Past Misdeeds: Der Schwarze Abt (1963)

aka The Black Abbot

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


The new owner of the hunting cabin (whose inside looks more like that of a bungalow to me, but what do I know about hunting cabins) on the estate of Lord Chelford (Dieter Borsche) is knifed in the back by a man dressed up as the legendary Black Abbot. Said Abbot is supposed to protect a mythical gold treasure hidden in the ruins of an abbey on Chelford's estate.

Scotland Yard sends Detective Puddler (Charles Regnier) and his comic relief assistant Horatio (Eddi Arent, of course) to deal with the problem by living in Chelford's estate for a time, which seems eminently reasonable once you've gotten to know Chelford's surroundings.

The Lord himself is clearly on the verge of some sort of breakdown, obsessing over finding the legendary treasure and charming his fiancée Leslie Gine (Grit Boettcher) with talk about "owning her". Leslie, you see, is the sister of Chelford's lawyer Arthur (Harry Wüstenhagen), who - as we will learn - is in the habit of selling his sister, a woman so pliable it's difficult to imagine a better argument for radical feminism, off to the highest bidder to help with his betting debts. Early in the movie, the bookmakers Arthur is indebted to will all turn out to be one single person, Arthur's office manager Fabian Gilder (Werner Peters). That villain will then proceed to blackmail the lawyer into selling his precious sister to him instead of Chelford. Gilder also would very much like to get his hands on the gold treasure and has planted a crook going by the delightful and totally believable nom de plum of Thomas Fortuna (Klaus "KINSKI!" Kinski) as a Butler with Chelford. Gilder too cooperates with Chelford's former secretary Mary Wenner (Eva Ingeborg Schulz). Wenner promises to lead Gilder to the treasure if he only somehow manages to stop the engagement between Chelford and Leslie so that she can have the Lord - and especially his title - for herself.

Having a headache already? Then you won't be pleased to hear of the existence of Dick Alford (Joachim Fuchsberger), Chelford's cousin and financial administrator. Dick is doing his best to protect Chelford from any suspicion the police may have against him, but his loyalties are torn between Chelford and the fact that he is also romantically interested in Leslie - and his interest, Leslie actually reciprocates. But Dick has other secrets too, secrets that may not be quite as innocent; or are they?

Clearly, this volatile mix of interests and shady people can only lead to violence, madness, and KINSKI! skulking through abbey ruins.

Der Schwarze Abt is another one of the half dozen krimis (all adaptations of either Edgar - like this one - or Bryan Edgar Wallace) director Franz Josef Gottlieb made in 1963 and 1964, all of which suggest a talent that doesn't show in anything the man directed before or after. If you told me these six films were made by Gottlieb's secret twin, or a mysterious masked director using his name for equally mysterious reasons, I'd believe you at once. It's a more satisfying, and obviously less boring, explanation than "he had a talent for this sort of film he never used before or after".

In the film at hand, Gottlieb's visual imagination doesn't get quite as bizarre as in the later Das Phantom von Soho, but that's mostly because he seems to have made the surprising choice of mirroring the slow increase of the plot's derangement and complexity (or is it mere complicatedness?) in his visuals. So the film starts off slowly, with a lot of scenes of nasty people being nasty to each other that are shot flatly, staged simply, and are lit too brightly for my tastes in black and white films. But the more the plot increases in bizarrery and density, the stranger Gottlieb's approach to the framing and staging of scenes becomes; the brightness is becoming less and less bright, the fog more artificial and the ruins ever more gothic and picturesque. A dialogue scene that would have been filmed in a very standard manner in the film's early parts is now shot from behind the swinging pendulum of a clock, and Richard Angst's camera becomes increasingly mobile. Despite their general visual superiority over other German post-war films (seeing as most German post-war films were absolutely allergic to anything that smelled of visual interest or elegance), this sort of ambitious set-up is uncommon even for the Wallace films, rather pointing towards the giallo, so I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear it were explicitly Gottlieb's films rather than those of his genre colleagues Reinl or Vohrer which influenced that genre visually.


Der Schwarze Abt is very proto-gialloesque in other aspects too, with its concentration on nasty people being nasty to each other, a plot that's even more complicated than usual for the krimi, and its relegating of the titular masked evil-doer to more of a normal murderer than the masked pulp super-villain of many of the other Wallace krimis. Often, the less pulpy Wallace adaptations are the less interesting to me too, but that's only because many of the lesser films of the cycle seem to relegate the villains to the side lines only because they seem ashamed of those villains' lurid pulpiness, exactly the part I find most enjoyable about them. Der Schwarze Abt just knows other places where it can also find that pulp feeling, namely in headache-inducing plot convolutions and some very well done melodramatics, and so decides to provide all the luridness and excitement its audience could ever wish for through them.

Past Misdeeds: Der Frosch mit der Maske (1959)

aka Face of the Frog

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only the most basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

For over a year now, a (rather large) gang under the leadership of the mysterious masked villain only known as the Frog (played by himself, if we can believe the credits), has been terrorizing Britain with a series of robberies and break-ins, blackmail, as well as a bit of murder to make things more interesting, always leaving behind the mark of a frog at the places of their crimes. Why it's so difficult to catch the members of a gang in the habit of branding its own with the sign of the Frog in a pretty visible place I don't know.

On the case is Scotland Yard's Inspector Elk (Siegfried Lowitz, who'd later go on to play another smug and rude cop in the long-running - and pretty damn boring - TV police procedural Der Alte, in popularity only second to Derrick), a man of a smugness and rudeness as great as his success at catching the Frog is small. But even the incompetent must get lucky some time, and Elk's time comes when the Frog takes a carnal interest in a certain Ella Bennet (Eva Anthes). The villain's idea of romance is a bit peculiar: suddenly appearing masked in a lady's room at night and declaring that you'll come again to take her with you another night, whether she wants to come or not is - I think - not what Miss Lonelyhearts recommends. I'm not sure what Miss Lonelyhearts says to blackmailing the lady of your heart by pulling her improbably naive brother (Walter Wilz) into a contrived murder affair, but that's The Frog's Way of Romance™, too. Whatever happened to roses and long walks in the park?

The Frog's rather dubious handling of his romantic situation is good news for Elk, though, for it provides the inspector with ample opportunity to gather clues regarding the plans and identity of his enemy.

