Tag: krimi

Dir: Alfred Vohrer
Star: Heinz Drache, Barbara Rütting, René Deltgen, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. Neues vom Hexer

I believe this is the only case of an Edgar Wallace krimi made by Constantin Films which was a direct sequel. For this was a follow-up to 1964’s The Mysterious Magician (Der Hexer), which I haven’t seen and is not reviewed here, because it did not include Kinski. This might have affected my enjoyment here somewhat, since I had no idea who the titular master-criminal was. A brief discussion thereof, seems pertinent. The IMDb synopsis runs as follows: “The sister of a famous, as-yet-uncaught criminal named The Hexer is murdered. Inspector Higgins of Scotland Yard believes that The Hexer will surface to take his revenge on his sister’s killers, and plans to set a trap to finally capture him. However, bodies soon start piling up, and it looks as if The Hexer might get away yet again.”

This was adapted from the Wallace novel published in 1925, and originally titled The Gaunt Stranger. The book had already been made into a film five times from then through 1952, and many of the cast from the 1963 version returned, including Deltgen as the mastermind, Arthur Milton. As this begins, he has left the British Isles for the less legally-troubling climate of Australia. However, he returns to England because of the murder of Lord Curtain, a crime at whose scene one of his calling cards was found. Unwilling to accept this attempt to blame him for a crime he didn’t commit, Milton decides he needs to clear his name by finding the real culprit. This puts him somewhat alongside Inspector James W. Wesby (Drache) of Scotland Yard, though for obvious reasons, Milton has to operate unofficially.

What’s interesting, is that this does not start off as a “whodunnit”. We know exactly who murdered Lord Curtain from the get-go, and how they did it. It was Archie, the nephew of the aristocrat, with the help of family butler Edwards (Kinski). He killed his uncle after stepping away from a game of cards. But with the aid of a tape-recording, containing a gunshot followed by a scream, he makes it seem as if the murder took place after his return, when he was sitting back at the table. That’s kinda clever. Except the judge presiding over the case notes that the bullet would have been immediately fatal, allowing no time for a scream. He then produces the tape-recorder – the judge is actually Milton, who is a master of disguise.

To this point, I was thoroughly impressed by the plotting on view, which was both imaginative and crisp. Unfortunately, the film as a whole is not able to sustain this level of creative writing. It soon turns out that Archie was not acting on his own. After he turns up dead – not the last corpse here, by any means – then we are back in the usual territory of multiple suspects, murky motives and more or less contrived twists on the way to the finale. Initially, it seems money is the motive, with the heirs to the Lord’s fortune also being knocked off. However, it eventually turns out to be more personal. The only member of the family who seems immune to the threat is Margie (Rütting), who has been cut off by Lord Curtain, after refusing to stop pursuing her dream of becoming an artist.

Outside of Kinski, one scene is certainly memorable – and, from a modern perspective, absolutely jaw-dropping. One of the Curtain family is a young boy, Charles, the family heir who lost an arm in a car accident. There is a failed attempt on his life, and at the end, he’s abducted. The kidnapper seeks to kill Charles by locking him in a room, and unleashing multiple tigers. The kid is genuinely in the same room with the big cats. No CGI obviously, but no stunt doubles or split screen either. At one point, he basically rides the tiger around! Quite what this means in terms of the story is hard to say: aristocratic children can soothe the savage beast? The boy is played by Teddy Naumann, whose family were animal trainers. Oh, and his missing arm is real: he lost it at age three (!), playing with a bear. [Fun fact, director Vohrer also lost an arm, fighting as a soldier in Russia during World War II]

As for Klaus, he certainly makes a sharp opening impression as butler Edwards, sitting up out of a coffin, and pronouncing it a good fit (above). He then is next seen playing the harp (!) for the amusement of his employers. But thereafter, he doesn’t get given too much to do, eventually turning up as one of those corpses mentioned earlier, being found in a dumb-waiter, used by those of nefarious intentions to move around the Curtain stately home. It is interesting that the film is almost a Battle of Butlers, for Milton has one of his own, Archibald Finch, played by comic relief stalwart Eddi Arent. Both manservants sport facial hair of some kind: Finch has a full beard, while Edwards has more of a five o’clock shadow going on, perhaps in deference to the character’s morally dubious nature and actions.

