Krimi Casebook: Monk with a Whip (Alfred Vohrer, 1967)

There are few things in life I enjoy more than a mid-week Krimi. Settling down with a glass of single malt to savour the delights of ‘Monk with a Whip’, aka ‘The College Girl Murders’, whilst my neighbours presumably content themselves with whatever Netflix or Mouse Plus have to offer, I can’t help but feel I’m “living my best life”, as the kids might put it.

By 1967, it’s safe to say, Rialto Films’ prolific series of German language Edgar Wallace adaptations had already lived their best lives many times over. But, even as the well-worn formula began to look a little ragged around the edges, both the introduction of colour and the gradual retreat of censorship through the second half of the ‘60s helped the ‘krimi’ experience something of a second wind, and happily, ‘Der Mönch mit der Peitsche’ (as it was known to West German audiences) stands out as one of the prime beneficiaries of these developments.

Although the film is allegedly adapted from Wallace’s 1929 novel ‘The Terror’, by this point Rialto’s scriptwriters were no longer even pretending to tell a coherent mystery story. Instead, ‘Monk..’ foregrounds a startling succession of outrageous, mildly titillating pulp / comic book set-pieces, loosely tied together into a distinctly half-hearted whodunit narrative, the resolution of which singularly fails to address the questions raised by the improbable events which have preceded it. Which is fine by me, needless to say - the crazier these movies get, the better, so far as I’m concerned.

As such, the film begins in a mouldering Frankensteinian laboratory located beneath a fog-shrouded gothic church (elaborate beakers and test tubes full of bubbling, fluorescent potions present and correct), wherein an elderly, white-haired scientist has perfected a colourless, odourless poison gas. As he merrily demonstrates, this can achieve the frankly less than earth-shattering result of killing a bunch of mice in a matter of seconds. (Is it just me, or does this feel like pretty uncomfortable subject matter for a post-war German film? Let’s not even go there, shall we.)

Keen to test his invention out on a human subject, the amoral egghead orders his reluctant assistant to enter the new formula in the book in which they apparently record such things. But, as the assistant opens the book’s cover - boom! - the crazy doc has only gone and installed a miniaturised poison gas spray it! Down goes the assistant, cackle-cackle goes the prof.

Cue the reverb-drenched voice of “Edgar Wallace”, the obligatory blood-dripping crimson titles, and the explosion of a main title theme, which, though it is not on this occasion composed by primo Krimi maestro Peter Thomas, nonetheless provides a pretty good imitation of the squawking, lurching tones of his deeply eccentric psyche/jazz/exotica stylings. (Martin Böttcher, who handled pretty much all the key krimis not scored by Thomas, was the man responsible.)

Clearly intent on wringing some immediate profit from his dastardly invention, we next see the scientist above ground amidst the tombstones, where he hands over a poison-loaded prayer book and a suitcase full of other nefarious, gas-related goodies to an unseen criminal, who arrives in a chauffeured Rolls Royce. The doc doesn’t have long to gloat however, as - ka-pow! - he suddenly finds himself garrotted by the lasso-like whip wielded by a hulking ‘monk’ clad in bright red robes and a conical KKK hood! Ye gods.

It would be difficult for any movie to top the EC Comics-via-Mario Bava ghoulishness of this opening, but ‘Monk with a Whip’ keeps the motor running for its next, loosely connected, segment, which concerns a prison inmate who is sprung from the joint, only to find himself transported (blindfolded of course) to the lair of a Dr Mabuse-like super-criminal, who sits with his back to the interviewee, his voice seemingly booming from the walls of a darkened, wood-panelled aquarium, from which giant turtles, manta rays and suchlike cast eerie, green-tinted shadows.

(The antechamber the villain’s lair, lest I forget to mention it elsewhere, comprises a rickety indoor rope bridge over an artificial swamp populated by alligators and pythons!)

Equipped with the deadly prayer book seen in the earlier sequence, the prisoner is promised riches in exchange for assassinating - for no reason which is ever satisfactorily explained - a suspiciously mature looking pupil at a Catholic girls’ school. (“FINALLY,” exclaim the audience who tuned in for ‘The College Girl Murders’.)

It is the demise of this unfortunate young lady which attracts the attentions of Scotland Yard, and in particular, the indefatigable Sir John, played as always by Siegfried Schürenberg. “What will they try next?”, he exclaims, throwing down a report on the killing, before calling in our old friend Joachim Fuchsberger (here playing one Inspektor Higgins), who, as a veteran of both The Black Abbott and ‘The Sinister Monk’ (1965), should surely be well-qualified to get to grips with this particular case.

A cameo player in the earlier films in series, Sir John was usually found choking on his tea in response to Fuchsberger’s mod-ish behaviour, but here he finds himself promoted to a central character - essentially subbing for mercifully absent comic relief overlord Eddi Arent, as he goes out ‘in the field’ to assist Higgins with the investigation.

