Das Geheimnis der schwarzen Witwe/The Secret of the Black Widow (1963)

A number of London business- and newspapermen get killed by poison via an airgun that propels an artificial Black Widow spider. What those men all have in common is that they were all members of an expedition to Mexico that brought them riches but also united them over a dark secret. Reporter Wellby (O.W. Fischer) tries to solve the killings… much to the annoyance of his boss (Werner Peters) who was also a member of that expedition. 

 Das Geheimnis der schwarzen Witwe/The Secret of the Black Widow (1963) is the third of four Louis Weinert-Wilton adaptations that were shot with various different production companies. 

Black Widow is again a Spanish co-production by International Germania Film and based on Weinert-Wilton’s novel Die Königin der Nacht (tr. “The Queen of the Night”, 1930). 

The film follows the plot in broad strokes with one notable difference: The murders aren’t committed by a mysterious killer with an airgun shooting fake black widows carrying real poison - highly cinematic though also very impractical in real life - but by a female killer calling herself the “Queen of the Night” through a similarly puzzling killing method. 

In the book the victims also don’t receive missives that tell them to “Talk or Die!”. Instead they get lyrically whispered alerts that “the Queen of the Night from the Fountain of the Seven Palm Trees will wait to the day until the moon enters into its last quarter” that serve as warnings of impending doom. 

Book and film also differ in that characters often get redefined. 

Karin Dor’s character in Black Widow is… yet another typical Karin Dor character: the beautiful heroine who works in an antique shop for one of the potential victims and falls in love with the hero. 

In the novel Clarisse is a colleague of Wellby, a female wallflower who walks hunched over, does nothing to appeal to any of the male characters and on one side of her face is even disfigured by a large birthmark making her downright ugly from that angle. From the other angle, as the novel describes it, she may, however, appear as beautiful. 

Klaus Kinski’s character Boyd also does what Kinski does best. He stands threateningly in the background smiling maliciously while also on occasion helping Wellby out of a conundrum. 

 In the book Boyd is an elderly gentleman with a passion for fly fishing who even gave up a promising career in pursuit of his hobby. 

O.W. Fischer, the film’s lead, is a breath of fresh air for the Krimi genre. 

Austrian actor Fischer was one of the highest paid German language film stars in the 1950s next to Curd Jürgens. Black Widow would become his only classic Krimi and one of his final films. Even though he still occasionally appeared on German television, he effectively decided to retire at the height of his fame. 

His most famous parts were Bavarian King Ludwig II and the infamous clairvoyant Erik Jan Hanussen, two troubled and eccentric real life characters. 

And troubled and eccentric he is also in Black Widow… albeit in a very entertaining way. 

His Wellby is constantly besozzled, slovenly dressed, prone to grandiose gestures and hiding his intelligent reporter’s instincts behind a facade of befuddlement that would make a Columbo proud. Somewhat a coward and clearly not a fighter, if he lands a punch it is by pure luck. He lives on a house boat and at the start of the film is even seen wearing a Van Dyke beard! 

Eddi Arent plays an archivist who helps Welby uncover some crucial information, absolutely incorruptible … unless he is offered the right amount of money for his services. 

Werner Peters is the director of the newspaper, for all appearances on a power trip but in reality way over his head and in deep trouble. He can neither manage Wellby, nor the other members of the expedition nor indeed his wife (played by Doris Kirchner), who quietly sits amongst the group of powerful men and on occasion contributes a wise throwaway remark that always calms the waters. 

Kirchner in real life was married to director Franz Josef Gottlieb and had previously also appeared in his CCC Wallace Der Fluch der gelben Schlange/The Curse of the Yellow Snake (1963). 

It is all those German actors that mainly make this an enjoyable watch. The Spanish actors in comparison aren’t given that much chance to shine. 

The direction itself is workmanlike but not overly exciting. We do get a few interesting camera angles here or there but for the most part the production just plods along. 

Visually the most stunning part is a nightclub scene in which chanteuse Belina sings a song (music by Martin Böttcher, lyrics by Ute Just and F.J. Gottlieb) that perfectly reflects the film’s mystery. That performance is full of mirrored reflections, shadow work and closeups to hypnotically staring eyes. 

All in all, this is one production that - in line with the other three Louis Weinert-Wilton films - may not reach the heights of the Rialto Edgar Wallace series but is enjoyable enough that it is worthy of a proper rediscovery. 

AVAILABILITY 

Coming at no surprise for anyone reading this blog, Black Widow is easily available in Germany on DVD and Blu-ray though not in an English friendly version. 