The film ends with an odd breaking of the fourth wall, Inspector Wesby, having stopped Milton from leaving for Australia, is asked what he wants with the man. He turns to the camera and says, “You will be told soon… in this theater.” This is an obvious set-up for a third movie in the franchise, and is all the more questionable, because it never happened. It appears the sequel was not quite able to repeat the success of its predecessor, and no further entries were made, apparently due to scheduling reasons. By this point, I’d lost most interest, and Wesby’s statement seemed more like a threat than a promise. Perhaps I’d have felt differently had I seen the original movie, rather than being introduced to a Ringer who was already very much in progress.

Dir: Franz Josef Gottlieb
Star: Judith Dornys, Rudolf Forster, Ernst Fritz Fürbringer, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. The Curse of the Hidden Vault

I just hope Klaus was not being paid by the word for his performance in this krimi, because if so, his check would have been very small, if not non-existent. I don’t recall him saying a word in the entire performance, with his role being largely relegated to lurking menacingly in the background – typically behind a gate or foliage, and lit from beneath as shown below. It’s not clear until the end where his allegiances lie, when his actions finally speak considerably louder than his words. This is a bit disappointing, since the opening credits proclaim “with Klaus Kinski and Eddi Arent”, but the two get very different amounts of screen time and significance to the overall story. Arent comes out thoroughly on top, which is fair enough. He’s playing his usual comedic relief, yet stays on the side of irritating, which can’t be said for all of his roles. His bumbling does occasionally prove necessary to the plot.

Speaking of which, it’s the story of Australian heiress Kathleen Kent (Dornys), who has returned from a land down under to England, with her legal advisor Ferry Westlake (Arent), to claim her inheritance. There isn’t actually much of that, as her father was taken to the cleaners by those to whom he owed money. This was mostly gambling debts, in particular owed to crooked casino owner, Mr. Real (Forster). However, as Real approaches his death bed, he suffers a pang of conscience at having left Kathleen destitute, and so wants to make things right by returning his ill-gotten gains to her. His criminal partners, led by Connor (Fürbringer) are unimpressed by this sudden burst of charity, and want to get their hands on what they see as their rightful profits.

The problem is, Real has got his assets locked up extremely tight, in a vault whose access is guarded by a series of traps, such as a tripwire which triggers a sword-swinging suit of armor. To beat the expected inheritor to the money, they have a number of plans, which begin with meeting Miss Kent at the station where she arrives, and locking her up in a hotel, to make sure she is not able to visit Mr. Real. They then send a stand-in in her place, only for the deception to be revealed by one of Real’s associates, who knows what Kathleen looks like. Further attempts then occur, up to and including masquerading as policemen, in order to get access to the vault, where they will then blow the hell out of it with dynamite.

Fortunately, Miss Kent has some allies on her side, including Inspector Angel of Scotland Yard (Harry Meyen), and Jimmy Flynn (Harald Leipnitz), who occupies a grey area between cops and robbers. There’s also no particular honor among the thieves, with mistrust the order of the day. The film begins by showcasing this, in an interesting way. It looks like we’re watching the police raiding a house where a hostage is being held. Except, after she is rescued, the words “THE END” then flash up, and we pull back to discover that we have been watching a film in a cinema. One of the customers appears to be sleeping, but when the usherette tries to wake him, it turns out he is dead, having been shot under cover of the noise of the on-screen gun-battle. It’s a striking opening. The bad news is, there’s not much else which follows that can come close.

That isn’t entirely true, with one grisly death the other highlight. Mr. Real, fed up of attempts by Connor and his gang, decamps to a room in a remote windmill. When tracked down there, and one of Connor’s gang pays a visit, Real’s mute minion George (Kinski), unleashes a false floor (below), sending the visitor plummeting into the heart of the mill machinery. Despite desperate struggles, the victim is unable to escape and is eventually caught up and crushed by the grindstones. While it may not be explicit, with very little in the way of gore, the sheer, extended duration of the demise and the about to be deceased’s screams of terror make a difficult watch. Without wishing to spoiler George’s end, let’s just say that he who sets the wheels in motion, gets the wheels in motion… A sternly-worded letter from the Health and Safety executive seems sure to follow. [The original title here was The Mill of Horrors, until that was deemed to brutal by the producers.]