Sir John’s shtick here concerns his attempts to prove the value of the new, “psychological” detection techniques in which he has apparently received some training - a one joke set up which, sad to say, soon becomes quite tiresome, as he bumbles around making a fuss about the psychoanalytical significance of witnesses’ testimony and so on, all whilst Fuchsberger smiles indulgently in the background.

This does lead to one genuinely amusing moment, when Sir John declares that he will rush home and consult his reference books to ascertain the potent Freudian implications of a dormitory full of school girls experiencing a collective hallucination of a red-clad monk, only for Fuchsberger - who, as noted, has form in this area - to gently reassure him that, “they say they saw a monk because there was a monk”.

That aside though, I confess that the Scotland Yard elements of ‘Monk with a Whip’ didn't quite hit the mark for me. Fuchsberger in particular seems a bit tired here, both as an actor and a character. Lacking much of the ‘silver fox’ charisma he brought to earlier adventures, he is more of a straight up, down-at-heel detective in this one. Despite some token attempts at flirtatious banter with Sir John’s Moneypenny-ish secretary (played on this occasion by Ilse Pagé), the unlikely depiction of Scotland Yard as a kind of louche bachelor’s paradise, as seen in films like 1964’s Der Hexer, seems to have diminished considerably by this point.

Likewise, as per The Hunchback of Soho, this one comes up disappointingly short on the kind of incongruous, not-quite-right English detail we UK-dwellers love to chuckle at in these films. Set largely in anonymous rural locations, there is perhaps a sense here of the Rialto films attempting to increase their international appeal (foreshadowing perhaps the reliance on questionable co-production deals which would just about keep the Krimi brand on life support into the early ‘70s).

Changes were also clearly afoot in terms of casting, with few holdovers here from the ‘krimi gang’ who helped fill Rialto’s black & white era films with such a memorable gallery of rogues and red herrings - but, despite all this, if we can cease comparing ‘Monk with a Whip’ to earlier krimis for a few minutes, there is so much else to love here.

Primarily, the film’s lighting and production design - though evidently executed on a tight budget - is really rather wonderful. Nocturnal scenes (of which there are many) fare particularly well in this respect, as DP Karl Löb (who appears to have handled photography on the vast majority of ‘60s German cult films) intersperses fields of dark shadow and deep, mossy greens with occasional outbursts of searing primary colour - not least the crimson-clad monk himself - whilst the smoke machines are meanwhile working overtime, lending a bit of a ‘Blood & Black Lace’ vibe to proceedings; ‘60s pop cinema in excelsis.

Throughout the film in fact, colours are cranked up to an admirably extreme level of saturation; all of the female characters wear eye-popping, monochromatic dresses and swimsuits, whilst many of the sets find a way to glow with some kind of eerie phosphorescence or another, like a wild, candy-coloured riposte to the cheaper, more naturalistic brown n’ beige mundanity which begins to predominate during the less imaginatively shot interior dialogue sequences.

Director Alfred Vohrer may not manage to include quite so many of the baroque props or forced perspective / model-based trick shots which became his trademark (“Vohrer-isms” as I recently heard them described in the Projection Booth podcast’s Krimi episode), but he nonetheless does everything in his power to keep the film visually exciting.

In particular, Vohrer gets much mileage out of the scenes set in and around around the school’s swimming pool, which, inexplicably, includes a kind of ‘viewing window’ in the service area beneath the pool, allowing for a number of unusual/distorted shot compositions. (How exactly this airy, modern building fits in with the ancient gothic exteriors we see representing the school’s estate is anyone’s guess, but no matter.)

It is here that the film’s perpetually sweaty pervert science teacher character (played by Konrad Georg) likes to crouch, watching the bathing beauties swim by - but, the teacher’s voyeurism goes both ways, as, in one of the films best moments, the young heroine Ann (Uschi Glas) dives into the pool, and, gazing out through the submerged viewing window, spies the hanging corpse of the sweaty teacher, ironically deposited in his favourite peeping spot by the monk.

As such incidents suggest, there is still a strong undercurrent of macabre sordidness running through ‘Monk with a Whip, however light-hearted and campy things may become at times. As well as sweaty Konrad, characters like the shifty-eyed headmistress (Tilly Lauenstein) and menacing chauffeur (Günter Meisner) bring some fresh blood (so to speak) to the movie’s unwholesome ID parade of suspects, whilst the idea of the school’s pupils leaving the safety of their dormitories to ‘party’ in the red-lit lodge occupied by a shady writer and sundry leery teachers is also fleetingly explored.