The German version of the film with English subs can be viewed on YouTube. 

YouTube also has the English dub of the film, albeit in a horrendously looking upload.

Das Geheimnis der schwarzen Witwe/The Secret of the Black Widow (1963, Lobby Cards)

 I am currently in Germany and picked up some lobby cards for Das Geheimnis der schwarzen Witwe/The Secret of the Black Widow, a Louis Weinert-Wilton adaptation from 1963 by Franz Josef Gottlieb and starring O.W. Fischer, Karin Dor, Klaus Kinski, Werner Peters and Eddi Arent.

There are 24 lobby cards in a full set and I now have 13.

Zimmer 13/Room 13 (1964) - Lobby Cards

     Having in the past already written a few lines about the proto-Giallo Zimmer 13/Room 13 (1964), methinks it's time to post a set of lobby cards for this film.

Der unheimliche Mönch/The Sinister Monk (1965)

Der unheimliche Mönch/The Sinister Monk (1965) was Rialto’s 20th Edgar Wallace production and the last to be filmed in black and white (though with full colour credits). 

It was based on Wallace’s play The Terror (1927) that he two years later also released in the form of a novella. And as if to illustrate Wallace’s seemingly endless ability to recycle his own material the play itself was actually also already a stage adaptation of his 1926 novel The Black Abbot (already filmed by Rialto as Der schwarze Abt in 1963). 

That play became his second most popular one after The Ringer and was also quickly adapted for the cinema. The first adaption The Terror (1928), shot the year before the novella came out, is now mainly known for being both the first horror talkie courtesy of the vitaphone system as well as the first lost film talkie. Contemporary critics were not generous and one described it as being “so bad it is almost suicidal”.

 Its accompanying slightly longer silent film version, now also lost, appears to have received slightly better accolades. 

A sequel, The Return of the Terror, followed in 1934, another new adaptation, The Terror, in 1938. 

 Play and book are set in an old country manor built on a monastery that is now being used as a lodging house. The owner and his daughter mysteriously only appeared on the scene just about a decade prior, just at the time of a robbery where the giant loot has not yet been discovered. 

Some of the villains that had been incarcerated for this appear on the scene just to be killed off by a strange hooded monk that haunts the grounds of the estate. 

Scotland Yard begins investigating. An unlikely romance blossoms. And nobody is what they appear to be.

 Whereas the first direct adaptations of this story more or less mirrored that plot, the Rialto movie differed quite extensively. Rialto at that time had reached the stage in their Edgar Wallace series where their films only borrowed some elements of the source novels and instead replaced large chunks with their own brand of successful Krimi tropes. 

What remained was the country manor (named Darkwood Castle in the film) and the murderous monk on a rampage. 

Darkwood Castle is now a boarding school for girls (well, young women by the look of things). Unbeknownst to most of his greedy family, prior to his death the previous Lord has changed his last will and made his granddaughter Gwendolin (Karin Dor) the sole heiress of his fortune. Gwendolin’s father is currently serving time in prison for murder. 

 Gwendolin’s scheming family plot to prevent her from gaining access to her inheritance when the testament appears to have vanished in the fires of a burning car. 

Girls get kidnapped and go missing and the hooded figure of a mysterious monk eliminates some of the main protagonists one by one by breaking their necks with the help of an Australian stock whip. 

 Directed for the last time in the series by Harald Reinl under the typically over the top, idiosyncratic Peter Thomas score, The Sinister Monk is one of the rare instances in the series where at least some parts of it were filmed directly in London. We clearly see some of the characters in front of well known landmarks and in actual fact during the filming some extras in Bobby outfits were spotted by real Bobbies and told to instantly change out of that costume. 

I think it’s safe to say that I’ll watch and rewatch every single one of the Rialto Wallaces whenever the opportunity arises but this film is one of the more middling examples that does just as much right as it does not. 

It yet again successfully mixes action scenes with bizarre murders committed by a masked villain, traditional crime elements with scenes of Gothic horror. The monk with the whip is genuinely one of the most iconic villains of the entire series and his method for murder truly memorable. 

And yet it also often misses the mark. 

The kidnappings and disappearances of young local women, seemingly the aspect that first connects Scotland Yard with Darkwood Castle, is barely mentioned or referenced at all in the first half of this movie so that the all out focus on it during the finale feels somewhat jarring and disconnected. 

Gwendolin would also prove to be Karin Dor’s final role in a Rialto Wallace production and she gives her trademark Damsel in Distress performance that had rightfully gained her the “Miss Krimi” nickname.