Otherwise, though, it’s not particularly memorable. Kathleen is a particularly passive heroine, outside of one sequence where she throws pepper in the face of her captor, in order to stage a breakout attempt. I read a review which criticized the film for lacking a clear protagonist, and that is fair comment. It feels like Jimmy Flynn should occupy that role, except he doesn’t get enough screen time to justify it. Ferry Westlake has considerably more scenes, despite being an obvious supporting character. He’s even the one who is left by the vault with the ticking bomb, unaware of his peril due to a preceding bang on the head.

It appears to have been a fairly troubled production. Filming was delayed in order to allow other Edgar Wallace adaptations to take precedence, including Das Verrätertor. These schedule changes ended up resulting in some parts being recast, with the first choices no longer being available, e.g. Dornys’s role was supposed to have been played by Heidelinde Weiss, Leipnitz was originally intended to be Inspector Angel. Perhaps due to these issues, or perhaps just because the end result isn’t very interesting, the audience stayed away, with the 1.3 million tickets sold making it the worst-performing film of the Rialto Wallace adaptations to that point. While I’m sure Klaus enjoyed the challenge of his mute performance – or perhaps appreciated not having the tedious task of learning lines! – it does feel a less than full use of his talents.

Dir: Franz Josef Gottlieb
Star: O. W. Fischer, Karin Dor, Doris Kirchner, Klaus Kinski

The success of the Edgar Wallace krimi films inevitably meant that similarly styled movies would follow suit. These weren’t just the work of other studios, hoping to ride on the coat-tails of Constantin-Film’s success. They, themselves, were also looking for source material which could be adapted, and found a worthwhile seam in the works of Louis Weinert-Wilton, Two of these had already been turned into movies, in 1962 and earlier in 1963 respectively: Der Teppich des Grauens (which translates into the rather less scary-sounding, The Carpet of Horror!) and Die weiße Spinne, or The White Spider. The success at the box-office of the latter perhaps explains why, for the third of their four adaptation, the name was changed from the book’s Die Königin der Nacht (The Queen of the Night) to a similarly arachnid-themed title, The Secret of the Black Widow.

Like many of the Edgar Wallace films, it was set in London, which does create a certain amount of cognitive dissonance, watching quintessential British “bobbies” speaking in German. Adding to this, it was filmed entirely in Spain, with a combination of Spanish and German cast and crew. The hero is Wellby (Fischer), a journalist for the ‘London Sensations’ newspaper, who is investigating a pair of bizarre murders. The victims are shot with poisonous projectiles, to which are attached fake spiders. He discovers a connection between the two dead men: they took part in an expedition to Mexico, on which leader Alfons Avery was killed, supposedly by the bite of a black widow spider. The rest of the group found Aztec treasure, and became rich on their return to England.

With further expedition members also being killed in similar fashion, it appears someone is not happy about the situation. The “Talk or Die!” notes being sent to the survivors are especially unsubtle. But might one of the group themselves be responsible? For they agreed that, in the event of a death, the deceased’s fortune would be divided among the other members. Or is it an outsider, such as Avery’s daughter, Clarisse (Dor)? Her actions are certainly suspicious, having taken an assumed name to work in the antique store run by one of her father’s colleagues. Complicating matters further, another of the group is the publisher of London Sensations, and is not happy about his employee’s investigation. Then there’s the sinister Boyd (Kinski), a bowler-hatted gentlemen lurking on the fringes, dropping thinly-veiled threats on Wellby.

It’s a fairly straightforward whodunnit, with the numbers of the guilty parties involved in Avery’s death steadily being thinned, which reduces the number of potential suspects in parallel. But they’re an oddball selection of candidates, and given their disparate nature it feels a little questionable that they would all go on an archaeological expedition. The most dubious is Selwood, who now owns a time-capsule sixties arcade, where seedy types hang about, playing pinball and table-football. He, in particular, doesn’t take kindly to Wellby digging into his affairs, and sets a couple of his thugs on the writer in the basement, to dissuade further questions. However, does that aversion to inquiry necessarily make him the murderer? There are certainly other possibilities, and Wellby doesn’t let his growing fondness for Clarisse interfere with her possible guilt.

