he would forget.” But the discussion finishes with an ominous warning. “If he ever crosses the path of an inviting woman…” Sounds applicable for most of Klaus’s life, actually!

The next time we see Martin, he is making his way out of the reeds surrounding a lake on the border between East and West Germany. Interestingly, it’s never stated, but I presume we are on the West. The border feels curiously unguarded, considering this was released in May 1962, nine months after the Berlin Wall went up. There’s really little to separate the two countries in this rural area save a few guards, and the farm workers he encounters just assume Martin is a refugee from the other side. One of them is Katrin (Grothum), whose father owns the farm, and initially mistakes Martin for her missing husband, also called Martin, who had previously vanished at the border. She now lives with her daughter Hanni (Christine Ratej), though another employee, Kurt (Rupp), has eyes on Katrin – whether for her or her eventual inheritance, is hard to say.

Taken under Katrin’s wing, Martin ends up staying on the farm, putting his skills (learned in the asylum) as a mechanic to good use. He has to register with the local police, who are a bit suspicious of his amnesia, But he settles in, and his child-like innocence and soft-spoken nature help him to bond with Hanni. Martim seems scared of his own shadow – “Every word he hears, every stranger he faces, I always have the feeling that he wants to run away, that he wants to hide” – with a particular fear of confinement, even in something as simple as a locked door. But Katrin and the others put that up to previous trauma across the border, and for a while, things settle down into a routine, though Karl grows suspicious Martin is not the refugee he says.

The fragile calm is shattered when Martin heads into the city, looking to buy the doll and flashlight that Hanni wants more than anything for Christmas. It’s a strange, scary place for him, since all he knows is the farm and the asylum. However, the real disaster happens when he sees a ‘Wanted’ poster pasted up, for escaped murderer Josef Stief, who had been convicted of murdering four women. Because the poster has Martin’s face on it, shattering his innocent belief system. The police are alerted to his presence, and even though he makes his way back to the sanctuary of the farm, the driver who gave him a lift points authorities in his direction, and they show up there, for a final confrontation which, in many ways, resembles the end of many a Frankenstein film, with a mob hunting down someone who deserves sympathy as much as hate.

That’s the key moral dilemma at the center of the film. How much does a man deserve punishment, for a crime he doesn’t remember committing? It’s very smart of the film to keep the details of “Martin’s” crimes under wraps until; 54 minutes in, as by that point, we have bought into the gentle, caring nature of his character. This is shown particularly well in in his interactions with Hanni, such as telling her the story of the Selfish Giant. But, as we see later on, he is not cured of his urges, with the sight of a particular piece of jewelry capable of triggering a return to the psychotic rages which got him committed to the asylum. There’s also a very interesting discussion in which Prof. Lindner argues against the police “shoot to kill” policy.

But, make no mistake, this is Klaus’s movie. He ends up hiding out on the farm, in the hay-loft where Hanni tries to protect him. Katrin finds him there, and tries to convince Martin the only solution is to go back to the asylum. His fear makes him refuse, and we get another wonderful example of Kinski in full, powerhouse flow: “They’ll lock me in. They’ll break me down. Only bars, only bars all over the place…” Unfortunately, it turns out that Katrin is wearing the coral necklace which reverts Martin into Josef, and he throws her from the hay-loft. Hanni thinks he has killed her mother, and tells the rest of the farmers, who have gathered to celebrate a wedding, leading to the mob mentioned earlier. The film-makers do appear to have set fire to an impressive amount of farmland, as the hunting party seek to drive Martin/Josef out.

I’m not 100% certain about the ending, which seems to come a bit out of nowhere. There’s also another subplot, involving Martin and the local barmaid, who is a genuine refugee from across the border – this doesn’t appear to go anywhere much. But whenever Kinski is on screen, the results are absolutely hypnotic. Particularly after his “true self” is revealed, Klaus is increasingly incandescent, playing a man tormented beyond the scope of what normal flesh should be expected to bear [it’s never revealed what they did in the asylum to wipe his memories, but it’s unlikely to have been tea and a chat] I suspect for this role, Kinski may have tapped into his enforced stay in a real asylum in the fifties. Whatever the source, this is perhaps the first great performance of his film career. Here are a couple of scenes, illustrating what I mean.

Dir: Gerry O’Hara
Star: Francesca Annis, Rosemary Nicols, Ian McShane, Klaus Kinski

I have to say, given a title like that, and a poster which also promises a great deal. this is considerably less salacious than I expected. I mean, with a tagline like “They made love their way… ANY WAY!!!” – capital letters, bold and exclamation points as in the original – you’d be forgiven for expecting something like a London version of Naughty Nympho Night Nurses, or some similar Scandinavian import. But this was perhaps just too early in the swinging sixties to capitalize on the loosening of film censorship which would follow later in the decade. While it doesn’t hang back in covering socially sensitive topics such as sex outside marriage, abortion and homosexuality, the actual depiction is… Well, either “restrained” or “tame” depending on whether your point of view is charitable or critical.