Fortunately for everyone involved, Elk's not the only one the case. Cocky millionaire amateur detective (and nephew of Elk's boss) Richard Gordon (Joachim "Blackie" Fuchsberger, some time before his career as a popular TV host, or as we Germans say, "Showmaster") and his competent comic relief butler James (Eddi Arent) are inserting themselves into the investigation. Gordon's pretty damn enthusiastic about his hobby, too, at least once he's met Ella; he's also a bit more competent at the whole romance thing than the Frog.

Now, our heroes will only have to find a traitor inside of Scotland Yard (don't trust the thin 'staches and eyebrows), investigate a dubious night club, survive captivity and wait until so many of the film's human red herrings have been killed off that there's only one guy left who can be the Frog.

Watching the very first of Rialto's Edgar Wallace adaptations (this early in the proceedings still keeping comparatively close to Wallace's novel, I am told), it's becomes clear at once why the cinematic Wallace krimis took Germany by storm. Compared to just about anything else the country's cinema put out at the time, Der Frosch is pure pop cinema: a bit lurid (as lurid as you could possibly be in Germany in 1959, really, which isn't that lurid, but certainly also not coy), a bit silly, delightfully pulpy, taking itself not too seriously, yet not walking into the trap certain later Wallace movies would enter where a film takes itself seriously so little it can be read as self-hatred or as an attempt at self-destruction. It's not the sort of film you'd expect coming from German cinema at all, especially not in 1959 when pop cinema as an idea didn't really exist over here and pop culture itself had entered the slow, sad years between 1959 and 1961 when it looked as if pop itself had only been a fad.

Mainly responsible for the film's energetic (and energizing) effect is Harald Reinl's direction. Though they roughly belonged to the same generation of filmmakers who started out in the biz in the 1930s and were therefore pretty damn old for being "pop", Reinl's style is quite different from that of his Wallace adaptation colleague Alfred Vohrer - until now the only krimi director I've talked about here or over at my home base. Where Vohrer likes his acting melodramatic and his direction zooming in the direction of the surreal, Reinl seems to be going for an updated serial effect, using the much better technical and financial state of his production when compared with a serial to achieve a feeling of dynamism and intensity atypical of the usual ponderous German movie. Reinl uses a lot of separate shots for every scene (pretty much the antithesis of all German filmmaking), loves snappy (ditto) and tight editing and is no friend of scenes going on for too long. The editing is especially effective when it comes to the action scenes. As you probably know, neither the 50s nor Germany are usually praised for their action choreography, but (if you can ignore the minor fact that fists don't actually seem to connect with faces in Wallace land) Reinl and his editor Margot Jahn manage to actually make the action sequences exciting through the cinematic wonders of clever framing and speedy cuts.

Reinl's no slouch in the atmosphere department either. There are some fine examples of moody (studio) night shots to be found whenever appropriate, with some stylish uses of high contrast light and shadow play you can describe as noir-ish without having to stretch things too far.


Ironically, all that visual beauty comes from a director whose filmography shows him as a pure work for hire guy who spent his time directing whatever was thrown at him - Wallace krimis, Heimatfilme, unfunny comedies, Karl May adaptations, some Erich von Däniken "documentaries" or even (later in his career) a would-be Roger Corman Poe adaptation. Directors like Reinl never get a fair shot at being taken seriously outside of our cult movie specialist world, as if the qualities of a director were defined by the commercial situation he works in, and not by what we see on screen. This isn't to say that parts of the director's output aren't pure and simple crap - because man, they sure are – but then we should probably not decide the worth of a life's work by looking at someone's worst films.

Der Teppich des Grauens (1962)

aka The Carpet of Horror

A mysterious mastermind and his gang have returned from a merry time of evil-doing in India (which must still be a British colony in this film’s version of 1962, or at least very much sounds as if its were) to continue their work in London. However, the gang’s professional success is threatened by a pack of documents that details the membership of their little group and discloses the otherwise identity of our mastermind, which is unknown to anyone but Henchman #1. Obviously, not only the side of the Law is interested in these documents, so soon there’s a bit of a thinning out of the ranks of evil necessary. The mastermind – who really could have used some sort of nom de plume like The Monitor or something comparably Marvel silver age in tone – doesn’t just shoot his enemies. Instead, he throws cute little gas balls with a mysterious Indian poison onto the clean carpets of people, not just killing but also producing the film’s ever so slightly exaggerated title by MAKING TINY STAINS ON THE CARPET! The Horror!

While the police are shuffling their feet, amateur sleuth Harry Raffold/Raffles – depending on whether you believe what the end titles say or what the German parts of the cast actually say - (Joachim Fuchsberger) and his black comic relief butler Sam (Lorenzo Robledo) – who is as painful to watch as you imagine – are on the case too. When he’s not punching out bad guys, sneaking around, or following mysterious hints into the luxury bed and breakfast of one Mabel Hughes – whose name our dear early 60s Germans inevitably and rather hilariously pronounce as “Mabel Huge” –, he finds the time to romance the niece (Karin Dor, as boring and kidnap-prone as ever) of a dead gang member.

Because the Edgar Wallace rights were in the velvet grasp of Rialto, other companies, not the least among them Artur Brauner’s Constantin Film who were also distributing the Wallace films for Rialto, were buying up whatever vaguely comparable other writers’ books they could to then ignore for their scripts, to create their own Rialto style krimis. The directors, the actors and various crew members of the Rialto films were up for grabs too (a Fuchsberger’s got to eat, after all), so there’s a more than respectable number of non-Wallace krimis to go around. This one is based on a novel by Louis Weinert-Wilton, directed by rather important early Rialto director Harald Reinl, features Wallace mainstays Fuchsberger and (alas) Dor, but surprises by filling out the rest of the cast with Italian and Spanish actors. This is a German/Italian/Spanish co-production (with Eugenio Martín as one of the co-writers!), after all, and while you certainly don’t see much of a difference in style – this looks and feels like your typical Reinl Wallace – the krimi world really must have needed a horrible black “comic relief” guy from Spain replacing Eddi Arent.