This particularly shows up, when he more or less kidnaps her – Wellby doesn’t exactly appear to be a supporter of equal rights for women – in order to take her to a nightclub, where the star act sings about the plot of the film.

There is a woman, who in the dark of the city,
has thoughts of hate and corruption.
She kills in the shadows, and avoids the light.
And nobody knows her face.

You walk through the streets and don’t look back
Maybe you are dreaming of fortune and love,
when you get hit by a shot and your life slips away.
A scream gets carried away by the wind.
And nobody knows how it happened.
Because nobody who ever saw her is still alive.

The Black Widow, who is that woman?
She finds her victim and it’s never a miss.
Why are the streets so lonely and empty?
Why are all the people walking around so scared?
There is a woman, who in the dark of the city,
has made a deal with death.

Catchy, isn’t it? I’m not sure if this was some bizarre attempt to get Clarisse to confess to the murders, or if the hero’s idea of a good time is listening to the warblings of a deep-voiced cabaret singer. He does seem more than a little fond of an alcoholic beverage, so his tastes in entertainment are probably a bit questionable.

The film’s biggest strength is likely its supporting cast. Kinski – who isn’t in the film as much as the poster above would imply – makes a solid impression. I don’t think there’s a scene where he’s not wearing a bowler hat, and he comes off as a more ambiguous version of John Steed from The Avengers. I will say, I was surprised when his connection to the murders was revealed in the end. I don’t want to give anything away, but let’s just say, perhaps it was before Klaus became typecast! I also enjoyed another Edgar Wallace regular, Eddi Arent as Wellby’s researcher sidekick and comic relief. It’s the kind of role which could easily seem jarring, yet Arent plays it lightly enough that it works, better than it should.

It all ends as you’d expect, with the murderer – who may or may not be as you’d expect – being revealed, and brought to justice. It’s okay, though I wasn’t all that impressed with Fischer’s performance as the lead character. Some elements feel as if they were going for something relatively hard-boiled, such as his drinking and womanizing, yet the actor doesn’t seem to have the macho air necessary to pull it off. It needs someone who can do a better job of holding the audience’s attention. It may be significant that, while Kinski would return for the studio’s fourth and final Weinert-Wilton adaptation, Fischer would not.

Dir: John Moxey
Star: Leo Genn, Christopher Lee, Anthony Newlands, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. Circus of Fear

Regardless of what the IMDb says, I’d say that Circus was less the “also known as” than Psycho. The former was the original title for this British production. The rather more lurid name was applied for its American release, which also slashed close to half an hour from the running time. I’ve no idea what this did to the coherence of what is a pretty busy plot, but it can’t have been good. There is even a third alternative version: when released in Germany, this color production was shown in black-and-white. This was done in order to make it more consistent with the local Edgar Wallace productions, which were not yet being made in colour.

For, despite its thoroughly British setting, and largely British cast, this is a krimi, apparently based on Wallace’s novel, The Three Just Men (though some sources cite other books). It was co-produced by Constantin Film, who were also responsible, with local studio Rialto, for most of the German adaptations of Wallace’s work. Several of these were supposedly set in Britain, e.g. The Dead Eyes of London, though stock footage typically played an important role in establishing the locale for these. No such subterfuge was used here, with the movie shot at Bray Studios, the home of Hammer Films, and on location around the South of England. Billy Smart’s Circus, a British icon of the time, provided the circus setting, as it also did for other sixties productions, including Circus of Horrors and Berserk.

However, to improve the cross-over appeal, several English-speaking stars of the German franchise were sent over to the UK to take part. Not only Klaus is present, but also Eddi Arent, another veteran of many of the Rialto krimis, making a relatively rare (especially compared to Kinski’s globe-trotting career) excursion into another country’s film industry. He plays the circus accountant, Eddie, who wants to become a performer in the ring. Heinz Drache also appears, as circus ring-master Carl. But it’s a while before anything tent-related shows up. Initially, this is a heist film, with an armored car being held up and robbed of its cash contents on Tower Bridge, the perpetrators getting away down the Thames, by boat. Kinski plays Manfred Hart, the smuggler charged with getting the loot out of the country.