There is an “export version” but according to a comparison, it only runs 67 seconds longer than the British theatrical release. This does include the only actual nudity present in the film, when an artist’s model at a party is shown topless for a few seconds. One of the other additional sequences does involve Kinski, and we’ll get to that a bit later. However, in general this is not anything like the exploitative vehicle I expected. I can’t say how audiences might have reacted at the time, but from a contemporary point of view, it plays more like a soap opera. There is a young, photogenic cast (no ugly people in the swinging sixties!) and multiple plot threads are woven through the 85-minute running time. O’Hara’s script does a deft job of keeping all these balls aloft, and is perhaps the best aspect of the movie.

The central character is Sally (Annis), an upper-middle class girl from Sussex, who moves up to London. There, she joins a house-share with some girls whom she knows, and other new friends. They include Marion (Nichols), who discovers she is pregnant; the token male, Paddy (Tony Tanner); and Dee (Suzanna Leigh), who is the mistress of the house’s landlord and property owner of dubious reputation, Nikko Stalmar (Kinski). Sally, meanwhile, meets and falls for Keith Dexter (McShane), despite initially finding his personality quite off-putting. In some ways, it feels like an early British take on something like Friends, not least in that none of the participants except for Nikko appear to work. A couple of off-hand reference to typing and modelling, is about as close to gainful employment as you’ll get.

Still, this doesn’t deter them from partying, and getting into various scrapes. Most obviously is Marion’s status, at a time when abortion was still not legal in the United Kingdom (that did not happen until 1968). I’m not sure the film even uses the “a” word, couching her situation instead in vague terms, with her boyfriend Prinny knowing somebody who can take care of it. The price for the procedure is given as fifty pounds; for comparison, the rent for the multiple girls in the flat is stated to be fifteen pounds a week. They end up having to sell Maddy’s heirloom jewelry to Nikko to raise the needed money, though Prinny ends up gambling away the proceeds. But this sequence does show Nikko in a sympathetic light. When he discovers the source of the item he just bought, the landlord arranges for it quietly to be returned to Marion.

However, despite being nice to his friends, there does appear to be a darker side to Nikko, in his everyday business dealings. Again, it’s more insinuated than clearly stated that he is a slumlord, renting inadequate properties to vulnerable tenants at extortionate prices (though the house in which the girls live seems perfectly nice). This brings him into conflict with some characters who appear to have a beef with his method of business, hired by the tenants to show the property owner the error of his ways. The first encounter comes with Dee in his car, and he only narrowly escapes being beaten-up due to her quick thinking. But that only delays the inevitable, and he is eventually cornered in a car-park to face the music.

It’s part of this sequence which was also excised from the UK release. After being beaten up, he’s tied to the front of a van (pictured, top), and the shirt torn off his back. In the export version, you actually see him being thrashed with a leather belt, while the British print cuts away before that happens. It does have the desired effect, in that Nikko apparently decides to accelerate his plan to get out of the business. Dee stands by him – but there’s an awkward scene when she visits him in the hospital, as his wife shows up, just after Dee has left Nikko’s room. It seems the lovely little future she had planned out for them, may not be quite as imminent as she hoped. It’s another way in which the film is anchored firmly in its era. Again, ending a marriage became easier later in the decade, after the Divorce Reform Act of 1969. [Completing the trifecta of social issues, turns out Paddy is gay, something entirely illegal in England until 1967]

It is, as you can imagine, very much a time capsule, and as such is difficult to relate to. There is not much character development; outside of Nikko, nobody seems particularly changed by their experiences. There’s no sense of escalation outside of his story-line, and the film just peters out, rather than providing a satisfactory sense of closure for its lead characters. I enjoyed Kinski speaking genuine English, rather than being dubbed, even if there were moments where his command of the language did seem a bit shaky. But beyond that, and seeing McShane and Annis early on, in what would become significant careers for both, there is not enough here to trigger much of a reaction. I did like the catchy theme song though, an appropriately sixties number performed by The Three Quarters. I may be whistling that for a while.

Dir: Just Jaeckin
Star: Françoise Fabian, Murray Head, Dayle Haddon, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. Madame Claude

After having had two global hits with Emmanuelle and The Story of O, Jaeckin went for a more ambitious film as his third feature. It’s based on the real life exploits of Fernande Grudet, better known as Madame Claude. She was to French society in the sixties and seventies what Heidi Fleiss was to Hollywood in the nineties: a purveyor of top-notch female company to the rich, famous and powerful. In Claude’s case, her diverse clients reportedly included French Presidents De Gaulle and Pompidou, John F. Kennedy – who supposedly asked for a girl like his wife Jackie, “but hot” – the Shah of Iran and Frank Sinatra.