Momentarily reminding me of 1962’s somewhat krimi-influenced Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory, this notion of lonely girls leaving the safety of their collective lodgings to drift into the dark woods, in search of illicit thrills, remains a potent addition to the mystery, and, though it is never fully developed here, we do at least get a nice piece of ‘Twin Peaks’-ish noir jazz to set the mood.

Then of course, there’s the whip-wielding monk itself - such a wonderfully absurd, surrealistic creation! Seemingly pulled straight off the cover of some especially depraved fumetti, it’s enough to make you forget that this was somehow at least the third film Rialto managed to make about malevolent masked clerics knocking people off in the dead of night before being subjected to an inevitable, ‘Scooby-Doo’-esque unmasking.

(If the plot is not complicated by at least one instance of an innocent character dressing up as the monk, or an unconscious hero being left lying around in monk robes, or multiple monks, or something, I believe you’re allowed to ask for your money back.)

As to that whole business with the odourless/colourless poison gas meanwhile, well, given that by the second half of the film the villains have been reduced to loading it into guns and squirting it into their victims’ faces, leaving a thick layer of fake cobwebs, I’m not really sure what advantage it holds over just, say, shooting people, especially given that the same criminal cartel employs a crimson-clad maniac with a lasso, but…. there I go with that pesky ‘logic’ again. It all adds to the fun, and boosts the body count - which at the end of the day is very much the point here.

I mean, let’s face it, but the time we account for Not-Dr Mabuse in his study / aquarium, with his snakes and crocodiles, and eerie florescent lighting, we’re pretty far gone into the realm of euro-cult delirium and - in my case at least - enjoying it all immensely.

As noted, the eventual ‘resolution’ to this mystery proves a complete damp squib, doing very little to rationalise any of the preceding carnage and leaving us essentially non-plussed as to why any of this madness really needed to happen, but at the end of the day - so what.

So long as that bloody monk gets his comeuppance and Higgins and Sir John can head back to the Yard in one piece for a pot of tea and some banter with the girls in the typing pool, all will be right with the world. As the nation’s foremost experts in the field of crimes involving girls’ schools, poison gas, secret passages, crocodiles and/or evil monks (we get a lot of that sort of thing in the home counties, don't you know), I’d like to think they have a long and rewarding career ahead of them - in my dreams, if nowhere else.

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Krimi Casebook: The Hunchback of Soho (Alfred Vohrer, 1966)

There’s nothing quite like movies which present a mythic/fantastical/completely absurd take on places quite near to where you live, is there? (“Have you seen ‘The Hunchback of Soho’?”, “Seen ‘im? I think I bought him a pint down The White Horse last week!”, etc.)

In fact, this is probably the element which most appeals to me above all about the West German Edgar Wallace ‘Krimi’ films spearheaded by Copenhagen-based Rialto Film - their bizarre conception of a phantasmagorical England that feels like an amalgam of the 1960s and 1890s, defined by strangulations in fog-choked, cobblestoned alleyways, sinister rendezvous in neon-lit, subterranean speakeasies and elaborate tea parties in gothic manor houses, all of which are liable to be interrupted at any moment by dapper, pipe-smoking detectives as they break down the plywood doors (probably using an oversized umbrella), enunciating that cry guaranteed to send shivers down the spine of all rapscallions and ne’erdo wells, “SCOTLAND YARD!”.

Despite its magnificent title however, there is sadly little Soho ambience (either real or imagined) to be found within Alfred Vohrer’s ‘Der Bucklige von Soho’, even as it opens in attention-grabbing fashion with the titular hunchback committing exactly the kind of back alley strangling described above, callously throttling a young lady in black lingerie and high heels as she flees from what appears to be another one of those sinister nightclub-brothels which seem to proliferate in Krimi London.

In fact, the vast majority of this caper takes place on a series of interior sets, variously representing the opulent drawing room of the elderly General & Lady Peabody, the authoritarian religious school for wayward girls which they sponsor, the secret subterranean workhouse / villain lair within which the criminally-minded proprietors of said school conduct their dastardly business, and the casino-cum-nightclub wherein the imprisoned girls are put to work as dancers / hostesses.

All of these locations seem to be inter-connected in a way that I never fully understood, allowing characters to move between them as if they were merely popping between rooms, and thus largely doing away with the need for exteriors, beyond the aforementioned alleyway set and a few stock shots of police cars zooming around Westminster and Piccadilly. Efficient though this must have been from a production perspective however, it lends the film a rather claustrophobic, repetitious feel which doesn’t necessarily serve it well.