Otherwise, this is a solid example of middle-of-the-road krimi filmmaking, with not quite as much direct insanity as some of the Wallace films offered, too few bowler hats (what is this, the real UK?), and alas way too much of the Fuchsberger/Dor romance stuff that as usual with this combination ranks among the least passionate romance subplots imaginable. I blame Dor, of course, who might have been very pretty but lacked any ability to project emotions, at least at this point and place in time.

However – and fortunately – most of the film consists of Reinl’s typically enthusiastic nearly-serial-style but lacking the intensity action, so many very mysterious side characters (of mystery!), stupid deaths, and a plot that’s much more complicated than it has any right to be are the main concern of the day. Add to this fine, moody photography by Godofredo Pacheco, and you have a fun little 90 minutes of solid and dependable krimi.

Zimmer 13 (1964)

aka Room 13

Evil mastermind Joe Legge (Richard Häussler) returns to his native London with plans for a Great Train Robbery. Because of a mysterious shared past he is able to blackmail pillar of society Sir Marney (Walter Rilla) into providing a hiding place for the loot once the deed will be done. Marney isn’t happy at all with this and hires two-fisted private eye Johnny Gray (Joachim Fuchsberger) to take care of business. At the same time, a black-gloved killer is slitting female throats with a razor that just might belong to Sir Marney.

Gray will need to hit various people in the face, romance Sir Marney’s daughter Denise (Karin Dor), and pal around with comic relief crime scene forensic Dr Higgins (Eddi Arent) to get behind what’s really going on. Gray isn’t helped by the police investigation into the matter being pursued by Sir John (Siegfried Schürenberg) himself, nor the fact that his client quickly decides hiring him was a very bad idea.

If you’re among those people who are understandably a bit sceptical about the influence the German krimi had on the Italian giallo (before the giallo started to influence the krimi right back), watching Zimmer 13 will probably clear up all doubts, for its side plot about the razor killer – including the identity of the killer and the explanation for their madness - is pretty much exactly what you’d get a few years later from the Italians, just not as stylishly and sleazily done here, and unfortunately made by people who really rather seem to prefer the train robbery business. Still, the influence is obvious.

Apart from the influence game, Harald Reinl’s film is one of the lesser known Rialto Wallace films, probably because it’s another one of the cycle’s films that very much is a thing all its own instead of a repetition of the best beloved elements of half of the other films, with no masked pulp mastermind hiding in an bizarre lair (Legge’s really just a clever criminal, and working from a nightclub), no curious murder methods, and not even a proper threatened heiress. The resulting film still goes for a pulp/serial type of enthusiasm (which is much preferable to the few attempts to make a “realistic” Wallace film in the Rialto cycle, because those turned all out rather awful and pretty darn boring), but where the core Wallace films are very much weird crime pulpy goodness, Zimmer 13 is more Gangbusters than the Shadow.

This certainly might be a problem in a film that doesn’t actually deliver on the required amount of fisticuffs, car chases, shoot-outs and train robberies. Fortunately, it’s this slightly more straight stuff Harald Reinl was best at, so Fuchsberger and company find themselves in a film much faster and rather less talky than usual in Germany, with seldom more than two scenes going by before some sort of outward excitement happens. Even better, the action is as good as a German filmmaker of the time could provide, so even as a hardcore fan of mysterious people in masks, I found myself rather too entertained by the stuff on screen to complain about the lack of Blue Archers or Hogs with Masks.

I found myself also rather pleased with the way the proto-giallo subplot went, even somewhat subverting the way basically every other Rialto Wallace film ends. Add to that a bit of the cycle-mandated off-beat weirdness like Eddi Arent’s (whose character is once again even doing something beyond being funny or “funny”) sexual relationship to a manikin, a Peter Thomas score that sounds more peculiar the closer you listen, an adorable strip tease (though one Alfred Vohrer would have done more with) and the expected professionalism in front of and behind the camera, and you’ll find me enjoying myself quite a bit with this one.

Technorati-Markierungen: german movies,reviews,krimi,harald reinl,joachim fuchsberger,karin dor,richard häussler,walter rilla,siegfried schürenberg,eddi arent

Three Films Make A Post: YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT...FOREVER.

The Fighting O’Flynn (1949): I suspect Arthur Pierson’s swashbuckler featuring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as former Irish mercenary protecting Ireland (and the United Kingdom) from a Napoleonic plot, mostly doing so to woo Helena Carter, won’t be on anybody’s list of favourite swashbucklers, or even favourite swashbucklers with Fairbanks. It’s a bit slight even for a genre that doesn’t usually go for too much depth anyway, with nary a moment that actually feels dangerous for our hero and a tone that comes down slightly too much on the comedic side of the genre, undermining the melodrama and romance a little. The film is completely fluffy good fun, though, with Fairbanks giving an enthusiastic cliché Irishman that might even count as a racist stereotype, the plot zipping alone nicely, and boredom a faint memory while watching. So even though there’s little I’d call actually memorable about the film, it’s a very nice way to spend a lazy, too warm winter evening.

Der Fluch der gelben Schlange (1963): I probably should be all over Franz Joseph Gottlieb’s very pulpy Rialto Edgar Wallace krimi because of its pulpiness but it’s rather difficult to appreciate a film this unrelentingly racist. I know, it’s trying to shape itself after the Fu Manchu films and other Yellow Peril stuff but in a film made in 1963, this sort of thing just leaves a very bad aftertaste in the mouth particularly because the film doesn’t just use unexamined racist tropes like a lot of comparable material does, but seems really enthusiastic about its racial politics. That’s not much of a surprise in a German film, really, given the kind of racist wonderland Germany still is even 50 years later, with your typical German bourgeois losing all of the liberality he pretends to be so proud of when confronted with anybody who isn’t white, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be able (or willing) to enjoy it. It doesn’t help that Evil Eurasian™ Pinkas Braun’s yellowface is quite this egregiously bad, making even Christopher Lee’s version of Fu Manchu look authentic, that our heroine is a wet blanket even for a Wallace film, nor that our supposed hero Joachim Fuchsberger is as rude as he is racist. It’s all just so very unpleasant I really didn’t even found myself wanting to overlook the bullshit watching it.