This film is considerably more circumspect, naming no names. While there is an American President to whom Claude caters, it’s a fictional one. Part of this may be because, at the time the film came out, its subject was in legal hot water. Her long protection from the law had faded after a change in government, and charges of tax evasion eventually forced Claude to flee for sanctuary in America. About as close as it gets to explicit contemporary commentary, is a few nods to the Lockheed corruption scandal of the early seventies, such as the US President advising Claude to buy shares in the company!

However, the viewer can still read between the lines, to try and figure out, for example, who the member of Arab royalty with a taste for watching lesbians, is intended to be. Similarly, Greek shipping magnate Alexander Zakis (Kinski) may be s reference to [REDACTED ON LEGAL ADVICE]. Crafted rather more out of whole cloth is the character of David Evans (Head, best known as the singer of One Night in Bangkok). He is a photographer who hangs around with and occasionally beds Claude’s girls, much to her chagrin (why give it away for free, she reckons), and has a nice collection of blackmail pics showing them in action with their clients.

That’s where the film differs markedly from Jaeckin’s previous works, since the focus is not entirely on sex. A good chunk of this a borderline paranoid political thriller, with various parties working to locate the elusive Evans, since his photo album could prove very useful to said elements. Evans’s actions also bring the heat down on Claude, with some believing she is behind the pictures. The final shot of the film has her being handed a set of prints by a shady intelligence officer, and asking “Where are the negatives?” There’s no answer, and it’s implied Claude will have to become an informant to the authorities – something apparently rooted in fact, and partly explaining why she was allowed to operate.

Of course, this is still a Just Jaeckin film, which means plenty of attractive, naked women as well. Leading the pack there is Haddon, looking like a young Isabelle Adjani in her role of Elizabeth. She is recruited by Claude after being caught shoplifting in a boutique, and eventually agrees to work for the madam. One of her first commissions involves her being hired out to Zakis, on his yacht in the Bahamas. Not for the tycoon himself; he wants Elizabeth to take his son’s virginity and “make him a man.” Afterwards, he tells his offspring that Elizabeth is a professional, and he doesn’t want to see her any more. What a bastard.

Zakis also plays an important role at the end. The net is closing on David, and he flees Paris, attempting to find shelter at the tycoon’s country estate, where the businessman is have what can only be described as a Middle Eastern-themed orgy. He wants nothing to do with the photographer, and has him unceremoniously thrown out the back-door. David is gunned down shortly thereafter in the woods nearby, by persons unknown [though you’ll have your suspicions], proof that discretion is indeed the better part of valour.

I have to shoot the film Madame Claude here in Paris. The pay is a disgrace. The producer wants to trick me, but I always need money. And the girls who are Madame Claude’s whores, the extras and mannequins, very young and in their twenties, are excellent fuckers. I can fuck the married ones only when their men are out of town for a short while or haven’t yet come home in the afternoon.

All You Need is Love, p.226

The producers had qualms about Jaeckin’s desire to cast Kinski, based on his reputation. However, despite the quote above, Kinski was apparently professional on set. And there’s another Kinski/Claude connection. Oddly, this is mentioned in Kinski Uncut, but largely missing from All You Need is Love. One of his girlfriends, Jasmin, talks about working as a call-girl in Paris. She says, (p. 112), “Our madam is an ex-hooker – Madame Claude. Her office is on Rue Lincoln in the Eighth Arrondissement. Everything goes through her office, the calls, the appointments, the payments, everything. We have nothing to do with any of it. She keeps thirty percent of the fee, and we get the rest.” There’s a lot more lurid detail about Jasmin’s employment, almost entirely absent in Love.

The subject of the film was apparently delighted with her portrayal, saying, “Françoise Fabian is exactly like me”. She liked the film so much she sent its director a thank-you – in the form of one of her best escorts. No record on what Jaeckin did with the “gift”. Fabian, on the other hand, was less impressed with the madam, whom she met as part of her research for the role, The actress called her “Une femme terrible… She despised men and women alike. Men were wallets. Women were holes.” After her time in America, Claude eventually returned to France almost a decade later, serving a four-month sentence. But you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and she was convicted of procurement in 1992.

She died in 2015, and there’s another biographical film, also called Madame Claude, which came out on Netflix in April. I haven’t seen it but. I may be intrigued enough to check it out. I will admit this is a lifestyle of the rich and famous which appeals to my prurient interests. Though I imagine it likely won’t be as kind towards its subject as this one seems to be.

Dir: Manfred R. Köhler
Star: Stewart Granger, Karin Dor, Curd Jurgens, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. Target for Killing

I must say, it feels as if this entry may end up being less than my standard thousand words. This is partly a reflection of the low amount of Klaus to be found in it. But there have been films with even less that I’ve still managed to cover to my usual depth, e.g. The Soldier. The difference is, that was not as mind-numbingly tedious as this poor man’s Bond-esque thriller. When you combine a shortage of Kinski with a plain bad movie, my attention is always going to be struggling to cope. But there’s nothing wrong with giving a film the coverage it deserves: which in this case, would be “not a lot.”