Achieving a delicate balance between illogic and boredom, the plot here is likewise a bit sub-par, rehashing elements of Vohrer’s earlier, arguably definitive, krimi The Dead Eyes of London (1961, itself a loose remake of the similarly-named 1939 Bela Lugosi movie), with a distinct sense of diminishing returns. The familiar material is given a bit of a Women in Prison makeover this time around, making it feel reminiscent at times of Pete Walker’s later ‘House of Whipcord’ (1974) – albeit,  a somewhat softer, more innocent variation on the scenario in which the doddering elderly couple remain blissfully unaware of the kinky depredations being perpetrated below stairs, or in the dungeon, or round the corner, or wherever the heck the ‘school’ is supposed to be in relation to their house.

Though the perennial theme of girls being kept imprisoned against their will is explored in abundantly suggestive fashion here, the film’s mid-‘60s production date ensures that the floodgates to full-on sleaze remain closed, with the obligatory lechery and low-key sadism presented in a prim, buttoned down fashion that, ironically, makes it all feel far more icky and perverse than would have been the case if they’d just thrown in a bit of good ol’ no nonsense nudity and brawling to relieve the tension.

So, no shower scenes, cat-fights or lesbian frolics here, but we instead get to enjoy such curious sights as the imprisoned girls being forced to sing jaunty hymns against their will, and – in probably the film’s weirdest tableau – a newly captured heiress in elegant evening wear being thrown on the filthy floor of the ‘workhouse’ set and doused with a hosepipe by the leering hunchback, whilst the other girls toil on around her, paying no mind.

Earlier in the ‘60s, Vohrer had established himself as by far the most inventive and accomplished director on Rialto’s payroll, but unfortunately his work proves disappointingly pedestrian here, suggesting that he was either working under greater time and budgetary pressures than usual, or was simply dog tired of making these damned things.

As such, uninterrupted master shots tend to predominate, and the bizarre stylistic experiments which proved so memorable in Vohrer’s earlier films are notable by their absence. No shots taken from the POV of a newspaper, or from the interior of someone’s mouth, here, sadly. About the best we get are a few strangling and/or gun-wielding hands looming into frame from the bottom left, comic book style. A nice touch, but pretty trad, dad, by the wacky standards set by Vohrer’s earlier work.

Meanwhile, ‘Hunchback..’ suffers further from the absence of the majority of the group of actors I’ve come to think of as the “Krimi gang”. Although Siegfried Schürenberg returns as the perpetually flustered ‘Sir John’ (a role he played in over a dozen Wallace adaptations), big hotters like Dieter Eppler, Werner Peters, Karin Dor and Klaus Kinski were all AWOL for this one - as, regrettably, was our usual dashing silver fox, Joachim Fuchsberger.

In his absence, Günther Stoll (who for some reason would later go on to corner the market in Italian-German giallo/krimi crossovers, appearing in Dallamano’s ‘What Have They Done to Solange?’ (1972), Duccio Tessari’s ‘The Bloodstained Butterfly’ (1971) and Freda’s ‘Double Face’ (1969)) steps into the obligatory suave, pipe-smoking detective role, but, despite a peculiar bit of comedic business about him doing his laundry, Stoll lacks that patented Fuchsberger charm; as a result, he is assigned relatively little screen-time and ultimately proves a bit of a non-entity.

One familiar presence we cannot escape here though is, naturally, that of ubiquitous funnyman Eddi Arent, although mericfully, his role actually takes quite an interesting turn during the film’s second half, as he ditches his usual ‘finickety, simpering choirmaster’ shtick, donning mirror shades as he reveals that that persona was actually nothing more than cover for his true identity as a dastardly criminal mastermind overseeing the whole ‘white slavery’ operation – a role which he throws himself into with hard-edged gusto .

There is, however, no shortage of gratuitous comic relief to be found elsewhere, between a bungling, short-sighted solicitor, the delusional General Peabody perpetually re-living WWII tank battles, and the aforementioned Sir John. Together, these over-enunciating oddballs conspire to make sections of ‘The Hunchback of Soho’ pretty tough sledding, especially as the English fan-subs on the version of the film I watched did little to preserve the no doubt uproarious phrasing and comic timing of their high-pitched German exclamations.

I swear, during one drawing room tea party scene which united all of these characters, plus Arent in his comic persona, I thought I’d died and become trapped in some kind of particularly fiendish purgatory. It was only the sight of the generous platter of shortbread and bourbon biscuits they were enjoying alongside their Earl Grey which kept me going, together with pondering the political ramifications of a West German film which presents a retired British general as a bumbling, senile buffoon with a tendency to end sentences with things like, “..and that’s why we won the war!”.

On the plus side, ‘Hunchback..’ has the distinction of being the first Krimi made in colour, and I must say, they did a very good job of it too, capturing that very specific, mid-‘60s grungy/atmospheric pseudo-Technicolor look in which deep pools of black contrast with vast swatches of brown and dark green and intermittent blasts of bright red, lending the film a visual depth which, if it’s not quite up to the standard of Hammer’s pre-’66 gothic horrors, at least compares favourably to some of their more handsome imitators.