 What is missing, however, is someone like Joachim Fuchsberger as a male counterpart for her. Harald Leipnitz as Inspector Bratt excels in the later action scenes but initially has little to do and worst of all lacks any romantic chemistry with Dor. 

His part is so lacklustre that it’s even up to Siegfried Schürenberg’s Sir John to unearth a vital clue. 

The fact that Eddi Arent’s character is allowed to reveal a surprise aspect of his personality (no spoilers!) is to be recommended, however, for a large part his comic relief persona fades much more into the background than in other Wallace movies. 

It is up to some of the other supporting characters to truly shine. Rudolf Schündler’s creepy/eccentric resident “artist” Alfons Short is arguably the most memorable character in this production. He specialises in creating death masks for clients and keeps a collection of his favourites on a wall in his study. School girls he particularly lusts after also get invited for life masks and he also appears to have a penchant for cheesecake photos and carrier pigeons (who at some stage become so crucial to the plot that Scotland Yard uses helicopters to follow them... a bit of an overkill methinks). 

International audiences know Ilse Steppat mainly as the sadistic Irma Bunt in her final film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). In The Sinister Monk, however, she plays a totally different role as a caring matriarch, Lady Patricia, who protects Gwendolin against the vile male members of her clan: Siegfried Lowitz, previously seen as Inspector Warren in Der Hexer/The Ringer (1964), is now a scheming lawyer who attempts to bag the inheritance for himself and deprive Gwendolin of what is rightfully hers. Dieter Eppler’s Sir William is not afraid to use violence to serve his goals. Hartmut Reck as Gwendolin’s cousin Ronny is particularly odious. It is implied that he is Lady Patricia’s sadistic rapist son who may already have been behind the killing of one girl in the past, leaving his mother torn between love and repulsion for her own offspring. Ronny also openly lusts after his cousin and goes as far as offering his hand in marriage in his attempt to gain access to her inheritance.

 And just who is that mysterious new French tutor with zeeee reedeeculous heavy accent? 

Uschi Glas was one of the boarding school girls together with Uta Levka, Dunja Reiter and Susanne Hsiao. This was her first feature film and the beginning of a long career in German cinema and on TV.

 White slavery and exploitation perpetrated behind the gates of an all-female institution full with secret passageways was a popular trope for the Rialto Wallace Krimis just like seeing a heiress threatened or a greedy family with a strong matriarch. In a way this final black and white production was a potpourri of all that had made the previous Krimis so very popular and as such it is little surprise that The Sinister Monk quickly became one of the most popular and successful entries in the series, so popular in fact that just two years later Rialto remade this film in colour as Der Mönch mit der Peitsche/The College Girl Murders (1967) with Uschi Gras in the lead role. 

MAELSTROM 01 - French fanzine dedicated to the Edgar Wallace Krimis

 I was just browsing through some old files on my laptop and happened to come across a PDF of MAELSTROM 01 - numero spécial Edgar Wallace, a richly illustrated 124-page French language fanzine covering all 32 Rialto Edgar Wallace Krimis.

Other than that it was published more than ten years ago in April 2013 I have no further info about this. It was clearly a one-off and I don't think there were even any other issues of this magazine created. The only thing I found online about this is this French language blog post that had also provided a download link (long since expired). 

To the best of my knowledge this zine had only ever existed as a free PDF for fans of this subgenre.

I have now uploaded this fanzine to archive.org to make this wonderful publication more easily accessible again. Even if you don't speak French, it is well worth exploring and an utter joy.

German Lobby Card Set for DIE SCHLANGENGRUBE UND DAS PENDEL/THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM (1967)

Say Count Regula three times fast and see what that sounds like….. 

Sumptuously filmed with stunning set design this is a gorgeous looking production reuniting director Harald Reinl again with his wife Karin Dor. It is one of only a very few German horror productions from the 1960s.

Pilfered from a number of different classic tropes (Dracula, Edgar Allan Poe, Mario Bava’s Black Sunday to name but a few), this production was aimed at a family audience and as such is more a Fantasy Adventure film rather than an outright horror movie, bearing certain similarities in style with Reinl’s own Karl May movies and the Gothic elements of the Wallace films. 

Christopher Lee and Lex Barker provide the international star power and are aided by a number of excellent German performers, most notably Carl Lange as Count Regula’s creepy trusted servant. Lange can also be seen in Der Frosch mit der Maske/Fellowship of the Frog (1959), Der Hexer/The Ringer (1964) and Die blaue Hand/Creature with the Blue Hand (1967).