It centres on the criminal syndicate run by Gérard van Looch (Jurgens), known to all as “Giant” – I guess in deference to Jurgens’s 6’4″ frame. His current target is Sandra Perkins (Dor), who is flying to Montenegro to take up a position as a publicist at a company there. It turns out she is about to inherit a large sum of money, and her uncle has tipped the Giant off to the possibilities resulting from her demise. The initial plan is to poison her on the inbound flight, but this is foiled when another passenger, James Vine (Granger), accidentally kicks the doctored drink from the hand of the stewardess, who is a minion of the Giant.

He strikes up an apologetic conversation, which leads to a relationship – though not before another assassination attempt is foiled, after Vine discovers the crew have unanimously parachuted out of the plane. He turns out to be a bit of a special agent, which helps land the plane, and foil further attempts by the Giant to come into Sandra’s inheritance. Bizarrely, the villain is operating out of a monastery, where the habit-wearing monks tote automatic weapons. Hence the original title, which translates as “The Secret of the Yellow Monks.” I must confess, based on the name, I was expecting a krimi from the Edgar Wallace school, but this is much more in the Eurospy genre. The idea of a fake religious establishment is certainly right out of the Bond villain playbook, and it’s far from the only similar element.

The Giant also has a pet mad scientist, Dr. Yang, on hand, working on brainwashing techniques. Then again, when your process involves using electric rays to open up your subjects to the desired re-programming, it’s understandable that more conventional avenues of funding may not be available. Also in typical Bond style, things come to a head after the hero lets himself be captured, in order to rescue his girl, who is Dr. Yang’s latest victim.Vine escapes certain death, not least because the Giant decides to have a chat, and the authorities rush to the rescue, having recorded the entire incriminating conversation. Really, the final reel should be “What not to do if you become an evil overlord 1.0.1.”

It is, almost painfully, a product of its time, most obviously in its portrayal of Sandra. For example, when she and James are fighting to land the crewless plane, he’s in the pilot’s seat and she’s trying to contact air-traffic control. Their shocked reaction after she does? “When does the pilot have the voice of a woman?” Oh, I dunno: maybe when you let women fly planes? Admittedly, Sandra is a bit… fainty, shall we say, keeling over on more than one occasion. On the other hand, I was impressed by the gung-ho attitude of the Giant’s chief henchma… er, make that henchwoman, La Tigra (Scilla Gabel). Clad in her fetching black leather pants, she takes obvious pleasure in strafing one of the failed plane assassins with her machine-gun, purely to terrorize her, before her victim is handed over to Dr. Yang for processing. Though in another scene, La Tigra is doing some… knitting? I’d like a whole movie about her, rather than Giant.

As well as the plot, the Bond connection is also apparent in the casting, which stretches both back to the past, and into the future. Adolfo Celi and Molly Peters had appeared in the previous year’s 007 movie, Thunderball; here, they play Sandra’s evil uncle, Henry, and Vera respectively. The following year, Dor would graduate from faux Bond to the real thing in You Only Live Twice, as a SPECTRE agent who ends up being eaten by piranhas. Most famously, Jurgens also gained promotion, though that took over a decade. He played main villain Karl Stromberg in the 1977 Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me.

As for Klaus, he plays another less than competent minion, Caporetti. He was also part of the failed plane plot, being its pilot. After parachuting to Earth, he gets picked up by La Tigra in her convertible (top) and informed that Giant is “mad” at the failure, saying it’s all Caporetti’s fault. He is obviously aware of what happens to henchmen who fail their job appraisal, i.e. they get fast-tracked to a personal encounter with Dr. Yang and his electric rays. So after further efforts to kill Sandra also come up short, he heads straight for a travel agent to book a ticket on the first plane from Montenegro, to anywhere in South America. However, the escape plan becomes discovered, and after trying to warn Sandra, is punished for his treachery with a stiletto between the ribs.

Kinski collects his cheque at about the 45-minute mark, and that’s the point at which my interest evaporated as well. While the Bond movies this is aping were not necessarily great shakes – Thunderball is arguably among the worst of the franchise – they did at least have glamour and a star with potent charisma. This doesn’t have much of the former, and Granger is a full 25 years older than his romantic interest, which makes their relationship feel more creepy than anything. Köhler’s pedestrian direction robs the script of any tension it might have generated, and the whole thing is thoroughly forgettable.

Dir: Dominique Goult
Star: Klaus Kinski, Maria Schneider, Patrice Melennec, Evelyne Bouix
a.k.a. Death Truck, Hate

Apparently, Klaus was signed to shoot a certain number of days here. When those were up, rather than negotiating an extension, he had apparently had enough, and simply left the set. Director Goult brought in a stand-in, and filmed any remaining scenes with the character wearing a motorcycle helmet. You can probably tell that certain scenes, where the wearing of a helmet would be… somewhat unusual, are likely ones involving the double. But I can’t particularly blame Klaus for his departure. The first hour of this is largely a dull and jumbled mess. Only at the end does it get the energy needed, which should have been present all along, if the plot was going to work.