By far the best thing here though is Peter Thomas’s characteristically hellzapoppin’ score, which arguably proves more exciting than anything which actually transpires on screen, beginning with a title theme that takes the “hoo, hah” backing vocals from Sam Cooke’s ‘Chain Gang’ down for a beating in some subterranean, reverb-drenched hell, before proceeding to take us on a chamber-of-musical-horrors tour incorporating bulbous, Residents-esque discordo-jazz, spidery, Ventures-at-Halloween surf guitar and assorted screams and wails of the damned, all set to a persistent pulse of thunderous caveman drumming.

I know that Thomas has something of a cult rep amongst the more shadowy corners of the soundtrack/library collectors world, but seriously, has anyone ever reissued the music he recorded for these Krimis..? If not, they really should. It’s completely out to lunch, some of the wildest, most errant aural craziness I’ve ever heard crow-barred into a motion picture (this side of the Indian sub-continent, at least), and I’m sure it would go down a storm with whatever remains of the garage punk/exotica contingent.

That aside though, I’m afraid ‘The Hunchback of Soho’ is, on every level, a disappointment. In addition to featuring very little Soho, it even has the audacity to give us a FAKE hunchback, if you can believe that. Richard Haller, who portrays Harry the hunchback here, proves a pale imitation of Ady Berber’s unforgettable turn in ‘The Dead Eyes of London’, and yes, in the final reel, Stoller pulls aside his jacket to reveal a false hump! Hopeless. (Though it must be said, the mystery of quite why this guy found it necessary to go around pretending to be a drooling hunchback 24/7 proves far more perplexing than anything in the film’s ostensible plotline.)

In spite of the novelty of colour and a somewhat higher sleaze quotent than was permitted for entries earlier in the decade then, we must sadly chalk this one up as weak tea for Krimi enthusiasts, and a total write-off for any viewers hoping to make a sideways move into the genre from straight horror. It’s a perfectly reasonable time-killer, and nice to look at, but really - only completists, WIP historians, Peter Thomas archivists or the terminally bored need knock upon this door.

Krimi Casebook: Der Hexer (Alfred Vohrer, 1964)

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a chance to settle down with a ‘Krimi’, but earlier this month I was suddenly struck with an urge to check in on Rialto Films long-running series of ‘60s West German Edgar Wallace adaptations, and 1964’s ‘Der Hexer’ (offered up to English-speaking audiences at some point under the far less enticing title of ‘The Mysterious Magician’) fit the bill nicely.

As might well be expected from a Wallace film, our Hexer / magician here is not an actual magician (of either genuine or stage variety) but instead a wily, Fantomas-type super-criminal. In keeping with this, ‘Der Hexer’ leans strongly toward the part of the ‘60s pop cinema venn diagram that sees the aesthetic of the krimi cross over with the more whimsical end of the era’s Eurospy / ‘moving comic book’ sub-genres, as exemplified by the ‘OSS 117’ and ‘Fantomas’ movies being overseen by André Hunebelle in France at around this time. Nonetheless though, director Alfred Vohrer still manages to cram in a few gothic flourishes along the way.

This melange of styles can be clearly seen in the film’s super-pulpy shock opening, which sees a solicitor’s foxy secretary shrieking as she is overpowered by a pointy-shoed assailant, before we cut directly to a view of her lifeless body, apparently enclosed within what looks to be a groovy little two-man submarine! This sub, it transpires, is being pushed beneath the water of what seems to be some kind of vaulted, subterranean drainage chamber, by an imposing, barge-pole wielding man who bears a passing resemblance to a young Boris Karloff.

Cue the credits, which in true krimi style crash suddenly into full colour (lurid, blood-dripping red lettering against a swirling, blue-and-green-tinted proto-psychedelic backdrop), accompanied by a frankly demented, reverb-drenched spookshow garage-rock theme tune from the reliably weird Peter Thomas. (Seriously, it’s got whips, chains, gun shots, orgasmic moans and cries of terror thrown into the mix – absolutely bonkers!)

I don’t know about you, but three minutes in and I’m confident that this movie is going be pretty great.

Once the movie-proper beings, a prototype swinging London / mod type vibe seems to be in play as we follow a beautifully turned out, mod-ish young blonde lady (Elise, played by Sophie Hardy) as she trades barbs with a revealingly attired, curvy young secretary (Finnish starlet Anneli Sauli, returning from Vohrer’s The Dead Eyes of London) in what, rather unexpectedly, turns out to be the office of a senior police officer.

Who could it be of course but that rakish silver fox himself, Joachim Fuchsberger, appearing here in the role of the dapper Inspector Higgins, a man clearly intent on shakin’ the dust off those other squares in Scotland Yard!

