Category: Filmography

Death’s Dealer (1971)

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Dir: Pasquale Squitieri
Star: Leonard Mann, Ivan Rassimov, Steffen Zacharias, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. La Vendetta è un piatto che si serve freddo, Vengeance Trail, Three Amens for Satan

While relatively minor in terms of Kinski content – after a brief appearance near the beginning, he then vanishes entirely for the bulk of its running time – this is still solidly satisfying. As an 11-year-old, Jeremiah Bridger (Mann) narrowly escaped being slaughtered, along with the rest of his family, when Indians attacked their Arizona farm. Now grown up, he has vowed to take revenge, and spends his time hunting, killing and scalping any native Americans he can find, selling their scalps to a local wig-maker(!). However, even he draws the line at killing women, and when he comes across one, Tena (Elizabeth Eversfield), takes her back to town.

The local folks don’t take kindly to this, due to a recent spate of Indian attacks, and tar and feather her. Jeremiah temporarily rescues her, only for the worst of the locals, Boone (Teodoro Corrà), to re-capture Tena as a present for his boss, Perkins (Rassimov). Jeremiah is rescued by a conveniently-passing comedic doctor (Zacharias), who spills the beans on what has been going on. Perkins has been staging all the attacks as part of a long-term land-grab, targeting those who stand in his way. He has been using his men, but blaming it on the natives, with the help of local journalist, Prescott (Kinski). It’s time for the end game. Seems like one more “atrocity”, and the Army will clear out all the Indians, freeing up their land – and, more importantly, its water – for use by Perkins.

vengeancetrail2Jeremiah heads off Boone and his men on their way to carry out the attack, frees the tribesmen whose corpses are intended to be left at the scene, and heads back to infiltrate his way into Perkins inner circle. For this is where the Italian title comes into play: it translates as “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” And there I was, thinking all the time it was a Klingon proverb. Quentin Tarantino was lying to me! [And it’s not as if a film geek like QT, especially one so devoted a fan of spaghetti Westerns, would be unaware of this one, though the phrase pre-dates the movie, obviously] So, ten years on, it’s time for those who were really behind the murder of our hero’s family, to pay for their crimes.

Damn, this does not exactly offer a sympathetic portrayal of Western settlers. Even Jeremiah is first seen as an adult engaging enthusiastically in genocidal slaughter, a firm believer in the notion that “the only good Injun is a dead Injun.” Just about everyone else is on the same page: either actively, in collusion with Perkins, or through believing the lies put out by Prescott in his newspaper. I couldn’t help thinking of the “false flag” claims which have become increasingly prevalent in the more paranoid corners of conspiracy theory lately, since what’s shown here is, effectively, what the government is accused of carrying out at Sandy Hook, Orlando, etc. It’s particularly notable in light of events just a few years later in Italy, where some of the attacks blamed on the Red Brigade, were allegedly actually carried out by right-wing groups.

Removing my tinfoil hat, and replacing it with the more appropriate Stetson… This is a good, relatively straightforward Western, though I was initially confused with the transition between young Jeremiah and the adult version, and didn’t immediately realize they were the same person. Mann makes for a good, taciturn hero, who believes in letting his action speak louder than his words. Those against whom he goes up, are equally appropriate, Rassimov makes a good villain, and Kinski oozes tabloid slime onto the screen in every scene. In particular, check out where Perkins rolls out a selection of kept women (though captive women might be closer), and offers Prescott his choice for the night. I felt like I was watching Shark Week on the Discovery Channel for a moment, watching Kinski languidly circling his prey. It’s the potential for moments like this which make even small Klaus roles worth the effort.

Less effective are the minor roles on the good guy’s side. Doc is a misconceived effort to inject levity into a plot, that doesn’t work at all. He fulfills all necessary purpose after his exposition tells Jeremiah the truth about what’s going on. Eversfield, in her only role, according to the IMDb, is no more convincing as a native American – should that be called “redface”? – spouting pseudo-philosophical nonsense in bad English. The same goes for Yotanka, the family’s Indian friend pre-massacre, who might as well have “noble savage” tattooed across his forehead. I was also not particularly convinced by Jeramiah’s sudden conversion from mass murderer of Indians to their protector. Generally (and I see this all the time with conspiracy theorists), it takes a lot for anyone to accept their deeply-held belief is thoroughly wrong. The cynic in me suggests that Tune must have been a really good lay…

Just to lob in a note on the score, which was composed by Piero Umiliani. He was one of the second tier of go-to guys for spaghetti soundtracks, a little behind Ennio Morricone and Riz Ortolani. But outside of that, he’s probably best known for writing Mah Nà Mah Nà. a ditty originally composed for a mondo film about Sweden, but latter covered on multiple occasions by the Muppets. If only there was a version of the song performed by Kinski, rather than just him doing songs by Bertold Brecht… It would be utterly epic.

Creature with the Blue Hand (1967)

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Dir: Alfred Vohrer
Star: Harald Leipnitz, Carl Lange, Klaus Kinski, Ilse Steppat
a.k.a. Die Blaue Hand (original title) and The Bloody Dead

But, wait! There’s more! Order this film today and you’ll get not just one Klaus Kinski! You’ll also receive an additional Klaus Kinski (of equal or lesser value), absolutely free! Just pay separate postage and handling… That’s kinda what this feels like, since KK plays identical twin brothers, Dave and Richard Emerson. They are both sons of an English lord, the third Earl of Emerson, who vanished under dubious circumstances a while back after being caught embezzling money. Dave is convicted of murdering an estate gardener, but is found to be insane and committed, protesting his innocence loudly, to an asylum run by Dr. Mangrove (Lange, in a part which would fit Malcolm McDowell like a glove for a modern remake). With some anonymous help, Dave escapes, heads back to the family home and takes the place of Richard.