However, there’s a wrinkle, in that a member of the gang, Mason (played by Victor Maddern, a face familiar from many Brit-flicks of the time) shoots one of the van’s guards, who subsequently dies. Mason is sent off to deliver the loot to a location near Windsor, but ends up with a knife thrown into his back. Some of the stolen and now vanished money starts turning up in local businesses, drawing the attention of Scotland Yard’s Inspector Elliott (Genn), who is under increasing pressure from his boss to find the culprits and recover the cash. His attention is drawn to Barberini’s Circus, wintering nearby. But when he starts to investigate it and its owner (Newlands), this opens an entirely new and even more murderous can of criminal worms. Not helping the overall sense of menace is Hart’s presence, as he also seeks to find the cash-filled suitcase.

For the circus itself has no shortage of odd characters, probably headlined by Gregor the lion-tamer (Lee), who wears a mask to conceal a badly-scarred face. There’s also a hyper-jealous knife thrower, his wandering fiancee (Margaret Lee), Gregor’s niece (Suzy Kendall), the ring-master and Eddie the accountant mentioned above, plus a midget (Skip Martin) with a fondness for lurking in the shadows and blackmail. By the time all is said and done, there will be multiple further dead bodies, and the original heist will be all but forgotten by Inspector Elliott. The finale, in which he gathers the performers together in the ring, is instead all about revealing the circus shenanigans. The question of the mysterious “Mister Big” behind the robbery, whose anonymity is specifically mentioned early on, is never answered.

Despite the (quite glorious) Italian poster above, and also gracing the film’s opening shot, Kinski is very much a supporting character, working again for producer Harry Alan Towers, who wrote the screenplay here under the pseudonym of Peter Welbeck. Like the midget, Hart spends most of his time lurking in the shadows, in his case watching to see if he can figure out the loot’s location before Elliott does. There’s only one scene at the circus where he has much to say for himself, an oddity where he pops in to ask for a job, presumably in an effort to go undercover. He’s rather less than forthcoming with the requested personal information, shall we say:

Carl: What’s your name?
Hart: That’s my business.
Carl:  I see. Have you ever worked in the circus before?
Hart: Maybe.

Unsurprisingly, he’s not employed, and thereafter, Hart is back to lurking on the outside. He meets an undignified fate, also at the business end of a throwing knife. Though as shown above, Hart does get to clutch a gigantic carnival-esque head as he goes down to the straw in the barn of his demise. There is, however, enough other stuff going on here, that the viewer may hardly even notice – perhaps after a brief pause, to cross Hart off the list of possible killers. The film does a fairly good job of keeping the multiple different threads moving, and I’ll confess that I didn’t guess the identity of the killer until it was revealed. However, I will say that the usual guideline of it being the least likely person, might get you pointed in the right direction.

It does feel a bit of a waste to have an icon like Lee spend 90% of the film hidden behind a ski-mask, even if there’s no concealing his sonorous tones, or his imposing figure. But this is an ensemble piece, with Lee taking a back-seat to Genn, who delivers a nicely likeable turn. I was especially amused with the way Elliott deftly handles his irascible boss, and was also struck by the footage of London and Docklands, pre-gentrification, which really adds to the period air. All told, I felt this was very much the equal of any of the German Wallace adaptations, and didn’t even mind the relatively early exit of Kinski too much.

Dir: Alfred Vohrer 
Star: Joachim Fuchsberger, Karin Baal, Dieter Borsche, Klaus Kinski

The Edgar Wallace novel had previously been adapted into a British film, The Dark Eyes of London, starring Bela Lugosi in the role of the insurance agent. Released just at the opening of World War 2, in November 1939, it was the first British film to be given the “H” certificate by UK censors, for horrific content. Proving quite successful in Germany, it was an obvious choice for a local version, two decades later. It was the first adaptation directed by Vohrer, who’d go on to become one of the mainstay helmers in the field, with a total of fourteen Wallace-inspired stories to his credit before the end of the sixties. This one is perhaps darker in tone than most, and seems almost to be inspired as much by Italian giallo films as the krimis with which I’m becoming increasingly familiar over the course of this project.