Chief target in the dust-shakin’ department is Higgins’ blustering superior Sir John (recurring krimi authority figure Siegfried Schürenberg), and through the antagonistic banter between the two, we soon learn that the girl whose body has been found washed up on the bank of the Thames was one Gwenda Milton of 17 Barkley St, London, and that her brother, currently based in Australia, is none other than Henry Milton, better known as that most notorious of villains… Der Hexer!

Time for a quick cut, and we find mention of that name putting the very fear of god into Jochen Brockmann, that seedy fat guy who appears in all krimis, working his usual magic here as Herr Messer, the unsavoury solicitor for whom the dead girl worked as secretary.

Messer, it turns out, is actually running a white slavery ring in cahoots with that Karloff-looking guy (Carl Lange) and a couple of other, similarly salty characters. (Hilariously, Messer keeps the door control for the secret passage in his office inside a bear skin hanging on his wall –the bear’s eyes flash when someone in the secret passage wants to be let in.)

In a direct call-back to the aforementioned ‘Dead Eyes of London’, this crew are orchestrating their devious operation using a rather scary, Victorian girls finishing school as a front. There’s even a Suspiria-esque monster-matron, and Lange is the headmaster. Having realised that they’ve just gone and accidentally killed Der Hexer’s sister for getting too close to their dark secrets though, the gang are one petrified bunch of nogoodniks, as they await his inevitable retribution.

So far, this film is clearly turning out to be far too much fun, and so, with a perfectly timed “guten tag gentlemen”, enter Eddi Arent, all-purpose dispenser of krimi comic relief, this time around playing a kleptomaniac-turned-butler named Archibald Finch.

Fear not though - as irritating as Arent’s initial “oh dear, poor old me, I can’t help but swipe things as soon as people turn their back” routine may be, ‘Der Hexer’ benefits from a relatively thin spread of his comic stylings. For some reason, his character entirely disappears for long stretch in the film’s central half hour, and when he does reappear, he is on his best behaviour, having become a lot more interesting following the revelation that his character has actually been planted in Messer’s hideout as a spy for Der Hexer.

Meanwhile, the film’s count of attractive, self-confident women with mod haircuts is further increased when Der Hexer’s wife (Margot Trooger) arrives in town for her sister-in-law’s funeral (taking place in “London’s central cemetery”, wherever that is). Certain that her husband must be lurking nearby, Fuchsberger is soon in hot pursuit, accompanied by his new partner in the investigation, Inspektor Warren (Siegfried Lowitz), a mercurial retired detective who has returned to Scotland Yard to take advantage of the opportunity to finally apprehend his arch-nemesis.

Whilst hassling Mrs Derr Hexer in a hotel lobby however, Inspektor Higgins also makes the acquaintance of a curious chap named James Wesby (Heinz Drache), an affable Australian crime writer who is also on the trail of Der Hexer, meaning that he often makes a habit of turning up in close proximity to the villain’s nefarious acts. Hmmm, I wonder….

Whilst this rather hum-drum “who’s the baddie?” plotline works itself through however, the film is at pains to ensure we remain sufficiently entertained, throwing in some delightful bits of comic book hijinks on a fairly regular basis.

After an evening spent horsing around in Elise’s flat for instance, Inspektors Higgins and Wilson set off on a frantic rooftop chase, in pursuit of some sinister, black-clad intruder. As smoke billows from dozens of huge, stone chimneys, I almost expected Dick Van Dyke to pop in for a cameo, but more than anything else the imagery harks back to those founding texts of the Euro-pulp aesthetic, Louis Feuillade’s silent-era ‘Fantomas’ and ‘Les Vampires’ serials – a comparison which also springs to mind when we visit the hideout of Messer’s smuggling operation, located beneath a trap door in the dusty, wine-barrel filled storeroom of an old manor house.

Meanwhile, it almost goes without saying by this point that the mysterious black-gloved killer who spends much of this movie creeping around the place throttling people feels like a direct precursor to the conventions of the giallo which would soon take root in Italy’s popular cinema.

(Lest we forget, Mario Bava’s epochal ‘Blood & Black Lace’ came out in the same year as ‘Der Hexer’, and was produced under the assumption that it would be presented to West German audiences as a Wallace film. The murder sequences here certainly bear a passing similarity to the kind of lurid set-pieces Bava would oversee in full colour in his film… although sadly he nixed the submarine.)

In another sign of things to come, ‘Der Hexer’ also dares to get just a little bit more kinky than we might have expected, given it’s year of production. This is largely due to the presence of Sophie Hardy, who appears here in full-on, raging sex kitten mode, even indulging in a salacious shower scene has her revealing some luscious bare back before asking Fuchsberger to dry her off. Lengthy scenes in which the pair fool around (fully clothed) on her bed, drinks in hand, meanwhile are suggestive of a dissolute lifestyle unbecoming of yr average early ‘60s movie hero… especially in view of an earlier, rather edgy, visual gag that revolves around Fuchsberger using the darkroom in his office to develop dirty pictures of his secretary.