But it’s not long before dead bodies start piling up, courtesy of a cloaked figure wielding an ancestral bit of weaponry called the “Blue Hand” which looks like a medieval attempt at Wolverine cosplay. Enter Inspector Craig of Scotland Yard (Leipnitz), who has to try and unravel the convoluted goings-on, in which it appears just about everyone has a motive for murder. Mangrove, for example, has a shady side business committing people – especially those in line for inheritances – for cash, and Lady Emerson (Steppat, best known as Irma Bunt from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) has a bit of a murky past herself, shown in the following exchange with Craig:

“You were born as Shenk, a former dancer, appearing in…”
“I know what I was appearing in!”

bluehandI guess, in 1967, this was edgy stuff. Anyway, back in the impenetrable morass which is the plot, you’d better hold on with both hands, especially in the final 10 minutes when Craig pulls the solution out, with a flourish befitting a cabaret magician finding a rabbit in his top-hat, and about as much logic. Yes, I suppose the culprit could have committed the crimes as Craig alleges; but if I was their defense attorney, I’d be filing for a motion to dismiss based on a severe lack of evidence. It could have been just about anybody. My money’s on Mangrove, mostly because I tend to be suspicious of psychiatrists whose office has a painting, behind which is a hidden snake-cage, the inhabitant of which he uses, for example, to traumatize a nurse who has found out about his nefarious schemes.

To be honest, you have to admire his loopily inventive approach to psychiatry, which involves stockpiling problematic patients in the literal basement of the facility, sending the most psychotic inmate out on murder missions, and keeping an insane strip-tease dancer in another cell: according to the Doctor, “She takes [her clothes] on and off continuously. An occupational hazard I believe.” At another point, he locks another member of the Emerson family, Myrna, in a room with a glass case full of rats. Then a door slides open in the wall, revealing a chute down which tumble a knot of snakes, sending Myrna cowering over to the door. But then, a piston slides through the glass case, expelling the rodents into the reptiles? Wouldn’t that all-you-can-eat buffet actually distract the snakes from terrorizing Myrna? Seems Mangrove might not have thought this concept through too well…

It’s all rather Gothic in feel, Emerson Manor possessing a near-endless supply of secret doors, hidden passages and suits of armor, conveniently equipped with still lethal attachments. As noted, the potential suspects are no less numerous, even to the point where the film possesses an extremely suspicious butler, without even having the shame to wink at offering this most obvious of murderers (or most obvious of red herrings). It’s also more than a tad confusing: is that version of Kinski the one playing Dave? Dick? Dave pretending to be Dick? I’d like to have seen rather more of the unhinged Dave, because a character certified as a lunatic, yet one claiming to be entirely sane, is entirely in Kinski’s wheel-house. Instead, it’s not too long before he’s pretending to Dick, and relative normality has been restored, with his innocence also being established with such ease, it left me wondering why the West Memphis Three spent 18 years behind bars. Dave and Richard are both notable by their disappointing absence in the second half, when it becomes much more about Craig and his investigation of Mangrove.

20 years later, it was re-released as The Bloody Dead, with new footage – entirely unconnected to the original movie – intended to spice things up, for example, by adding gore to the murders. I’ve not seen that version (since it doesn’t include any additional Kinski, there didn’t seem much point!), but by all accounts, it’s a waste of time. For this version, as krimis go, this is certainly… one. It’s a genre often compared to the Italian giallo, and this example is perhaps the closest of the ones I’ve seen, particularly in its plot appearing to take a very distant second-place to atmosphere, particularly in terms of the final resolution. While somewhat more down-to-earth, in that there are no supernatural elements present here, it has its share of what my wife calls “I’m so sure…” moments. If the results are still entertaining enough, these make it difficult to become fully engaged with the story or its characters.

Web of the Spider (1971)

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Dir: Antonio Margheriti
Star: Anthony Franciosa, Michèle Mercier, Peter Carsten, Klaus Kinski

For one of Kinski’s cameo roles – his appearances strictly book-end the film, this is actually not bad, an Italian Gothic horror set in the 1830’s. It’s a remake of an earlier film, 1964’s Castle of Blood, also directed by Margheriti (mostly – let’s not get into that here!), but which flopped at the box-office. The director believe this was due to it being in black-and-white, so decided to remake it in color. He appeared to regret this, calling the decision”stupid.” I haven’t seen the original, so can’t comment, but found this to be an effective enough tale, good enough to leave me interested in locating a decent print. For the one I watched was badly washed-out, pan-and-scanned (with a lot of scanning!), edited down by about 20 minutes, and dubbed into English with Greek subtitles. That it still retained my interest, thus says a good deal.

The wraparound story is a good one, and sees writer Edgar Allen Poe (Kinski) visiting England – there’s no indication, incidentally, this trip ever took place [Though Poe did spent several years in London, it was as a young boy]. It starts with Poe, Lord Blackwood and writer Alan Foster (Franciosa) drinking together in a pub, where Poe reveals that his stories aren’t works of fiction, but reports of events that actually happened, and were witnessed by him. The skeptical Foster scoffs at this, but Blackwood agrees with Poe that there are more things in heaven and earth, etc., and wagers ten pounds with Foster that he will be unable to spend an entire night in a haunted, empty castle owned by the nobleman. The writer is dropped off at the (impressively spiky) castle gates by Poe and Blackwood, and goes inside for a lengthy sequence of Foster walking the halls and rooms of the deserted manor.

web2Except, naturally, it turns out to be far from deserted, playing home to a wide spectrum of characters – some of whom happen to bear a strong resemblance to portraits hanging on the walls. The first of these to appear is Elisabeth Blackwood (Mercier), for whom Foster falls, and falls hard; this is used to explain his reluctance to leave, once the escalating weirdness achieves full effect. She’s followed shortly after by another, rather more sullen beauty, Julia (Karin Field), and before you know it, this supposedly vacant home is playing host to an entire ball. Turns out, as you have perhaps guessed already, that these are not living people, but spectral entities left over from previous tragic events.