Not, in any way, to be confused with Mathieu Kassovitz’s 1995 urban social work, La Haine, this is very much a rural movie. Though, I suppose, it does share with La Haine the element of what happens when a community rejects those it perceives as outsiders. Yeah, I’m stretching here. In this case, it’s a small village in the country, which has been having a few issues of late with biker gangs in the area. It appears nothing apparently too bad, just the usual yobbishness and noise. However, things come to a head when a young girl in the town is killed by a unknown motorcyclist. This event coincides with the appearance of an unnamed motorcyclist (Kinski) – actually, almost everyone here is unnamed – who rides into town wearing his white leathers, immediately drawing suspicion in the girl’s death.

There seem to be two opposing forces at work: some residents want him out of town as soon as possible, while others seek to prevent him from leaving, so he can answer for his supposed crimes. While he’s in town, he strikes up a relationship with the local outcast, who does have a name: Madeleine (Schneider). She’s universally regarded as the town bike – everyone gets a ride – whose out-of-wedlock promiscuity and subsequent child has made her a pariah. But the almost trivial kindness shown by the motorcyclist strikes a chord with her. Things escalate considerably at the funeral for the accident victim, or more specifically, the “after party” held at a local bar. The biker gets into it with a local truck driver (Mellenec), after he insults Madeleine, and the brawl disrupts the supposedly solemn occasion.

From then on, the gloves are off, with the driver and his pals setting up a blockade around the town, preventing the motorcyclist from departing. And the first alternative title above does eventually make sense. While not exactly Duel, there is an extended scene where the truck pursues Kinski’s character through the countryside, both on- and off-road. This ends with the bike flying into a pond, but with the help of Madeleine, he’s able to get it out, and demands it be repaired by a local mechanic, at shotgun-point. However, word seeps out, and the trucker rounds up a posse to make the alleged child-killer pay the ultimate price. Yet, as we discover in the later scenes, things might not quite be as they seemed, with the real perpetrator perhaps closer to home than is comfortable.

There are too many unanswered questions for this to be effective. How do the villagers know it was a motor-cycle which killed the child, for a start, rather than a car or a truck? You’d think they might then start by checking out any locals that own such a bike. Apparently not. There’s there the rather odd nature of the girl herself. The film opens (after the credit sequence, including a quote from the philosopher Stendhal, which translates as “I have lived enough to see that differences breed hatred”) with her walking through the village, and there’s something off about her. She pauses outside the church where the local priest is standing reading his Bible, and just stares at him before moving on. Even her parents later admit, “There are people who feared her… because of her eyes. That look.” It made me wonder how “accidental” her death was.

We do know, from the start, that Kinski’s character is completely innocent: he wears white, while the real killer is clad in black [almost like the participants in an old-school Western!]. It’s a little odd to see him as, more or less, the victim in the film, though his problems in the early going are more annoyances, such as someone stealing a part from his bike. It’s only after the face-off at the wake that there’s any real sense of threat. Up until then, there’s just been a vague, underlying sense of light menace, exacerbated by the locals’ groundless dislike of him – in part driven by his refusal to treat Madeline with the same contempt they do. This could be due to his ignorance of her back-story; to some extent, you can see their point. He’s just a visitor, passing through, and should not be getting involved in the town’s (literal!) affairs. But there’s a certain point where – again invoking the Western motif – a man’s gotta do, what a man’s gotta do. In this case, it’s when the biker’s attempts to leave town are thwarted.

This does lead to a “high noon”-style face-off in the town square. Though without giving too many spoilers, what happens thereafter would put this more in the spaghetti Western category, rather than the traditional kind. I do wonder if there wasn’t some miscasting here. Kinski would perhaps seem better suited for the role of the truck-driver than the motor-cyclist, because of the perpetual sense of threat he would have been able to bring as the antagonist. Here, he comes over as more of a reactive character, responding to the actions of the town people rather than taking control himself. The results are rather bland, and forgettable. It’s an idea with potential, yet the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Dir: Karl Anton
Star: Heinz Drache, Ina Duscha, Benno Sterzenbach, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. The Avenger

Coming out very early in the sixties wave of Edgar Wallace adaptations, which German cinema would churn out over much of the decade, this stands out for not being produced by the usual suspects at Rialto, who made over thirty such movies. Instead, this was made by Kurt Ulrich and Heinz Willeg. It’s perhaps them we have to thank for introducing Klaus to the krimi genre, which would give him frequent employment over the next ten years. While not quite the first Wallace adaptation in the cycle – Rialto had released Der Frosch mit der Maske the previous year – it’s early enough that it was still finding its footing. Stylistically, it lacks most of what I’ve come to appreciate as staples of the genre, even if Kinski isn’t the only face in the cast that I recognize. In particular, Drache has appeared in four other films reviewed here alongside Kinski, such as The Indian Scarf (1963) and Die Tür mit den 7 Schlössern (1962).