Elsewhere, ‘SNAKE KILLS MAN’ reads the billboard behind a super-imposed Trafalgar Square newspaper vendor, foreshadowing another great bit of business which sees a nefarious villain hiding poisonous snakes in the pockets of our heroes’ overcoats whilst they dine at a restaurant.

Other highlights meanwhile include a moody and violent scene in which the policeman guarding the submarine tank after it has been secured by the cops is dragged into the water and knifed by a sinister frogman (shades of both 1965’s krimi-ish gothic horror The Embalmer and actual frogman-related krimi ‘The Inn On The River’ (1962))… and then, there’s the genuinely rather astonishing shot in which we see a grand country house being dynamited (it doesn’t look like a model shot).

A restlessly imaginative director with a distinctly whimsical sense of style, Alfred Vohrer certainly does his utmost to keep things lively here. At certian points, I suspect Vohrer is deliberately having fun with the kind of artificial studio backdrops necessitated by low budget productions; the view from Fuchsberger’s office window for example, rather than stock photo of London, displays some boldly sketched, cartoon-like rooftops, whilst some of the doors and windows in Messer’s office set are clearly painted directly onto the walls. A nice use of budgetary limitations to create an amusing, somewhat post-modern effect, this can also perhaps be observed in shots which see exterior ‘brick’ walls clearly chalked onto flat black set dividers.

Vohrer also employs some amusing business with moving figures being followed through holes in newspapers (in shots taken from the POV of snoopers observing them), and with extreme close ups of said holes being burned in the papers by cigarettes. (If nothing else, this stylistic quirk at least proves that the production went to the trouble of acquiring genuine British newspapers – ‘RESCUE BY SHRIMP BOAT’ is the unlikely headline in the Daily Mail.)

At one point, the director even attempts to top his audacious “POV from interior of mouth as man cleans his teeth” shot from ‘The Dead Eyes of London’, with a shot purportedly taken from inside a rotary telephone as a character dials a number.

(Although the sheer eccentricity of these “impossible POV” experiments remains unique to my knowledge within European pop cinema, you could, at a stretch, perhaps draw a line to Dario Argento’s later fondness for employing “impossible” camera placements – of an admittedly far less ridiculous variety - within his work.)

In spite of all this fun and games however, ‘Der Hexer’ finally flags somewhat in its final act. The story’s Big Plot Twist can be seen coming a mile off, and the decision to go with one of those dreary ‘whodunnit’-style finales in which the cast stand around en masse explaining the finer details of the plot to each other in lieu of any action, is regrettable.

Although it eventually comes up short on the kind of sadistic, baroque and surreal elements which have increasingly endeared krimis to horror fans in recent years though, ‘Der Hexer’ is still a ton of pulpy 60s fun – a richly atmospheric romp which mixes swinging spy movie tropes with exquisitely moody black & white photography, some startling moments of violence and weirdness, a top-line cast of krimi regulars (Klaus Kinski’s absence notwithstanding) and characteristically idiosyncratic and stylish direction from Vohrer.

It’s probably not the film I’d select as an initial introduction to the krimi oeuvre, but if you’ve already “got the bug” with regard these movies and find yourself in the mood for a kooky caper in the vein of Franco’s Attack of the Robots or one of those ‘60s Dr Mabuse movies, ‘Der Hexer’ should do the job nicely.

Krimi Casebook: Die Toten Augen von London / ‘The Dead Eyes of London’ (Alfred Vohrer, 1961)

Amid the greasy cobbled streets of a “London” apparently stuck in some strange amalgam of the 1890s, 1920s and 1960s, a visiting Australian wool merchant loses his way in the obligitory peasouper smog. Accosted and beaten by parties unknown, we see him bundled into the back of a sinister white laundry van. “Accidents like this happen every time we have this fog”, remarks the coroner after the corpse is fished out of the Thames the next morning, having to all appearances died a natural death by drowning.

Dashing Inspector Larry Holt of Scotland Yard (Joachim Fuchsberger) is unconvinced by the coroner’s verdict however. “It looks like the blind killers of London are at work again!”, he announces after a torn piece of braille text found in the victim’s pocket is revealed to contain fragments of a threatening message, and the game is afoot in another rousing installment of Rialto Films’ Edgar Wallace ‘Krimi’ series.