This is explained to Foster by Dr. Carmus, an occult scholar who went to the castle to carry out some research, only to be trapped there himself. The same fate seems likely to befall Foster – except for the love that he and Elisabeth share, leading to her trying to help him escape the grounds before dawn, when he is doomed to join the other spirits, forever. At least, that appears to be the plot here: I was somewhat surprised to read other synopses saying things like, “Near the end of the film, the ghosts reveal their true nature: they aren’t actually ghosts but vampires with ghostly powers, and they need Foster’s blood in order to maintain their existence,” because that particular angle would appear to be part of the 20 minutes missing from the version I saw. This would at least somewhat explain the German title, Dracula im Schloß des Schreckens (“Dracula in the Castle of Secrets”), even if Dracula is notable by his complete absence.

While enjoyable enough, with no shortage of atmosphere to be found, I suspect Mercier is likely a downgrade from the phenomenal Barbara Steele, who played the same role in Castle: here, she’s pretty, and not much more, hardly coming over as the sort of woman to inspire the level of devotion shown by Foster. Given its era, this also feels tame; things had moved on significantly in the horror world since the original film, and some more sex and violence probably wouldn’t have gone amiss. It is a bit of a shame the early direction isn’t sustained. I love the concept of Poe’s stories actually being journalism, and think it would have been a fantastic idea to have had an entire series of films based on that premise [H.P. Lovecraft immediately comes to mind as another author for whom this would work]. There’s a sequence which plays under the opening credits that shows where this idea could have gone: Poe stalking his way through a graveyard, all disheveled and flailing, looking for a specific grave and digging it up, before it cuts to the pub where he is telling the story to Blackwood and Foster – still, all disheveled and flailing.

Kinski as Poe is an inspired bit of casting; if I can’t say how accurate the portrayal of Poe as a twitchy, sweaty  laudanum addict type might be, I can’t deny how much fun it is to watch. Undeniably, it’s a vast improvement over Klaus’s other cameo as a “great author”, playing the Marquis De Sade in Justine, where he got to do very little except sit in a cell and pretend to scribble furiously. Margheriti had worked with Kinski before to great effect, in And God Said To Cain, and it’s just a shame that his screen time here is limited to a handful of scenes. While the rest is more undeniably more entertaining than some of the Kinski cameos I’ve had to endure in the course of putting this site together, the gap between Klaus and the rest of the cast is rather apparent. I’d have willingly ponied up ten quid, for everyone to just sit in the pub and listen to some more of Poe’s stories, rather than go out on a cold night to a freezing and unwelcoming pile of stones – ectoplasmic babes or no ectoplasmic babes…

Das Verrätertor (1964)

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Dir: Freddie Francis
Star: Gary Raymond, Albert Lieven, Margot Trooger, Klaus Kinski

gate3Bit of a surprise to see this is directed by Freddie Francis, an English film-maker, best known for his work as a cinematographer (winning Oscars almost three decades apart, for Sons and Lovers and Glory). As a director, in the sixties he was regularly employed by both Hammer and Amicus, helming Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, The Evil of Frankenstein and 1972’s Tales From the Crypt. Having once said, “Horror films have liked me more than I have liked horror films.” this movie is unusual, both in being German and a krimi, without any supernatural or horrific elements. The screenplay, similarly, was written by another Hammer horror veteran, Jimmy Sangster, based on Edgar Wallace’s

Instead, it’s a heist film, about a plan to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. It begins with a convict being broken out of Dartmoor prison by Kinski – the IMDb calls his character Kane, but at one point, his boss, Trayne (Lieven) clearly refers to him as Kinski! Said convict, Graham (Raymond) is key to the plan, because he is a dead-ringer for Dick (also played by Raymond, naturally), the man in charge of security at the Tower. So, the idea is to swap Graham for Dick, late one night, so that he can facilitate the entry of the thieves into the fortress, and also prevent the emergency power from being activated – triggering a power-cut to disable the security systems, is also part of the scheme. Meanwhile, comic relief German tourist Hector, played by krimi staple Eddi Arent, has stumbled across the plot, and when he can’t convince Scotland Yard of its seriousness, opts to investigate himself.

There’s quite a lot going on here, and not just in terms of the plot, but in terms of style and approach, with Francis not able to maintain a consistent tone, with some of the shifts between sequences not exactly smooth. A good example is Hector’s first scene, where he asks a street newspaper seller for directions to “unusual sights”, and ends up at a Soho strip-club. Blundering around there without his glasses, for humorous purposes, things turn unexpectedly dark, as he witnesses Kane’s cold-blooded killing of a man who tried to blackmail Trayne. What’s particularly memorable, and is shown below, is Kinski’s patient, yet slightly bored, expression, as he waits for the drum solo from the theater [this being from a time where strip-clubs had live music!], to cover up the sound of the gun going off. It’s some cold-hearted stuff, and quite at odds with Arent’s buffoonery.  According to the IMDb, “International politics weighed heavily on the production of this movie, filmed at the height of the Cold War, and so to lighten the tension in the movie the German producers insisted on the inclusion” of Hector. To be honest, the latter adds nothing to the film, and I would have been happier if Sangster and Francis had stood their ground.