British agent Michael Brixan (Drache) is called in to investigate a sensitive case by the Foreign Office. A man with access to classified materials had gone missing, and there are indications he may have been copying them. His head has just turned up in a cardboard box at the side of the road, apparently the latest of the 12 victims of the titular killer, who calls himself “The Benefactor”. He – for the single blow decapitations clearly rule out a feeble woman (look, it was the early sixties…) – has been killing both criminals who escaped justice and those who want to commit suicide, yet lack the will to off themselves. The trail leads to the niece of the latest victim, Ruth Sanders (Duscha), an actress currently working as an extra on a production near Windsor. Brixan goes to interrogate her, but on set finds a page from a script apparently produced by the same typewriter used by the Executioner in his notes. so sticks around to investigate further.

One aspect it shares with the standard Wallace adaptations is, there’s no shortage of suspicious and/or weird characters who may be involved. Possible candidates include two local land-owners, whose stately homes are being used as locations: Sir Gregory Penn (Sterzenbach) and Henry Longvale (Ludwig Linkmann). The former appears especially plausible, since he has a wide selection of sharp-edged weapons, and a mute, hulking servant called Bhag, who seems eminently capable of doing the decapitation thing. He also keeps a Malaysian woman locked up in a turret for his sexual pleasure. I will admit that, having seen all this, I couldn’t help but think he was simply far too obvious to be the killer. I won’t say whether or not this turned out to be the case, There’s also disgruntled lead actress Stella Mendoza (Ingrid van Bergen), who just lost her part to Ruth after complaining once too often to the director, and wants to set up her own production company.

Then there’s Klaus. He plays script reader Lorenz Voss, who is responsible for handling all the unsolicited manuscripts which get send to the production company. So he should, in theory, know where the page Brixan found came from, and who submitted it to the studio. He is curiously averse to revealing this information, and when the necessary documentation is found, the name and address has been heavily crossed out. He definitely knows more than he’s saying, and it probably doesn’t count as much of a spoiler to say that he barely makes it to the hour mark into this, and meets a bad end, at the hands of the “Benefactor.” As shown below, his severed head also turns up in a cardboard box, accompanied by a terse note saying, “This is the head of a traitor.” We discover later he tried to blackmail the perpetrator with his knowledge of their identity, only for the target to take unkindly to this extortion attempt.

Like most of the Edgar Wallace adaptations which would follow, the setting is England, though there’s very little effort made beyond some random stock footage to give the impression this was made there. Though with most of it taking place in a rural setting, and the balance in offices and other interiors, there’s not much need for any realistic scene-setting. While Drache makes a decent hero, the plotting leaves a considerable amount to be desired. The original case, of the civil servant with access to classified documents, appears almost forgotten as soon as Brixan sets eyes on Ruth, and he spends as much time wooing her as investigating the case. He has a rival there, in that Sir Gregory also has a severely wandering eye, and his Malaysian kidnappee isn’t enough. He turns his attention to Stella, but it’s Ruth he really wants, sending Bhaq out, apparently looking to add her to Gregory’s collection.

There are secret passages to discover, and the whole thing builds to a climax in an underground vault, where we see the decapitations are actually the work of a guillotine installed by the Benefactor (so much for the whole “It has to be a man to do this” sexist argument posited in the beginning). His ancestor, you see, was a renowned executioner in the French Revolution, whose resume included lopping off the head of Marie Antoinette, and so he is keeping up the family tradition. Various people are set up for an encounter with Madame Guillotine, but help arrives from an unexpected source – these “secret passages” end up known to just about everybody! The Benefactor, naturally, ends up becoming a victim of his own infernal device, and Brixan gets the girl, with Ruth’s career apparently untroubled by the whole murderous series of events. It’s all merely okay, though Kinski plays the role with understatement, even as you sense Voss is a tightly-wound spring who could be capable of questionable deeds himself. Otherwise, there’s little here to stick in the mind.

Dir: Helmut Ashley
Star: Adrian Hoven, Christopher Lee, Marisa Mell, Klaus Kinski
a..k.a. The Puzzle of the Red Orchid

Klaus Kinski was famous enough at this point to receive a “with…” listing and his own page at the end of the credits, along with Eddi Arent. He plays a Chicago gangster in this, listed in the credits as “der schöne Steve”, though the subtitles translate this as “Gunner Steve” for some reason, rather than “Beautiful Steve”. I’m fine with the subs: his character here is certainly not what I’d call attractive, even by the standards of Klaus in this area. But I’ll just avoid any issues, and refer to him as Steve, for the rest of this article.