The hero is Scotland Yard’s Inspector Larry Holt (Fuchsberger), who is investigating a series of deaths by drowning in the Thames, which he’s convinced are murders, even though the forensic evidence suggest accidental demises. We know from the start that he’s onto something, having watched as Blind Jack, a hulking bald brute with cloudy eyes, attacks his chosen victim, an Australian wool merchant. A Braille note found in the victim’s pocket brings in specialist Nora Ward (Baal), who helps uncover a possible link to “The Dead Eyes of London,” an organized criminal group of blind beggars, and a mission for sightless old men run by the Reverend Paul Dearborn.

Discovering a life policy held by the corpse leads Holt to the Greenwich insurance company, run by David Judd (Borsche), since the death of his brother, Stephan. It turns out they have ties to the other corpses fished out of the river, and have had to pay out on the claims, because the deaths were officially certified as accidents. Meanwhile, Judd’s secretary, Edgar Strauss (Kinski) has a criminal record for fraud, a gambling habit and a fondness for wearing mirror shades in every situation. Might he, possibly, have something to do with the murders?

Oh, who am I trying to kid? It’s Klaus Kinski in mirror shades. Of course he does, as if his glowering (albeit sickly-looking) presence on the Spanish poster wasn’t a dead giveaway. Though it has to be said in the film’s defense, Strauss is just one element in a very twisted tale, and I’ll go as far as to say, not even the central one. This area is perhaps where the movie has most in common with the giallo: an incredibly complicated plot, on which it’s probably best not to breathe too hard, for fear of the entire thing collapsing into a heap of “I’m so sure…” implausibilities. In this case, it seems as if the majority of the characters are not who they claim to be; some of these assumed personas are more credible than others.

The fraud plan particularly doesn’t seem to stand up to any degree of scrutiny, not least in the way all the victims are insured by the same company. If I was pulling off this kind of scheme, that approach would seem immediately to invite unwanted attention from the authorities – and this is exactly what happens here. If I were an evil criminal mastermind, I might also be inclined to have a range of different “accidents” befall the victims too, rather than drowning them in the same location. Again, the similarity in the deaths, allows the police to draw a connecting line between them far too easily.

Much like the best giallos, however, it knocks the atmosphere thing out of the park. The London depicted is apparently perpetually blanketed in fog, in a manner which suggest the Clean Air Act passed five years earlier had never gone into effect, with the last real “pea-souper” actually being in 1952. I lived in the city for more than a decade and never saw anything like the phenomenon depicted here. However, I won’t deny the impact of the meteorological license, with the eerie, almost deserted streets, and shadows in which anything could conceivably lurk – up to and including a sightless vagrant with murderous intent. [Blind Jack is played by Adi Berber, who brings a physical presence to his portrayal which reminded me of Tor Johnson, the ex-pro wrestler frequently used by Ed Wood, Jr.]

There are some surreal stylistic flourishes, such as the shot of a man cleaning his teeth which is filmed from inside his mouth. While it’s certainly something I don’t recall having seen before, the obvious question is: why? It’s a surreal moment largely out of stylistic keeping with the rest of the film, though the movie has some other odd physical elements, such as a skull which doubles as a pop-up cigarette dispenser, and a booby-trapped television set that shoots at the viewer. On the other hand, there are the comedic stylings of Eddie Arent as Inspector Holt’s sidekick, Sergeant Sunny Harvey, who knits jerseys to relieve stress.

After taking a bit to get going, this does eventually reach a decent speed, even if some aspects do require a healthy quote of disbelief suspension. By the end, it’s almost a giallo-Gothic cross-breed, with the heroine victim facing some particularly nasty potential deaths. Particular praise goes to the appropriately named Heinz Funk’s score, which occasionally borders on the electronically experimental, before dropping back a few centuries for a bit of the old Ludwig Van, to accompany bits of the (somewhat ultra-, given the date) violence. Kinski’s role is more of a supporting one, significantly oversold by the poster above, yet he slips into his character like a well-worn, slightly threadbare suit, inhabiting it as if he has been there all his life. This turned out to be something of a breakthrough performance for Klaus: reportedly, the film “was a huge hit when it was released and earned Kinski a title story in the very influential news magazine Der Spiegel, exposing him for the first time to a broader audience.”