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The rest of it isn’t bad, moving along at a decent pace, and with some nice set-pieces such as the robbers practicing their heist on a full-scale model of the room containing the jewels. There’s an Ocean’s 11 vibe to this aspect, and I’d like to have seen more of that. For this is clearly a large-scale operation – at one point, it’s mentioned that the proceeds are to be split between 25 different people, but the focus of the film is very much on the body-double section of the plan, and this may not be the most interesting. Certainly, there’s nothing particularly memorable about Dick as a character, though it is kinda weird to watch the “Beefeaters” who guard the Tower of London, spitting out their challenges in German! Unexpectedly, that almost gives the film a feel of an alternate history, like The Man in the High Castle.

Given the large roster of thieves, the way things unfold is probably not a surprise. The actual robbery goes off with surprising ease, and it’s only afterward that certain elements of the team take action, unsatisfied with their relatively paltry share of the estimated 1.5 million pound haul (somewhere north of 20 million in today’s money, though I’d say even that seems to underestimate the Crown Jewels’ value significantly). There’s no honor among this particular gang of thieves, particularly when the cops are hot on their trail – having finally realized that Hector was not some kind of loony. This leads to a climactic showdown on a boat heading out of British waters, with a bomb on board, courtesy of Trayne, and one final moment of ill-fitting light-heartedness, with Hector certain he had taken care of it. “Don’t worry. I defused the bomb,” he says, seconds before it explodes, wiping out the remainder of the robbers, along with who knows how many innocent merchant seaman. Who says Germans have no sense of humor?

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La bestia uccide a sangue freddo (1971)

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Dir: Fernando Di Leo
Star: Klaus Kinski, Margaret Lee, Rosalba Neri, Jane Garret
a.k.a. Asylum Erotica, Cold Blooded Beast and Slaughter Hotel

The last alternate title is particularly inappropriate, since it’s not a hotel and there’s a disappointing deficit on the slaughter front. My God, this is tedious. I know Kinski had a tendency to appear in anything, but even he looks bored out of his mind, in his role here as Dr. Francis Clay. Clay is the head of a mental sanatorium which, for reasons which quickly become clear to the viewer (if not any needed by the plot), appears to serve only young, female and attractive loonies. Someone in a mask is going round, picking off the staff and patients with a variety of weapons, but showing particular fondness for an ax. Inexplicably, nobody seems to notice this, until about 15 minutes before the end, when a crossbow bolt through the neck galvanizes the authorities into action, and they set a trap for the killer, using one of the patients as bait [it’s okay, she’s been cured, so it’s not really exploiting the mentally ill].

However, it’s nowhere near as interesting at that might make it sound. A better summary of the movie is to be found in the opening sequence, of the killer creeping round the corridors of the hospital before being scared off. This utter non-event lasts a full six minutes, close as I could figure out. What there also is, instead of plot, characterization or even good old-fashioned splatter, is an awful lot of nudity, with just about every actress here chosen not for their thespian talent, as an apparent willingness to get their kit off. Some of this is surprisingly explicit, given the time and the somewhat mainstream nature of this as a film, but it’s all depicted in such a boring manner, even red-blooded heterosexual males (or lesbians – we are nothing if not inclusive here)  may find themselves fast-forwarding through the nudity to get back to the rest of the film.

Dr. Clay, naturally, has a relationship with one of his patients, Cheryl Hume (Lee), in violation of just about every medical ethic. Mind you, the way this mental institute just leaves lethal weapons around, should also bring local health and safety down on them. I mean: they have a working iron maiden, f’heaven’s sake, and don’t even bother to lock it! That’s just asking for a class-action law-suit, I’d say – even before the obvious happens with it – and I imagine a sequel depicting Dr. Clay declaring bankruptcy as a result of the resulting damages he has to pay out for negligence, to the victim’s families.  And oh, look: another inmate, Anne Palmieri (Neri), is a raging nympho. What are the odds? Take your time curing that one, Dr. Clay. But it’s the relationship between Nurse Helen (Monica Strebel) and patient Mara (Garret) that provides a particularly large does of the gratuitous nudity, which is clearly Di Leo’s main purpose for making this one. Massage! Tribal dance! Lesbian canoodling! Truly, this film has something for everyone – at least, providing they like massage, tribal dance and lesbian canoodling.

slaughterhotelAnyone else, however, will likely find this irredeemably bad, to the point of unwatchable. I’ve seem some truly shitty examples of the giallo genre in my time, yet this one manages to scrape the bottom of the barrel, for its nonsensical plotting and feeble performances, lacking even the strong sense of visual style for which the field is generally renowned. Kinski is entirely wasted, with his doctor getting the absolute minimum of screen time, and the character could have been removed entirely without impacting the film to any significant degree. Di Leo clearly decided, “Why bother having Kinski, when you can have an apparently endless massage instead?” I suppose this choice could be considered as having some kind of artistic vision, except it’s a vision of which I want absolutely no part.

I’ve had to sit through some remarkably dull movies for this site (hello, Jess Franco), but even in these, Kinski has usually been an enlivening presence. That isn’t the case here, and of the forty-odd movies covered here at the time of writing, this is the very bottom of the barrel. While most of his other films would at least possess some re-view potential, for one reason or another it’s hardly any exaggeration to say that I would rather gouge my own eyes out than be subjected to this tedious exercise in bad soft-core porn ever again. If anyone can explain the appeal – and 800 votes on the IMDb have it scored at a semi-respectable 5.2, so there clearly is some – or make a case in favor of this one, I’d be curious to see it. Because it’s clearly entirely wasted on me.