Gallows Hill aka The Damned (2013): Victor García’s “stranded in an old house with a possessive witch” movie (that’s a sub-genre, right?) is perfectly fine entertainment for the 90 minutes or so it goes on. The acting’s fine all around, García knows how to pace this sort of thing, and the film does some neat things with the bilingual nature of some of its characters. Despite these virtues, I can’t say the film really grabbed me. The nature of its central evil is just a bit too played out right now, and the additional twist of a possessor who always hops into the body of the person who killed it doesn’t sit right with me, and feels more like a way to crank up the drama in easy ways than something that fits the monster’s background organically. I was also rather miffed by the film’s very clichéd hymns on family love even when it leads to Very Bad Things, and by the fact that the first act doesn’t do much work to actually prepare later character developments. It must have sounded like a good idea to have a monster that knows everyone’s dirty secrets, but it’s a wasted idea if a film never prepares these secrets but springs them on the audience with a “we needed a shocking plot twist here, so magic” gesture.

This doesn’t make Gallows Hill a bad film as much as one that wastes too many opportunities to be a great one.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,german movies,in short,adventure,romance,krimi,horror,douglas fairbanks jr.,helena carter,franz joseph gottlieb,joachim fuchsberger,pinkas braun,victor garcía,sophia myles

In short: Das Gasthaus an der Themse (1962)

aka The Inn on the River

A smuggling mastermind called The Shark perturbs the London police. His hobbies are harpooning people, diving through the London sewer system, and being quite mysterious.

London’s River Police has put their best man (?) on the case, as well as young, energetic Inspector Wade (Joachim Fuchsberger), who is so good at pretending to be competent while always coming too late to catch his man, even Sir John (Siegfried Schürenberg) kind of likes him. Wade concentrates his investigation on the Mekka, the shady Thames-bordering inn of Nelly Oaks (Elisabeth Flickenschildt). Though he can’t prove anything, Wade feels sure she is in league with the Shark. Plus, Wade has taken quite a shine to Oaks’s underage (but just barely) niece Leila Smith (Brigitte Grothum).

Wade might even be right with his suspicions about the inn, for the place is nearly bursting with the usual Wallace adaptation suspects. Just take shady spice merchant Gregor Gubanow (Klaus Kinski), always sweating, sneaking around, and dressed as if he were somewhere in the Colonies. Or Mr. Broen (Heinz Engelmann), a man supposedly a friend of Leila’s dead mother, but clearly a very particular kind of gold digger. If you know your Wallace adaptations, you might imagine there’s a plot line about some kind of large inheritance too, and most of the suspects won’t survive the course of the movie, and you will be absolutely right.

I have praised the Rialto Wallace adaptations directed by Alfred Vohrer (as well as those of Harald Reinl, of course) quite a bit during the last few years, often as films that come to terms with the problems of genre film in Germany despite on the surface having all of these problems.

Das Gasthaus an der Themse is no exception to this, with Vohrer using very German weaknesses like a very particular type of stiffness in many of the performances to create a slightly weird, never naturalistic world all his own, the only place where the film’s also very German ideas about the ways of the United Kingdom could actually fit into, because they sure as hell don’t have anything to do with reality. Fortunately, I always found reality to be badly overrated, and the world of the better Rialto Wallace adaptations quite delightful (unless you’re the one getting harpooned), so Vohrer’s approach does suit me very well.

At this point in the cycle, its rampant irony, silliness, and weirdness weren’t as overwhelming as they’d become later on (for better and for worse), so it’s not difficult to enjoy Das Gasthaus as a pleasantly skewed bit of pulp entertainment, with a typically fun performance by Fuchsberger, a typically bland female lead, the rest of the case, particularly Flickenschildt and Kinski, strutting their stuff with scenery-devouring enthusiasm, and Eddi Arent popping in from time to time to make lame yet not particularly painful jokes (he has been better as well as worse). All taking place in some always interestingly shot locations and sets that combine conscious fakeness with a sense for the telling detail.

Of course, Vohrer always was Vohrer, so you can also expect many shots of eyes peaking through this or that hole, extravagant blocking, and an ability to make full use of Karl Löb’s fine photography to create moods of whimsy as well as pleasant excitement. For me, Das Gasthaus an der Themse’s aesthetic is a lot like a comfortable shoe, and who’d complain about that?

Technorati-Markierungen: german movies,in short,krimi,alfred vohrer,joachim fuchsberger,brigitte grothum,elisabeth flickenschildt,klaus kinski,eddi arent

Die Weiße Spinne (1963)

aka The White Spider

The gambling addicted husband of Muriel Irvine (Karin Dor) has a car accident that leaves him quite exploded. The only way to identify his body is via his miraculously safe talisman, a white spider made of glass. Despite Muriel and her husband not having had the best of marriages, hubby's death is not the start of happier times for her. The company responsible for her husband's life insurance delays the payment of a much larger sum than Muriel had expected because they suspect something isn't right about the accident, and Scotland Yard starts poking around.

Or rather, Inspector Dawson (Paul Klinger) of Scotland Yard does. The policeman is convinced a murder syndicate has established itself in London, delivering murders that look like accidents, and - perhaps not the best idea when you want to actually have your murders look like accidents - leaving behind white glass spiders as their calling card. Dawson soon is killed by one among the half dozen bad guys who are all played by Dieter Eppler (and if you think that's a spoiler, I really don't know what to say).

Scotland Yard's boss Sir James (Friedrich Schoenfelder) decides to give the case to a secretive Australian master criminalist who hides his face behind blinding spotlights and has methods decidedly related to those of the criminal mastermind behind the white spider business. I'm sure he has nothing at all to do with Ralph Hubbard (Joachim Fuchsberger), an ex-con who - depending on one's tastes - charms or slithers around Muriel in the social worker job provided by another Dieter Eppler she has to take. Muriel's other problems include the possibility that her husband is still alive and Scotland Yard will think her to be his accomplice in insurance fraud, another ex-con with the charming name of "Kiddie" Phelips (Horst Frank), and a criminal mastermind with a thousand faces that all look like Dieter Eppler's who has grown quite fond of her and is much worse at romancing than Hubbard is, though makes up for that by turning out to be very adept at killing people with his favourite wire noose.