It opens with Steve showing up late to a poker party, held by members of his gang, including their leader, O’Connor. This tardiness proves to be Steve’s savior, as his associates are gunned down by members of a rival gang, under the oddly-named Kerkie Minelli. Steve hightails it out of Chicago for safer pastures in the United Kingdom. But Minelli ends up there as well, after being kicked out of America by the authorities for what I believe they call “moral turpitude”, though the cops can’t prove any specific crime he committed.

A year later, in London, someone starts extorting money from the rich, sending them messages, cut out of newspapers, and threatening them with death if they don’t pay up. Worse, the perpetrators follow through on the threats to those who won’t pay, or who try and alert the police. This is uncharted territory for Scotland Yard, who are used to more genteel methods of blackmail. Investigating detective, Inspector Weston (Hoven), therefore gets permission from his boss to bring in FBI specialist Captain Allerman (Lee) to help with the case. He immediately identifies the cut-out messages as a hallmark of the O’Connor gang, and with Steve’s presence in the city known, he immediately becomes the top suspect.

Next to receive a message is an elderly millionaire Elias Zacharias Tanner. Weston is familiar with the man – though more familiar with his secretary and live-in help, Lillian Ranger (Mell), Tanner has just changed his will to leave all his assets to Lillian, rather than ne’er-do-well nephew and nomadic orchid hunter, Edwin. After Tanner is gunned down in his own home, by a pair of assassins who pretend to be Scotland Yard bodyguards, Edwin shows up for the reading of the will, and is rather miffed to discover he is no longer present in it.

Matters are complicated by a copy-cat set of blackmailer, who opt for a less intensive approach, using pre-printed forms, into which only the victim’s name and amount have to be added. Allerman identifies this approach as belonging to the Minelli mob, and Lillian is the recipient of one of their notes. She can’t pay, as it seems Tanner had a lot of unpaid debts which drained the estate’s funds. But Edwin gets in her good graces by engaging in some threatening behavior of his own, against Minelli’s wife, which gets the mobster to cross Lillian off his list of candidates.

So, Weston now has two blackmail gangs to worry about, run by Steve and Minelli – and the pair have no intention of letting the other muscle in on their turf. Despite an apparent gentleman’s agreement to split the territory, using Regent Street as the boundary, unpleasantness between them escalates, with Minelli planting a bomb in the tobacconist’s shop run by Steve as a cover. Indeed, these problems end up cancelling each other out (with a little help from the “dead” O’Connor), happily for the authorities. But there’s still the issue of Lillian and Edwin to be settled, for it turns out that Edwin may not be the happy horticulturist he initially appeared.

As a thriller, it works reasonably well, though as always with these Edgar Wallace krimis, a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is required by the viewer. Less here than some, with a relatively grounded plot, even if there are still a number of the usual tropes, such as people not being who they appear to be. Outside of Kinski, probably the most memorable character is Arent’s, operating as his usual comic relief. Here, he plays butler Parker, employed by all the blackmail victims (yet somehow escaping police suspicion!), and due to their deaths, has to keep seeking new employment. Eventually calling himself “Der Todesbutler” – the Butler of Death! – he even gets recommended by Steve to ask Minelli for a job.

Kinski’s character initially appears to be small and mousy. Yet Steve proves capable of holding his own against a “big fish” like Minelli, even refusing an offer of 75,000 pounds – a fortune in the early sixties – to leave town. There’s a particularly good scene (above) in which Allerman visits Steve’s shop with a search warrant – apparently more to let him know the police are onto him, than in the hope of actually finding incriminating evidence:

Allerman: I suppose you know what I’m after.
Steve: But, Allerman. It doesn’t change. It’s the same 2 things. Probably a scissors you think I used simply to cut letters out of a newspaper.
Allerman: I see I’ll find nothing. One fine day, I know I’ll find them both.

This may be the first time Kinski and Lee shared a scene. They were both in Das Geheimnis der gelben Narzissen the previous year, but I don’t recall them ever being on screen together. It’s particularly neat to watch Christopher Lee speaking fluent German again [the English dub uses neither Lee’s nor Kinski’s voice]. As the still above suggests, he quite towers over Klaus, though it’s clear that Steve is not intimidated by his interrogation. And neither is his parakeet, which yells out “Dirty copper! Dirty copper!” on Allerman’s entrance!

I’d like to have seen more of Klaus as this criminal mastermind . There are a number of neat little touches, such as the sword-stick he carries, with which he can dispatch enemies. Still, I was satisfied overall, and I’d call this a better than average Wallace krimi, which kept my attention and kept me guessing until the very end.

Dir: Helmut Käutner
Star: O.W. Fischer, Ruth Leuwerik, Marianne Koch, Klaus Kinski

Let me provide you with the sum of my knowledge regarding King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-1886), going into this film. I’ll provide the facts in order of how I perceived their importance.