Finally, this probably counts as a spoiler, but screw it – this film has nothing of merit which could be considered as worth spoiling. The ending of the film does contain what is likely the worst death scene ever. And, yes, I’ve seen the clip from that Turkish film which did the rounds on social media a while back – it was edited and redubbed for comedic effect [I’ve seen the original film and it’s actually not bad, in a cheerfully trashy 70’s way]. What follows here is exactly as it occurs in the film, right down to what would surely have been its majestic domination in the “Most Sudden Ending” of the 1971 Razzies. I note whoever uploaded it to YouTube shares my assessment, going by their title…

The Indian Scarf (1963)

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Dir: Alfred Vohrer
Star: Heinz Drache, Corny Collins, Eddi Arent, Klaus Kinski

Definitely a strong Agatha Christie vibe here, as various relatives of the late Lord Lebanon arrive at his remote estate in the far North of Scotland, for the reading of his last will and testament by lawyer Frank Tenner (Drache). Except, it turns out actually to be his Lordship’s penultimate will and testament, telling the wannabe inheritors that they have to stay in the mansion for the next six days and nights, before the actual last will gets read, dividing up the loot between those who have remained. Which, considering the considerable degree of antipathy between the contenders, is apparently intended to thin out the herd. However, a storm cuts the estate off from the outside world, and it soon becomes clear that someone is intent on shrinking the field even further, strangling the residents, one by one, with the aid of the titular cloth. Which of the relatives, many of whom seem to have their issues, is responsible?

There’s a sense the makers here aren’t taking things entirely seriously, most clearly in a final twist where Lord Lebanon’s plans for his inheritance become clear. But even before that, I got the feeling they were aware of the well-trodden path down which they were going, most famously in Christie’s Ten Little Indians. A factor here is the soundtrack, by Peter Thomas, which feels as if has strayed in from a completely different film, most likely Carry On Strangling – this is most apparent when someone is spying on a woman undressing, from a secret passage in her wardrobe, which I almost expected to be punctuated with a Sid James-like “Phwoooar!” There are other aspects which are similarly tongue in cheek, such as a painting of a naked woman, whose nipples can become eye-holes through which the murderer can peep.

indianThat said, I can’t say, I minded this self-aware attitude, which has probably stood the test of time better than a straight “mystery” approach would have, and largely inoculates the film against some of the more obvious criticisms that could be leveled at it. For example, it’s clearly an extremely cheap production, without a single exterior shot: the closest you get are some very obvious drawings of the manor seen from the outside, with smoke being blown across them. Taken seriously, these would be woeful indeed; instead, they set things up nicely, almost adding to the sense of meta-satire here. The characters here are similarly almost deliberately cliched, stereotypes of the field, running the gamut from the doting mother and her neurotically “gifted” son, all the way to… Klaus Kinski.

I was on tenterhooks early on, wondering how long his character was going to survive, what with it being an “early” Kinski role, and this being very much an ensemble cast, in a story with a high mortality rate. Not that late Klaus performances are of necessity much more significant: given enough financial incentive, he would happily turn up and work in minor roles, his presence splashily exaggerated across subsequent promotional material. It would have been no surprise here if he had been an early victim of the strangler, though to be honest, this has enough entertainment value elsewhere that his quick departure would not have been a fatal blow. While I will remain vague on specifics, to avoid spoilers, I will say that he is not the first actor to collect his check, and the film contains a sufficient helping of Klaus to meet your daily nutritional requirements.

He plays Peter Ross, the illegitimate son of Lord Lebanon, who is now making a living as a sculptor, so while hanging out at the castle, has been working on an extremely large piece, based on a life mask, cast from one of the aristocrat’s servants. However, both it and Ross appear to contain dark secrets, for the bastard (for once, used literally, rather than as an epithet applied to the actor by a wronged director!) is seen sweating profusely and shooting up, which allows Kinski to demonstrate his glorious ability to act all twitchy and moist. It’s one of the more creepy performances of this era in his career, and Ross is certainly a credible killer – but does it necessarily indicate he is actually the murderer, or is it all a massive red-herring, intended to divert the viewer’s attention away from the real killer?

Hey, you can’t expect to hand over all the movie’s secrets, can you? If the film had sucked, I’d probably have been more than happy to spill the beans, but I feel warmly enough toward the makers that they deserve a better fate. Sure, the ambitions on view here may be extremely low, but when your resources are limited, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. For what this is, it succeeds on its own terms to a greater degree than most movies, and can only be appreciated for that.

Kommando Leopard (1985)

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Dir: Antonio Margheriti
Star: Lewis Collins, Cristina Donadio, Manfred Lehmann, Klaus Kinski

Part of my childhood growing up in the late seventies was The Professionals, a two-fisted TV series centered around Bodie and Doyle, operatives of fictional British government agency, C.I.5, and their boss Cowley. While my memories are vague, I recall a lot of whizzing around, in what Wikipedia helpfully tells me was a Ford Capri, with a lot of shootouts and punch-ups. Like most 12-year-old boys at the time, I wanted to be Bodie. Or Doyle. I forget which. I mention this, because Bodie was played by Collins, and watching him running around the Philippino jungles, pretending it’s somewhere in “Latin America” was an immediate throwback to watching him running around the streets of North London.

This was the second of three movies he made with Margheriti, following Code Name: Wild Geese (an unofficial sequel to The Wild Geese) the previous year, which also had Kinski in a supporting role. It begins with a tense attack by Enrique Carrasco (Collins – yeah, not exactly an obvious Hispanic) and his allies on a dam, seeking to disrupt the fuel distribution network of President Homoza, the man who rules over this unnamed Latin American country with an iron fist. When the plan succeeds, Homoza orders the head of his secret police, Silveira (Kinski), to capture the “terrorists” responsible – or failing that, render the local population into such a state of fear, that Carrasco will be unable to rely on them for support.

kommando2Thus begins a game of cat and mouse between Silveira and Carrasco, who joins forces with the typical slew of characters you get in movies like this – a foreign mercenary, a Catholic priest (Lehmann), hot local chick Maria (Donadi). Meanwhile, Silveira and his militia forces stop at nothing to paint Carrasco and crew as the bad guys, including gunning down refugees, shooting up a hospital, and even blowing up a plane full of 185 kids and blaming it on the rebels. Damn: even by the standards of psychopathy we’ve come to expect from our #1 German lunatic, that’s cold. Needless to say, this doesn’t stop the revolutionaries from their mission, and the tide begins to turn as they blow up a freight train – and the oil refinery through which it is going at the time. Inevitably, in ends with Silveria making the fatal mistake of entering the field himself, a decision which leads to him being Qadaffi’d by the locals before Carrasco can intervene.