Now, all this may sound as if we were in the presence of another Edgar Wallace adaptation, but in truth Die weiße Spinne belongs to the number of German krimis of the 60s in the business of keeping as close to Rialto's Wallace movie style as possible while only shelling out for a novelistic source by Louis Weinert-Wilton. Not that you'd really find much of a difference, especially since this was written by Egon Eis who was also responsible for writing the earliest Rialto Wallace films. Eis, knowing what is expected of him, does not change anything of the krimi's established style. It's the German version of pulp mystery through and through, with all the curious ideas about the UK and stiff-necked melodramatics one expects here. So of course, Die weiße Spinne features the fun convoluted plot full of mildly inventive contraptions and too complicated evil plans one also expects.

Other Wallace veterans are involved too. The film is directed by Harald Reinl, whose films in the genre usually put the emphasis on fast pace and show a particular talent for and love of doing the more pulpy and outlandish elements in his films justice. Reinl can't quite bring all of his usual visual imagination to bear here, though. Neither Ernst H. Albrecht's production design nor Werner M. Lenz's cinematography (both man weren't very deeply involved in the krimi) are quite on the level of their Rialto counterparts, making the lower budget of the second row krimis quite visible in places. Even so, not quite living up to the standards set by the best part of popular German cinema of that era still leaves us with a film that always has something interesting to look at, which is as much as I'd ask of a second row krimi.

Another Rialto Wallace alumni working on the film is Peter Thomas. Thomas is generally the weirder of the two main krimi soundtrack composers, with Martin Böttcher usually providing somewhat straighter yet not weaker scores. In the case of Die Weiße Spinne, though, Thomas goes for an archetypal, horn-driven style that sounds exactly like you imagine a krimi soundtrack to sound. It's not exactly inspired work but it gets the job done.

Finally, you'll also know just about anyone on screen from playing similar roles in the Rialto Wallace films: Fuchsberger is charming and two-fisted, Dor very pretty but cursed with a horrible thing for mistaking woodenly opening her eyes really wide with effective melodramatic acting (honestly, it might be an irrational dislike for the actress speaking here, but she's so wooden, Anthony Steffen playing a wooden Indian would be less like a piece of wood), Eppler the least thousand-faced man with a thousand faces imaginable but always fun to watch, be it in bad brown-face as a Sikh or in bald eye-patched main henchman mode, and Horst Frank his usual entertaining psycho.

That's not enough to make for one of the top spots in krimi history, but it sure as hell makes for an entertaining ninety minutes.

Technorati-Markierungen: german movies,reviews,krimi,harald reinl,joachim fuchsberger,karin dor,horst frank,werner peters,dieter eppler

Three Films Make A Post: The Lashing Slashing Drama of the Hellions and the Town They Violated!

[Rec]3 Génesis (2012): I loved the first two [Rec] movies, but this one does everything wrong it can do wrong for me. Giving up on the first two films' POV gimmick turns the movie into just another zombie movie, with added generic horror comedy humour I really didn't ask for, and not a single good idea I haven't seen before in better movies. Worse, the other big selling point of the two earlier films, their peculiar religious zombie variant, here turns into the sort of babbling nonsense only the maddest of right wing "Christians" gibber before they attempt to burn somebody alive. There's also some nonsense about a freshly married couple "feeling each other" telepathically that is played completely straight and other stupid crap of the same type I find much too tiresome to get into.

Of course, I have endured worse things in films if they also had things to like about them; unfortunately [Rec]3 only has the dubious virtue of being professionally made, and therefore deserves the strength of my annoyance. At least the film - directed by Paco Plaza alone - answers the question which of the two directors of the first two films in the series was responsible for all that was good about them.

Hyenas (2011): Talking about crap, how about this thing about Costas Mandylor's epic fight against CGI were-hyenas, directed by Eric Weston, who, a long time ago, made one entertaining movie. This one often feels as if somebody had artificially grafted random scenes from two completely different scripts only connected by were-hyenas and their utter stupidity together, hired Costas Mandylor and Christa Campbell as the utmost in available star power, and then proceeded to film the actors' first run-throughs through said script(s). I'd love to find anything positive to say about this one, but what can you say about a horror film that is so ashamed of itself it even digitizes nipples away in its brief seconds of female nudity?

Die Seltsame Gräfin aka The Strange Countess (1961): One early and pretty minor entry in Rialto's Edgar Wallace cycle, directed by veteran director Josef von Báky with an assist by Jürgen Roland. It's much less pulpy as well as less pop than most of the other Wallace films and instead spends its time being a somewhat bland, very convoluted mystery movie that could have been made in the 40s (well, not in Germany, of course). At least, there's some fine "I'M MAD! I'M MAD!" acting by saintly Klaus Kinski, an expectedly decent hero turn by Joachim Fuchsberger and the shock of Eddi Arent playing neither a butler nor a photographer. Compared to today's other two movies, though, it's just golden.

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On WTF: Der Schwarze Abt (1963)

aka The Black Abbot

Apart from Alfred Vohrer and Harald Reinl, some other directors did work on Rialto's Edgar Wallace cycle too. One of my favourites among this number is Franz Josef Gottlieb, who directed six krimis in two years and did no direction work worth one's eyes before or since.

Der Schwarze Abt features KINSKI!, a particularly convoluted plot, and lots of shots of people looking through holes. My column on WTF-Film takes a peek at the movie.

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Der Mönch mit der Peitsche (1967)

aka The College Girl Murders (which seems to have been re-cut for those poor, slow Americans)

aka The Prussic Factor

A series of peculiar murders committed with a new-fangled poison gas that is either shot from bibles or contraptions that look - depending on your taste - like ray guns or like hair dryers shakes a girls' boarding school populated by girls who are fastly nearing their thirties in Edgar-Wallace-England.

What neither Scotland Yard's - now psychologically educated for a new running gag - Sir John (the inevitable Siegfried Schürenberg), nor poor, beleaguered gum-chewing Inspector Higgins (Joachim Fuchsberger) know - but may or may not find out - is that the murders are committed by prisoners who are carted in and out of their place of imprisonment as if an open door policy were in place.

Behind it all stands - or rather sits - a shadowy mastermind with an excellent villain lair full of colourful light, alligators, aquariums, snakes and blue cat statues. Apart from the prisoner of the day and an evil chauffeur, said mastermind also has the titular Monk with the Whip working for him, an impressive henchman dressed in a red monk's habit with a red Ku Klux Klan hood, wielding a white, movie-magically neck-breaking whip.