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!”

I 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.

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.

That 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.

Dir: Paul May
Star: Peter van Eyck, Dieter Borsche, Werner Peters, Klaus Kinski

Dr. Mabuse is best known through the Fritz Lang movies. Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, but in the sixties, the character was revived for six films made by the Berlin company, CCC Film. Some were remakes, in particular 1962’s version of Testament, which starred Gert Fröbe of Goldfinger fame – though not as a villain! But others used the character in other settings, such as this, the fourth entry, based on a novel by Bryan Wallace, who was the son of the more famous Edgar. Here, Mabuse is actually dead, but his role has been adopted by the head of the lunatic asylum where he was confined, Professor Pohland. His plan involves liberating an electronics specialist, George Cockstone (Borsche), to work on a mind-control device which can implant suggestions in virtually anyone’s mind, that they are powerless to resist. When strange cases start to occur as a result, such as a postman murdering a man to whom he is delivered a package, they are investigated by German detective Inspector Vulpius (Peters).

However, once crimes start also to occur in England, the full force of Scotland Yard comes in to assist, led by Major Bill Tern (van Eyck), who was originally responsible for putting Cockstone away. Mabuse/Pohland continues his plan, and the move to England was for a specific purpose, since with the aid of the mind-control device, he accumulates an entire cabinet’s worth of high-ranking citizens, from the police commissioner through to royalty. As the villain expounds, “I’ve summoned you all here, for the express purpose of assisting me to halt the decay of the country, to bring back the glory of the empire and to bring new leadership.” Among those abducted are Vulpius and Inspector Joe Rank (Kinski), and they kidnap Tern with the intent of killing him, and deraoling the investigation. But it turns out that Vulpius, as well as Tern’s elderly mother, have something that renders them impervious to the mind-control device, and which holds the key to Tern defeating Mabuse’s spiritual successor and his quest for global, or at least Anglo, domination.

It’s quite an entertaining piece of hokum, even if the concept at the core is dubious; the mind control works only until the subject falls asleep, so the suggestion must be reinforced every day, which has got to become problematic as the circle of the hypnotized grows, apparently exponentially. The connection to Mabuse is tenuous at best, though this does mean you don’t have to have seen any of the previous entries to appreciate this one. On the other hand, the characters are memorable and quirky, particularly Tern’s mother, who appears to be several steps ahead of the “professional” detectives in terms of figuring out what’s going on, thanks to her encyclopedic knowledge of crimi. I also note a significant plot-point is a robbery of the Glasgow-London train. Either this was eerily prescient or turnaround on production was remarkably fast, because the real Great Train Robbery took place in August 1963, and the film came out in German cinemas the following month.

Kinski’s role is relatively minor – more than a cameo, yet you’d be hard pushed to call it a significant supporting role – and he’s positively restrained by the standards of even his later work in the genre. It might have been more interesting, from a casting point of view, to have Kinski play the role of Cockstone since, at least in Wallace’s original novel, published the previous year, he appears to have been the main protagonist rather than operating largely as a minion. Indeed, that version of Cockstone has something of a Mabuse-esque quality to it, and I’d like to have seen what Kinski could have done with the role of a megalomaniacal villain, rather than what is, if truth be told, a bland and colorless police officer. The film, notably, also drops the anti-socialist theme of the book, in which Cockstone offered his device and its potential to the Communist party! Hey, there was a Cold War on, y’know… If not what you’d call memorable, it does keep moving at a good pace, and succeeds in its apparent goals, even if those never seem any more ambitious than achieving an adequate degree of competence.