There’s more than a slight degree of irony in producer Erwin C. Dietrich opting to use the Philippines as a stand-in for a despotic banana republic – because the country was, at the time, hardly any different, being in its third decade of control by President Ferdinand Marcos, hardly a model leader. This was made not very long after opposition leader  Benigno Aquino had been gunned down at Manila Airport, getting off the plane bringing him back from exile. And barely four months after Kommando opened in Germany, Marcos and his wife Imelda were booted from office and bailed out on the country entirely, famously leaving behind her collection of 2,700 pairs of shoes. So, safe to say, knowledge of the contemporary and future political climate adds a certain resonance to things.

That said, there’s good reason the country was a hotbed of B-movie film production around this time: you certainly got lots of value for your money (I vaguely recall reading that, if you got on Marcos’s good side, he’d loan you military hardware and troops for your shoot). The budget here was reportedly about 15 million Swiss francs – the most expensive Swiss-financed production to that point – which translates to about $16.5 million in today’s money, so this wasn’t a bargain basement piece of work. About half of that went on effects, and it’s all up on the screen, with some pretty impressive model work being blown up, in particular the opening dam and the oil refinery. Though perhaps the coolest things ever, for any wannabe evil overlord, are the helicopter gunships with flamethrowers mounted in their noses. There’s one shot of it letting rip, right into the camera lens, which had me wondering if this was shot in 3D.

During the early stages, which have Collins roaming the jungle, while Kinski sits comfortably in the President’s palace, I wondered if this had been part of the contract negotiations, but as mentioned, Klaus does end up getting down and dirty as well. Though going by the (low-resolution, sorry) clip below, it doesn’t appear to have done anything at all for his sunny disposition! The distance between hero and antagonist does impact things: it feels more dispassionate, almost like a chess match, watching them move their forces around the board, though Carrasco is in the trenches with his troops, to a much greater degree. It is a good role for Kinski, and he makes the most of it; however, the focus is very much on the good guys, and Collins (who once auditioned for Cubby Broccoli as a possible James Bond) doesn’t do much to stand out from the foliage.

Burden of Dreams (1982)

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Dir: Les Blank
Star: Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, Claudia Cardinale, Thomas Mauch

When you get a chance, google “Werner Herzog motivational posters.” It’s a meme which combines quotes from our favorite dour German director, with beautiful images of nature and life. You get the sense this documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo may have been the source of many. For, while the relationship between Kinski and Herzog was often… Well, let’s go with a severe understatement and say, “somewhat strained,” what you’ll take away from this is that Klaus was hardly the biggest problem, in a film that took almost four years to complete. It’s just horribly fascinating to watch Herzog disintegrate as his dream collapses around him, eventually launching into the following glorious tirade, a defeated man who is both cursing his opponent, and acknowledging its inevitable superiority. [I see I also included it in the Fitzcarraldo review, but make no apology for including it here as well!]

Kinski always says it’s full of erotic elements. I don’t see it so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. It’s just – Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn’t see anything erotic here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course, there’s a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don’t think they- they sing. They just screech in pain. It’s an unfinished country. It’s still prehistorical. The only thing that is lacking is the dinosaurs here. It’s like a curse weighing on an entire landscape. And whoever goes too deep into this has his share of that curse. So we are cursed with what we are doing here. It’s a land that God, if he exists, has created in anger.

burdenThis is a project that was certainly cursed from the beginning, and there’s something appropriate about the film’s subject being a man attempting to do something ludicrous and borderline insane – drag a ship over a mountain – because Herzog’s persistence can only be admired. From the get-go, there were issues with the natives,  and the initial location had to be abandoned, with locals burning the camp to the ground as the crew pulled out. Burden also includes footage from the original version, which started filming over a year later with new locations, and starred Jason Robards as Fitzcarraldo, with (of all people) Mick Jagger as his sidekick. After five weeks shooting, almost half the movie was already in the can, when Robards came down with amoebic dysentery and had to return to the United States, where his doctor forbade him from returning. While Herzog tried desperately to find another lead, Jagger had to return to his Rolling Stones related duties, and his character ended up being written out entirely.

As we all know, Herzog found a replacement in Kinski, who came to the Amazon jungle for his fourth collaboration with the director – likely triggering memories of the Aguirre shoot. But, in many ways, Herzog was even more maniacally focused here, and his efforts to ensure “authenticity” are beyond the extrene.  According to Blank, he “admits he could shoot Fitzcarraldo right outside Iquitos,” a reasonably-sized city in the region. Herzog instead chooses a location that’s a full day into the jungle by air, or two weeks by boat – if reachable at all. He claims “the isolated location will bring out special qualities in the actors, and even the film crew, that would be impossible to achieve otherwise.” It’s clear that Herzog has a vision, and nothing is going to be allowed to interfere with this. Frankly, based on this film, Kinski seems like the sane one in their partnership.

While there were reports of tensions between them, Blank doesn’t provide much on this – the film’s cinematographer, Thomas Mauch, appears more fed-up (and also gets his head cracked open while filming the boat going through the Pongo das Mortes, or “Rapids of Death”). Kinski’s main gripe appears to be the long periods of sitting around, resulting from the lengthy delays in production: the weather proved uncooperative, leaving rivers unnavigable and the bulldozer used to help clear a path for the boat over the mountain was bought second-hand, and kept breaking down, requiring parts to be flown in from Miami.  Based on the interview here, it’s the resulting idleness which grated on Klaus’s nerves; curiously, and as hinted at in Herzog’s quote above, Kinski seems to have appreciated the primeval physical location more than most Westerners probably would.