1. Mad
2. Built Neuschwanstein Castle
3. Drowned

That’s it. Now? Well, #2 and #3 appear to be confirmed, but #1 is on considerably shakier territory, if this film is to be believed. Not that this stopped the movie from being promoted with the English-language title, Mad Emperor: Ludwig II. [I wonder if this possibly confused potential viewers who hadn’t seen Mad Emperor: Ludwig?] That’s certainly a rather more… judgmental title than the original German one, which translates as “Ludwig II: Splendor and End of a King.” The original probably more accurate as well, since it’s generally very sympathetic to Ludwig. If I took anything away from this, it’s mostly that he was less insane, than simply entirely unsuited for the position of monarch.

It begins with his death, which is announced as a drowning, along with his companion, Dr. Gudden, though there are immediately doubts as to whether this was suicide, an accident or murder. The rest of the film is told in flashback, beginning back when Ludwig (Fischer) was young – and a bit of a regal rock star if the movie is to be believed, going by the pack of women hanging outside the palace. Here, we get the immortal line, “But girls, you’re not allowed to climb through the King’s chamber window!” It soon becomes clear that Ludwig is almost naive: “It must be possible to rule without deception, without lies and betrayal.” Yeah. About that…

His kingdom of Bavaria occupies an important strategic position between the Austrian and Prussian empires, and both the Austrian emperor and Prince Otto von Bismarck seek to lean on Ludwig. He, however, doesn’t seem to care about the prospect of war, as is clearly illustrated by this speech: “I have been crowned king of an old, beautiful land, whose inhabitants are happy and peaceful. It is my sacred duty to preserve peace and happiness, and, God willing, to increase it. Do not consider me an enemy of progress. Art and culture are the fields in which I wish my people to wage battle.” As I said: thoroughly unsuited to rule, especially in the saber-rattling era of middle Europe at the time.

So, instead, Ludwig begins a patronage of Richard Wagner, with the resulting expenses ending up forcing a separation, and doing the equally expensive castle building thing. Though at least that turned out to be a worthwhile investment, with Neuschwanstein attracting 1.3 million visitors a year, and more than repaying its cost, the equivalent of 43 million Euros in 2017 terms [Some scenes of the movie were actually filmed there]. He also attempts to find love. The problem is, his real object of affection, childhood friend Sissi (Leuwerik), is now Empress Elisabeth of Austria. As a stand-in, he does have a brief engagement with her sister, Princess Sophie (Koch), but even though she seems to care for him, it’s just not the same.

Meanwhile, Ludwig’s brother, Prince Otto (Kinski), is showing signs of mental deterioration, eventually being diagnosed with schizophrenia. Whispers begin to circulate that Ludwig is also mentally unfit to act as king – though the film suggests this is the result of his unwillingness to be manipulated by court advisers. Actually, I can see their point. Especially given the militaristic times, a country with a leader who is more interested in symphonies and schlosses is asking for trouble. Yet, one feels this could have been handled more tactfully, rather than simply flagging Ludwig as a loony and having him locked up.

Generally, this is a lush biopic, with good production values. It certainly leaves you with a sense that Ludwig has been dealt with unfairly by history, and deserves to be remembered as more than simply the “mad king”. [The script was vetted by family members, in exchange for location filming permission, which may explain its sympathetic tone] It perhaps helps that Herbert von Karajan had a hand in the music, and I was also surprised to see Douglas Slocombe in the opening credits as cinematographer. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he shot the first three Indiana Jones films for Steven Spielberg, as well as The Italian Job and Rollerball – the originals, rather than the unnecessary remakes. This seems to have been the only German film he made, and I’m guessing his selection was by Käutner.

Kinski, sporting an unusual blond mustache, has just the three scenes here, but they are quite memorable. The first and least important comes about half-way into the film, at a ball (above), where Otto introduces Ludwig to Sophie. The meatiest follows at the 70-minute mark, when a considerably more manic brother shows up, positively burbling about the new, unified Germany of which Bavaria just became a part. I was a bit distracted here by Otto suddenly bursting into God Save the Queen, but it turns out the same tune was actually the national anthem of the German Empire up until the end of World War I. He then collapses, triggering the diagnosis of schizophrenia by the questionable Dr. Gudden, though he never quite gets to say whether this kind of thing runs in the family.

Kinski’s third and final scene comes in the last ten minutes, and in it, Otto appears in a vision to his brother. Unlike Ludwig, he seems quite content in his insanity, stating “You’ve no idea how calm it is there,” and when Ludwig asks him, “What should I do?”, Otto replies, “Submit, brother…” It doesn’t quite work out like that, of course. An escape plan concocted by Sissi leading to a watery struggle between Ludwig and Dr. Gudden, that ends up fatal for both men. According to Kautner, Kinski was never again as intense as he was here. While I’d not agree with that, it is perhaps the first example of the famed Klaus ferocity captured on film. Below, you’ll find the second and third scenes involving Kinski.