Higgins and Sir John of course have to deal with the usual gallery of suspects in form of various shady, perhaps even sleazy, teachers, a definitely sleazy writer (the always wooden Harry Riebauer), and the main suspect in any cosy piece of crime fiction, a deeply suspicious gardener (Claus Holm). At least, our heroes also have the assistance of girls' school good girl and prospective girl detective Ann Portland (Uschi Glas), who also makes an excellent kidnapping victim; we all know how important that trait is in a Wallace adaptation.

Will Higgins crack the case as long as there are still girls alive in the school?

Now this is the good stuff when it comes to Rialto's cycle of Edgar Wallace adaptations. As its title (which translates to "The Monk with the Whip") promises, Wallace main-stay Alfred Vohrer's Der Mönch mit der Peitsche delights with an eye-poppingly coloured pulp villain with an iconic dress sense working for an evil mastermind with an iconic lair sense (yes, the aquarium/zoo/light show combination is that delightful), doing pulp bad guy stuff that may not make all that much sense as an actual crime plot but is much more fun to watch than something that would make sense.

Vohrer, who sometimes tends to step over the line of winking self-irony a bit too long in these films, here finds the perfect balance between knowingly showing the silly elements (see the plot synopsis as well as a hundred things not mentioned there) of his film as silly half of the time, and just as knowingly accepting the silly as if it were the day-to-day for the rest of the time; it's pretty beautiful, in its own, peculiar way.

Visually, Vohrer has room to indulge in many of his obsessions: there's gothic, incredibly bright fog, colours often nearly as artificial as in a Bava movie (yes, it's that villain lair again), quite a few shots of eyes peeping through various holes (even after having seen the movie, I'm not always sure whose eyes are poking through these holes at all times, since everyone in a Vohrer movie is something of a voyeur - villains, Scotland Yard and would-be girl detectives alike), and camera angles that often point out their own artificiality. It's like a - somewhat provincial, we are still in German pretending to be the UK, after all - pop art dream of a pulp novel made film.

If there is something to criticize about Der Mönch then it is the film's surprising lack in actual action. Joachim Fuchsberger (who was pretty good at this sort of thing, actually) has not much opportunity for fisticuffs or even running around girls' school corridors. He's there to chew gum, crack the case after large parts of the cast are dead, and give the straight man to Schürenberg's - surprisingly funny - "I'm a psychologist now" shtick, but isn't involved in much action. Which is a bit of a strange thing for a film that feels as pulpy in every other respect as Der Mönch does.

However, the film's pacing and style never leave much breathing room to be disappointed in the lack of pulp-appropriate chases and brawls. If done right, and Der Mönch mit der Peitsche does it oh so right, it turns out, it's the mood and not the fist that makes a film part of pulp cinema.

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In short: Der Teppich des Grauens (1962)

aka The Carpet of Horror

The secretive - he's the type who only communicates with his minions via wall-projected text, like an old-fashioned teacher gone mad and invisible - leader of a criminal organization that has moved from India to London mercilessly kills traitors and supposed traitors with a peculiar nerve gas that's damnably difficult to treat.

Among the victims is the uncle of sweet, good-natured, nauseatingly innocent Ann Learner (Karin Dor). Being practically a saint, Ann did not know of her uncle's involvement in EVIL, which does not hinder Scotland Yard in form of the incompetent Inspector Burns (Julio Infiesta) and the mean-spirited, incompetent and frighteningly square-jawed Inspector Webster (Marco Guglielmi), from suspecting her in her uncle's murder. Fortunately, a rather stalkerish, yet clearly romantic lead-featured character named Harry Raffold (of course Joachim Fuchsberger), has taken an interest in Ann and protects her from the Yard and the expected attacks and kidnapping attempts of various evil-doers of various quarrelling factions of the gang her uncle worked for. But is Harry - who unfortunately only comes with his racist caricature servant/assistant Bob (Pierre Besari) - really a good guy, or part of the gang too? (Hint: he's played by Joachim Fuchsberger, not Klaus Kinski.)

Only time and a series of shady characters (among them Krimi mainstay Carl Lange as suspicious Colonel and Eleonora Rossi Drago as suspicious and Fuchsberger-adoring boarding house owner) will tell.

After that synopsis, you just might be surprised to hear that Der Teppich is not based on a novel by Edgar Wallace, but on one written by Louis Weinert-Wilton; though Weinert-Wilton's book was published as part of the same paperback line as the Wallace books. This is one of the numerous attempts of companies not Rialto Film - in this case Rialto's distributor Constantin Film with some Italian help - to also get at some of that sweet Krimi-money, and because Rialto had Wallace's works all tied up, those other companies adapted books of a comparable style to those of Wallace. Or at least turned these books into films very much in the style of the Wallace adaptations.

Because the German film industry never was all that big, some of the usual names of the Wallace krimis appear here too: there's Joachim Fuchsberger giving his usual energetic and often charming leading man performance, Karin Dor being pretty and very decorative when being kidnapped yet also being utterly bland and without any chemistry with her supposed love interest, and Carl Lange looking suspicious. The direction falls to Harald Reinl, one of the two big directors of the Wallace films, and he keeps to his style: much less comic relief and irony than in an Alfred Vohrer movie leaves even more room for moody scenes full of noir-inspired shadow-play that meet not spectacular yet enthusiastic and fun action scenes in a slightly more mannered (it's a German movie, after all) serial style, in a combination I find pretty much irresistible, seeing as it mixes the visual cues of two of the three movie genres black and white film was made for.

The film's script suffers a little from a typical krimi problems in that its more emotional scenes belong to the sort of hollow melodrama that, instead of being an emotional intensifier for the film's pulp action and noir leanings, always ends up feeling limp and unconvincing, reminding me of the horrors of the German Heimatfilm instead of the glories of Douglas Sirk.

Fortunately, there are three scenes of Fuchsberger fake-punching people and shadowy people looking shadowy in shadowy rooms for one of Karin Dor and Fuchsberger suddenly feeling the urge to marry (or worse), so while Der Teppich isn't quite up there with Reinl's best films, it's still pretty darn entertaining.