If we would work from the morning to the evening, that’s fine. You have to do something. You have to move, you know. But now we’re just sitting and sitting and sitting around. So you can’t go anywhere. You can’t escape this fucking, stinking camp because you never know when they call you. Because you have to be here because you’re paid for it. You are under contract, so you can’t just go. It means you’re completely captured here. Completely. You go from there to there and from there to there. That’s all that you can do. At least you have this view, instead of something else, and you feel you’re right in the jungle, which is a good feeling, you know.

The main weakness here is likely unavoidable, in that Blank wasn’t there for the finale. It seems he had to leave at a point where completion once again appeared in doubt, with one of the three boats used having run aground and another being stuck at the base of the mountain, all efforts to pull it up having failed. But after the documentarian’s departure, a new engineering crew managed to help Herzog achieve his vision, even if Blank wasn’t there to capture it or Herzog’s reaction. Instead, it ends with the director’s response to being asked what he’d do when filming ends. “I shouldn’t make movies anymore. I should go to a lunatic asylum right away. [It’s] not what a man should do in his life all the time. Even if I get that boat over the mountain and somehow I finish that film, nobody on this earth will convince me to be happy about all that. Not until the end of my days.”

Count Dracula (1970)

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Star: Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Soledad Miranda, Klaus Kinski
Dir: Jess Franco

While I appreciate the idea of making a more faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel, going back in many ways to its original roots, I’m not sure getting Jess Franco to direct it was the smartest idea. Whatever his merits, he was hardly known for PG-rated works inspired by Victorian literature, and despite a couple of bits of impressive casting, in Lee and Kinski, this feels about 15 years too late, and a bland supporting cast leave it marooned in, at best, the middle tier of vampire movies.

The main coup is, of course, getting Lee to reprise his most famous role, even if this was the third chance to sink his fangs into Count Dracula that year, its release (at least, in Germany) just managing to pip Taste the Blood of Dracula to cinemas, and with Scars of Dracula following later. [Blood wasn’t even supposed to include the Count at all, but the US distributor balked, and he was talked into playing the role again; Lee later complained Hammer’s president used “emotional blackmail” to convince him to keep playing Dracula, saying the crew would be put out of work otherwise – I wonder if it was for this film?]. He was growing increasingly disenchanted with the direction Hammer were taking: “They gave me nothing to do! I pleaded with Hammer to let me use some of the lines that Bram Stoker had written. Occasionally, I sneaked one in.” Here, no such sneaking was needed, and indeed, the film’s best scene has the Count delivering a sonorous monologue about his ancestors, which is close to Stoker’s text:

“To us was entrusted for centuries the guarding of our lands. The Lombard, the Bulgar, the Turk, poured their thousands against our frontiers – we drove them back! The Draculas have ever been the heart’s blood, the brains, the sword of our people. One of my race crossed the Danube and destroyed the Turkish host. Though sometimes beaten back, he came again and again against the enemy, till at the end, he came alone from the bloody field, for he alone could triumph. THIS was a Dracula indeed!”

countdracula2Another cool aspect is the way this Count starts off as old, and gradually becomes more youthful and active as the film goes on and he quenches his thirst on more victims – something also used in Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But the film still takes liberties with the text, some of which don’t work, such as the way Jonathan Harker escapes Dracula’s castle, and is transported back to Great Britain, to rehab in a facility – here run by Professor Van Helsing (Lom) – which directly overlooks… Dracula’s English mansion. Really, what are the odds? The fiance of Lucy Westenra (Miranda) is now Quincy Morris, with Arthur Holmwood entirely omitted. So, while more faithful than many, it’s clear the makers still felt it necessary to make a number of concessions on the transition from page to screen.

Klaus Kinski plays Renfield, in a casting choice of both staggering obviousness and brilliance, matched only by Kinski’s other collaborations with Franco, where he played Jack the Ripper and the Marquis de Sade. In this case, it’s a virtually non-verbal performance, where his sole line is “Varna…”, uttered just before Renfield shuffles off this mortal coil, to tell the good guys where the Count is heading. But that doesn’t make it any less memorable, since Kinski has always been capable of conveying an entire chapter of emotion with a stare, and is allowed to do so freely in this film. Right from the first time we see him, hurling food about his cell, it’s clear that this Renfield is barking mad – and that’s before he starts chowing down on his favorite snack, dead flies, which he has hidden in a box in his cell. According to Jay Marks and Waylon Wahl, Kinski took Franco to task for not filming Renfield’s scenes in an actual asylum, to which the director responded, “I had planned to shoot it in a real cell but then it occurred to me that they might not let you out!”

Certainly, it’s fair to say that, as well as the canonical Dracula, in Kinski this film also has the canonical Renfield, and I don’t think anyone can match the intense lunacy of his portrayal. Where the film goes off the rails is with the good guys in the cast, starting with Lom as Van Helsing, who is a very pale shadow indeed of, say, Peter Cushing. And that’s before he inexplicably appears to suffer a stroke, which confines him to a wheelchair for the rest of the movie (perhaps inspiring Dr. Everett Scott in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which hit the stage three years later?). The rest of the cast are equally forgettable, despite the scenic contributions of Miranda, and Maria Rohm as Mina – although the latter remain far more clothed than most Franco ladies! And, indeed, Hammer ones of the time, as they released The Vampire Lovers the same year, the first of their Karnstein trilogy.