Dir: Franz Josef Gottlieb
Star: Joachim Fuchsberger, Grit Boettcher, Dieter Borsche, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a.  Der schwarze Abt

This was my first encounter with the cinematic works based on the books of Edgar Wallace, a prolific writer from the first third of the 20th century. His crime stories gained a new lease of life in the sixties when the German studio Rialto made a long – more than 30 – and successful series of film adaptations, forming a foundation of the genre known as Krimis, an abbreviation for the term Kriminalfilm. Much like the horror films of Hammer, around the same time in Great Britain,. the studio had a stable of actors, many of whom appeared across multiple entries in the series, playing similar roles. For example Fuchsberger, played in thirteen of Rialto’s Edgar Wallace production, usually as a Scotland Yard detective or other investigator, though here he plays estate manager Dick Alford – albeit a character with investigative tendencies.

Kinski, too, was something of a regular, from 1960’s Der Racher [The Avenger] through 1967’s Die Blaue Hand [Creature with the Blue Hand], typically playing a character of dubious morality. In this case, he plays Thomas Fortuna, butler to landowner Lord Chelford (Borsche), with a particularly unctuous nature. Detective Puddler of Scotland Yard (Charles Regnier) and occasionally-amusing comedic sidekick, Horatio (Eddi Arent, another Rialto regular) are at Chelford’s manor to investigate a murder, after a man is found stabbed to death in the ruins of a nearby abbey. From this spirals off a severely tangled mess of suspects, plots, multiple blackmail attempts, red herrings and further deaths. To be honest, my poor head was spinning with the complexity of it all, and I feel some kind of chart, perhaps involving arrows, should come with the movie, explaining the relationships between the characters. The main thrust seems to be a lost treasure of the Chelford family, in which most of the cast are interested, but you can also add:

• Chelford’s fiancee, Leslie Gine, is actually in love with Alford.
• Her brother, Arthur, is being blackmailed by employee, Fabian Gilder.
• Gilder has an almost stalkerish obsession with Leslie.
• Chelford’s ex-secretary and former girlfriend, Mary Wenner, teams up with Gilder.
• The titular Black Abbot, guardian of the treasure, is roaming the grounds.
• Chelford’s sanity is increasingly loose, and collapses entirely after seeing his dead mother.
• Fortuna is quickly recognized by Puddler as a former resident of Dartmoor Prison.

That enough plot for ya? More than one review mentions a Gothic tone here, and with its combination of family secrets, lost treasure and insanity, it does have the feel of something by Victorian author Wilkie Collins [I’m a fan, so was down with that]. The opening is also particularly striking: while the film is entirely in black-and-white, after the Abbot claims his first victim in a pre-credit sequence, the opening titles explode into quite lurid color, with a voice-over declaring, “Hello. Here speaks Edgar Wallace!” Which is quite a feat, considering the writer died in 1932, while working on an early draft of King Kong. There are also aspects not dissimilar to the Italian giallo genre, which would flourish, in particular under Dario Argento, a decade or so later.

That’s particularly apparent in the later stages, when Chelford goes off the deep end. Borsche actually does a decent job at falling apart, but by this point, Kinski has left proceedings [to avoid spoilerage, no more detailed account of his fate will be provided]. I’ll admit much of my interest went with him, though I could still admire some pretty nifty cinematography. That’s something else this has in common with peak Argento: even if the storyline is, being very kind, on thin ice, it’s always nice to look at. But, I must confess, the prospect of having to watch a whole slew of these, since Rialto kept Klaus gainfully employed for much of the sixties, doesn’t exactly fill me with a great deal of enthusiasm. I am encouraged to discover that this one isn’t necessarily “typical,” and I think I may be include to lean towards some of the earlier entries and see if they’re a little easier to handle in terms of plotting.

In the film’s defense, I was watching an English-dubbed version, and that may not have helped proceedings – it rarely does. However, it didn’t seem like they had done too bad a job, at least compared to some other Kinski works I’ve had to endure, in other than their original languages. The voices generally appear to fit the characters, and more than one person of each sex is doing voices. You can probably guess, the bar for good dubbing has been set painfully low by previous experience. The trailer below gives you a good flavor, along with showcasing the abbot’s pugilistic skill, and given you just a taste of the complexities involved. I’m not sure the full-length feature makes a great deal more sense.