 

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Die Bande des Schreckens (1960)

aka The Terrible People

Before his execution, master criminal Clay Shelton has a friendly meet-up with the people he holds responsible for his arrest and his death (poor executioner of London). Shelton promises that all of them will be killed by "the Gallow's Hand".

Chief inspector Long (Joachim Fuchsberger), also known as "the Better", bets against it, which is pretty understandable, seeing how he is one of the threatened victims himself. To nobody's surprise, the promised murders begin soon after Shelton's death. What's really peculiar, though, is that people see someone looking a lot like the dead criminal in the vicinity of these murders. Is Shelton taking his vengeance from the grave into his own hands, or does somebody just want Scotland Yard to think he is?

Of course, this being an Edgar Wallace adaptation, this is not the only troubling question Inspector Long will have to answer before the criminal or criminals can be apprehended. He'll also need to escape various assaults on his own life, muddle through the usual pool of suspect victims and even more suspect suspects (among them usual professional suspect actors in the Wallace films like Dieter Eppler and Ulrich Beiger), un-kidnap the woman and - of course - heiress of his dreams (Karin Dor), and find out how his own father, the brilliantly named Lord Godley Long (Fritz Rasp), is involved in the whole affair. Who said it's easy working for Scotland Yard?

Die Bande des Schreckens is one of the more straightforward movies in Rialto Film's Wallace cycle, not in its plot construction - that part is as byzantine and improbable as usual in these movies - but in its presentation as a classical thrill-a-minute pulp movie with relatively little interest in self-irony, camp or madness. The film is not completely without humour. There's still Eddi Arent walking around doing his usual shtick, yet - also as usual - being allowed to do a few things that make him actually useful, too. However, where the humour is all-pervasive in many of the other Wallace films even this early in the cycle, it's really just a minor element Die Bande des Schreckens includes because films are supposed to have comic relief, and Edgar Wallace movies are supposed to have Eddi Arent as comic relief.

On the down side, director Harald Reinl replaces some of the comic relief with additional scenes of stiff melodrama, putting more energy into the "romantic" (as romantic as scenes between two actors with zero chemistry and horrible dialogue can get) parts than strictly necessary or recommendable.

Generally, the Wallace films tend to revel in their own silliness and divorce from reality in a way that straddles the Weird and the absurd, while still trying to keep a straight face. Reinl's movie just doesn't seem to be all that interested in its own silliness and ridiculousness, instead putting the emphasis on, in the beginning, creating a mildly spooky mood through techniques influenced either by the film noir or the films that influenced film noir (take your pick). The scene where Shelton basically curses a bunch of people just before he is going to die is one of Reinl's finest achievements in a directorial career containing quite a few of these. With the help of Dutch angles, uncomfortable close-ups and stark shadows and lights, Reinl sets Shelton's threat up as something closer to destined doom than just your normal death threat. It's as gothic as any scene of classic gothic horror.

Die Bande des Schreckens doesn't keep to the gothic mood for very long, though, only using it as the starting point for a much more conventional pulp thriller with the expected assortment of weird murder methods (shot by phone is a fine one), last minute escapes and heroine kidnappings. In combination with the romance bits that just don't work, I could have become quite disappointed with this state of affairs, but - the more Vohrer-like stiffness of the acting notwithstanding - Reinl is pretty darn great as a director of straight-up pulp thrills packaged in sometimes painterly, more often dynamic black and white pictures. The downplaying of the more outrageous elements of the Wallace cycle in this particular movie just makes all the more clear how good Reinl is at this sort of thing, how energetic a director he is when he wants to be.

 

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In short: Der Hexer (1964)

aka The Mysterious Magician

aka The Wizard

aka The Ringer

A group of human traffickers of the usual societal make-up in an Edgar Wallace adaptation - a lawyer, a fake priest, etc. - using a very Edgar Wallace human trafficking plan with the usual home for criminal young women and a home-made submarine make a capital mistake when they kill the sister of Arthur Milton, the vigilante known as "Der Hexer" (I'd translate that as "The Warlock", clearly not "The Wizard"). Once Milton hears of his sister's death, he and his wife (Margot Trooger) fly in from their exile in Australia, and they're not just coming for the burial.

Inspector Higgins (Joachim Fuchsberger) does his damndest to catch the traffickers and the vigilante, but even with the help of retired Inspector Warren (Siegfried Lowitz, unconvincingly aged by dying his hair white), Higgins is always one step behind the gangsters and two steps behind Milton who goes about avenging his sister with some enthusiasm. Things would be easier for the two Inspectors if they at least knew how Milton looked, but as it stands, he could be anyone, like, for example, the kleptomaniac comic relief butler (Eddi Arent) or the Australian writer James Wesby (Heinz Drache) with his tendency for always being exactly where Higgins or The Warlock are.

Alfred Vohrer's Der Hexer has always been a favourite among German fans of the Rialto Wallace cycle, yet I can't help but disagree with them emphatically. Sure, the film is decently made on a technical level (though it is not difficult for a movie to look better than your average German movie of this era), and concerns itself with some of the plot elements many of the Wallace films obsess about - the home for difficult young women lead by a shady or fake priest, a genius vigilante, mysterious people from equally mysterious Australia. However, the film is also inordinately in love with particularly unfunny comedy that is disrupting the film as soon as some of its pulp action threatens to become actually fun. Apart from the usual antics by Schürenberg and Arent (that are actually funny in some of the other films, but not here), there's also a lot of humour of the unpleasant "aren't women dumb? - but look at their legs!" type. The film wastes way too much time on jokes about Higgins's brain-dead girlfriend stereotype that haven't been funny when they were invented back in the stone age, and sure weren't funny anymore in 1964.

As I already mentioned, Der Hexer isn't too bad visually, but Vohrer never achieves the creative mix of the stiff German melodrama, weird pop stylings, noir influence and home-made Gothic he does best. There are a few scenes of good, dynamically edited pulp action, and the camera sure isn't nailed down, yet that's as far as Der Hexer ever comes. This aspect of the movie is just too routine to make it worth wading through the "humour" for.

 

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Skeletons in the Closet: Im Banne des Unheimlichen (1968)

aka The Zombie Walks

In the first themed month of many, the members and agents of M.O.S.S. point their eyes/eye-stalks/tentacles/augmentations towards all things skeletal and skull-shaped. You can find our ever growing (at least throughout October) list of fleshless knowledge here.