That’s perhaps what I mean about it being 15 years too late. In tone and content, this comes across as less daring than even Blood of Dracula, made in 1957 and whose success led directly to the entire “Hammer Horror” filmography which followed. That packed much more of a wallop than this even lower-rent version does, which has all the impact of the giant polystyrene rocks used to disrupt the Count’s escape at the end [you can clearly see one of them glancing off the side of a horse’s head as they are “hurled” down from a nearby cliff. And do not even get me started on the “bat” effects…]. The truth is, for all the influence Dracula had, Stoker isn’t actually all that good a writer – if you can name two of his 11 other novels, it will be one more than I can manage, and my Lair of the White Worm knowledge is entirely through Ken Russell’s adaptation.  So a faithful translation to the screen may seem like a good idea in theory, yet it tends to bring over as many negatives as pluses. This film demonstrates why most movie versions have tended to take only the core, and leave everything else.

 

Jack the Ripper (1976)

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Dir: Jess Franco
Star: Klaus Kinski, Andreas Mannkopff, Josephine Chaplin, Herbert Fux

The Jess Franco film so good I watched it twice? Well, kinda… It’s certainly better than most of Franco’s work – I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with the “tedious dreck” end of the spectrum in his filmography, but this is solidly workmanlike, and grounded mostly in Kinski’s fine performance as the central character. However, the double viewing is less because of any quality, than the first copy I got was the English-language version which is among the worst dubs I’ve ever had the misfortune to experience. Virtually none of the characters sound anything like their characters; they could have had Betty Boop dub Kinski, and it would have been more appropriate. That necessitated getting hold of the original German version, which is (as usual) a great deal better.

Just do not expect anything like authenticity, or anything bearing much more than a tangential relationship to the real Jack the Ripper, despite a couple of nods, which I’ll get to later. That’s clear right from the start, where a lady of the night is warned outside the enchantingly-named Pike’s Hole music-hall: “You have to walk through Kensington and Chelsea, where he looks for his victims.” Er… No? And Zurich isn’t much of a substitute for London either, despite providing some waterways through which bodies can be transported. Still, as long as you’re happy with lurid sleaze, you’ll find plenty to enjoy here, even if it does fall a little short of Edge of Sanity, another take on the tale from a sometime director of porn, Gerard Kikoine. That had Anthony Perkins, threw a large helping of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde into the blender, and was shot like the demented offspring of Ken Russell and Dario Argento. Compared to that masterpiece of misbegotten excess, this is almost tame, yet there’s a good amount to appreciate.

The story has Kinski playing Dr. Orloff, a character name used a bunch of other times by Franco, from 1962’s The Awful Dr. Orloff through to one of the director’s best, Faceless, in 1987. He has what can only be described as severe mommy issues, and is acting these out by abducting prostitutes and dismembering them, with the help of an assistant, Frieda, who may be mentally deficient and/or in love with Orloff [the film is vague on such details]. It’s never clear if Orloff’s recollections of his mother as a whore are literal or metaphorical, but if the former, it doesn’t appear to have prevented him from rising up to pursue a medical career, As the body count rises, Inspector Selby (Mannkopff) of Scotland Yard investigates the case, but matters are complicated by his ballet-dancer girlfriend, Cynthia (Chaplin – the daughter of Charlie!), who decides to go undercover in search of the killer herself. Needless to say, she finds the not-so good Doctor, only to fall into his clutches as Selby searches frantically for both of them – like a number of others, a plotline also largely recycled from The Awful Dr. Orloff.

jtr13It’s certainly an epic bit of casting to have Kinski playing a largely undiluted sexual psychopath, and he is actually quite restrained in his performance, save for a couple of moments where the mommy issues burst out in a gush of scenery-chewing. There’s no doubt Kinski had an ambivalent attitude towards women, and it’s the nastier side which is allowed full rein here, in his brutal treatment of his victims, usually raping them before beginning their dismemberment, which is depicted in occasionally highly graphic fashion. The worst such is reserved for frequent Franco muse (and future wife), Lina Romay, whose promising career as a music-hall act is brought to an abrupt end by Orloff carving off one of her breasts in its entirety. Yet Orloff spends his days tending to the poor, accepting whatever they can pay. It’s an unusual dichotomy, perhaps intended to expose Victorian hypocrisy [though when one of his patients attempts to blackmail the doctor, the results are unsurprising!].

I kept expecting Mrs. Baxter, Orloff’s landlady, to play a significant role in proceedings; that doesn’t happen, and her character serves no real purpose. On the other hand, I was quite impressed by the police procedural aspects, in particular a scene where the Inspector has to wrangle witnesses of wildly varied social stature into putting together a composite portrait, only to find there are two, clearly different descriptions. Fortunately, the sharpest tool in the box is also present, in the shape of a blind man, whose heightened senses provide a couple of key elements that narrow down the inquiry, and also gives Selby a crucial clue after Cynthia is abducted. However, the ending falls kinda flat: rather than any kind of fitting retribution for or by society, on behalf of the numerous victims, Orloff simply gives himself up, though in response to Selby’s assertion, “You are Jack the Ripper,” the doctor counters coolly, “You will have to prove that first.”

There are occasional, albeit slight, nods to real Ripperology. For there is some evidence to suspect the real Ripper may, like Orloff, have had medical training, and the film does make a reference to him having “relatives at Buckingham Palace”, perhaps hinting at the connection to the British royal family which has been suggested by some. However, this is an entity appreciated for its own merits, whatever they might be, and not as any kind of historical reconstruction. In particular, it’s good to see a Kinski film which truly lives up to that label, with him front, center and given the opportunity to unleash, quite possibly, a few of his own inner demons involving sex and death. As so often, however, you are left to wonder what might have been, had the material been handled by a better director than Franco, though the results here are certainly among the upper tier of his filmography. Just don’t inflict the dubbed version on youself, for that would be far more horrible than any of the breast-removing and repeated stabbings carried out on Orloff’s victims!