 

The rich philanthropist Sir Oliver Ramsay has been killed in a plane crash, leaving his brother Sir Cecil (Wolfgang Kieling) as his inheritor. Sir Cecil isn't quite convinced that his brother is really dead, though, for the badly burned corpse supposedly belonging to Oliver was missing his scorpion ring. Something definitely is up with Oliver's death: during his burial, a terrible laughter fills the church, seemingly coming from Oliver's coffin.

Following this rather disturbing event, Cecil repeatedly sees a stylish skull-faced form wearing a broad-rimmed hat, skeleton gloves and a scorpion ring. That's enough to convince that his brother has turned into a zombie and is out for revenge for some undisclosed misdeed. Once the skeleton-faced form begins to kill the people - starting with Cecil's lawyer - around Sir Cecil with a rare poison hidden in the scorpion's tail of his scorpion ring, Inspector Higgins (Joachim Fuchsberger) of Scotland Yard gets on the case.

Poor Higgins will not only have to cope with a murderous zombie (if he is one)/skull-masked villain of impeccable style, the charming roving reporter Peggy Ward (Siw Mattson) who knows it's '68, and the "comedic" shenanigans of his boss Sir Arthur (Hubert von Meyerinck). Our hero will also have to sort through a whole bunch of suspects including a shady physician (Siegfried Rauch), a shady mortician (Wolfgang Spier), a shady and very ill green-faced white guy who is supposed to be a creole from the West Indies (Peter Mosbacher), a shady stranger (Pinkas Braun), a shady nurse (Claude Farell), a shady chauffeur (Jimmy Powell), a shady priest (Hans Krull) and his shady wife (Renate Grosser), and a shady expert (Ilse Pagé) on poisons who lives and works in the most preposterous home ever to be filled with prepared animals. Some of these people would be financially quite better off if something happened to Sir Cecil, which - this being an Edgar Wallace adaptation - of course means many of them will end up quite dead while Higgins is still trying to get his act together.

I'm not an expert on statistics, and therefore can't be quite sure, but I suspect Alfred Vohrer's Edgar Wallace krimi Im Banne des Unheimlichen (which translates to "under the spell of the uncanny" - or "under the spell of the uncanny one", rather than the more pedestrian "the zombie walks") might be the Rialto Wallace movie featuring at once the highest number of suspects and the highest number of corpses; as you know, there's only a thin line dividing suspect and corpse in these films.

Im Banne is a Wallace krimi far on the pop side of the tracks, a film whose stiffly conservative side is permanently subverted by Vohrer's playing up of the script's inherent silliness, as the stiffer and more conservative elements in Vohrer's directorial style are drowned out by his obvious enjoyment of finally being able to play around with colour now that the Wallace films had given up on black and white. It's 1968, after all, and even though Vohrer's idea of pop is pretty far from hippie dreams, it is one that has room for moments of utter psychedelic delight like his frequent use (some will say overuse) of red and green light, a very swank nightclub sequence, and lovingly hideous interior decorations that culminate in the nearly Bollywood-ripe place Professor Bound works in that looks as if a bunch of dead animals had invaded a 60s ethno kitsch bachelor pad.

There are also some very peculiar ideas about the West Indies on display throughout the film. The West Indies, you see, are filled with creole people, some of them very white guys with green faces, who spend their time making zombies with the help of Aztec poison when they're not creating shrunken heads or mixing a drink known as "the zombie". Culturally, the film further suggests, the West Indies are at once part of the Caribbean and of Mexico. Some people will probably find enough material in here to be insulted for life, but for that, you'll have to be able to take this stuff seriously - I certainly don't, nor does the film itself.

The camp quotient pretty much goes through the roof, yet Vohrer does also use the more typical accoutrements of the earnest side of the krimi: rather drab churches, cobwebbed crypts, a swank castle, and a creepy hospital are all there, accounted for and created with a loving look for detail as well, providing the film with as much contact with the style of 1948 as with that of 1968. This contrast works well for the film, since it underlines its slightly surreal streak and pushes its mood into the dream-like and artificial, which is the only way I personally can stand a film this camp. In fact, this works out so well for the film (and for me) that I found myself utterly enthralled by the silly nonsense happening on screen while watching it.

My enjoyment was heightened even further when realizing that Vohrer (or script writer Ladislas Fodor) for once in a Wallace film actually includes a semi-competent woman on the side of the good. Sure, Siw Mattson's Peggy Ward isn't above getting kidnapped and threatened repeatedly, but she's also shown to shrug these meaningless little issues off like a good heroine and do something useful again afterwards; she's also pretty aggressively (and sillily) flirting with Higgins, which is as far from the regular passive female leads of the series as is possible. We probably have to thank the pervading popularity of The Avengers and Emma Peel (who is even mentioned in the dialogue) in Germany for this particular change to the accustomed formula of these films; I give my thanks daily.

Also worth mentioning (what with this being part of Skeletons in the Closet and all), is the excellent, excellent Laughing Corpse/Skull-Faced Gentleman. This particular masked evildoer is one of my absolute favourites in the whole Wallace cycle because he manages to be at once campy and somewhat creepy in concept, and is realized with a fine sense for the importance of little details. There aren't many skull masks with a moveable jaw after all, and not many villains wearing a skull mask, a cloak and gloves would sew themselves actual skeleton gloves. (Am I the only one hoping for a costume sewing scene in one these films?). It's that sort of enthusiasm that makes the true villain as much as the ability to speak of oneself in the third person and build death traps.

The very same enthusiasm that created this wonderful villain get-up is running through the whole film, making it one of the most outrageous as well as one of the most entertaining films in the Wallace cycle.

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On WTF: Der Frosch mit der Maske (1959)

Finally, my expeditions into the wild and weird world of German Edgar Wallace adaptations lead me to the point where the Rialto cycle of adaptations began.

It's also the first time I talk about one of the films of Harald Reinl.

"But is it any good?", I hear you ask. Click on through to my column - soon to be renamed to The Edgar Wallace Mystery Hour - on WTF-Film and find my answer.

(This will be my only post for this weekend, by the way. Normal service will resume on Monday).

 

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