Whilst ‘Die Toten Augen von London’ (released in West Germany in March 1961) may not be quite as action-packed as Harald Reinl’s Der Frosch mit der Maske, this first Wallace film by the series’ other key director Alfred Vohrer is nonetheless as an equally impressive achievement. Whilst Reinl’s film cruised by on a sense of pure, pulpy momentum, Reinl’s directorial style is slower and more static, but his trump card here is atmosphere, and, as its title rather demands, ‘The Dead Eyes of London’ (also known as ‘The Dark Eyes of London’) has it in spades.

Apparently owing less to Wallace’s 1924 source novel than to an earlier British movie adaptation from 1939 (with which I’m entirely unfamiliar), ‘Dead Eyes..’ seems, like many Krimis, to fall into that peculiar category of movies that seem to embrace all of the aesthetic trappings of horror film, whilst not actually being horror films.(1)

Certainly, great effort has been taken here to create a feeling of claustrophobic, Jack-the-Ripper-haunted London as rich and indigestible as that of any film ever made in a similar vein. Dark, overhanging streets, canes tapping on cobbled pavements, squalid slums that seem to hide every conceivable variation on grinding poverty and moral degradation, sinister, elongated shadows stretching across each soot-blackened brick wall as misshapen proletarians cringe in fear - you name it, this movie’s got it (well, minus the top hats and horse-drawn coaches at least), all swathed in enough dry ice to put your average Italian gothic moldering in the shade.

Apparently, this particular ‘London’ houses a notorious brethren of blind criminals, who emerge to commit their misdeeds upon foggy nights when, quoth Inspector Larry, “they can more easily take advantage of their victims”. The coldly oppressive atmosphere of the poverty-stricken religious mission from which at least some of these ne’erdowells operate could have come straight from one of Pete Walker’s unsettling ‘70s horrors, and it is within a vast Victorian drainage duct beneath this institution that we find the lair of the film’s chief representative of this loose ensemble of visually-impaired villainy – a hulking, white-eyed ogre named ‘Blind Jack’, as portrayed by an actor (Ady Berber) whom I can only assume was Germany’s equivalent of Tor Johnson or Milton Reid. (Oh, for the days when each national film industry had a gigantic, lumbering brute on call 24/7.)

Although ‘Blind Jack’ provides the closest thing this quasi-horror film has to a monster, handling stalking, stomping, strangling and gurning duties with admirable aplomb, the cynical nature of Krimi plotting of course demands that he and his sightless cohorts are merely pawns in a game beyond their control, as the net of guilt eventually spreads itself far more widely across the film’s more outwardly respectable characters.

It is this side of the story that allows Vohrer to deepen the film’s sense of seedy urban degradation even further, drawing on a well of comic book noir imagery that mix strangely with the quasi-Victoriana of the ‘London’ setting. This feeling hangs particularly heavily over the scenes that take place within the supremely down-market casino / nightclub where many of our gentlemen of ill-repute congregate – a joint where it perpetually seems to be closing time, and the occupants perpetually exhausted; you can almost smell the stale beer and cigar smoke hanging in the air.

It is here, predictably enough, that we’re introduced to the film’s obligatory ‘bad girl’ (Finnish actress Ann Savo), who once again is violently punished for her floozy-ish ways in cheerily misogynistic fashion, assailed by a faceless, black-gloved assassin amid the classic “neon sign outside bedroom window” ambience of her ‘Soho’ bed-sit, in a highly fetishised murder sequence that, whilst not explicitly gory, couldn’t have anticipated the MO of the Italian giallo any more clearly if it had cut to a shot of Mario Bava and Dario Argento crouching outside the window taking notes.(2)

On the side of law and order meanwhile, ‘Die Toten Augen von London’ sees the duo of Fuchsberger and Eddi Arent reunited, but sadly the good feeling that their partnership generated in ‘Fellowship of the Frog’ is rather squandered here. When left to his own devices, Fuchsberger is just fine of course, delivering a mixture of Roger Moore smarm and Stanley Baker-esque determination that makes him the perfect leading man for this kind of movie, but Arent proves more troublesome, having already settled into the persona that he would go on to embody through the majority of his appearances in the Rialto Krimis – namely, that of a comic relief goofball straight from the pits of movie fans’ very own hell.

Whilst ‘Der Frocsh..’ proved that Arent could be a somewhat charming screen presence when gifted with a moderately interesting character to flesh out, here, as Fuchsberger’s perpetually clowning partner, he’s simply a lead weight dragging against the film’s momentum. Veteran comic relief haters in the audience will already feel a shudder down their spines when his character is introduced as ‘Sunny’ (“a nickname that reflects his disposition”), and it’s all downhill from there I’m afraid, as Eddi does his level best to reinforce every unfair stereotype you might have heard about the German sense of humour.

Altogether more pleasing – if equally predictable - is the appearance of a young Klaus Kinski, here essaying the first of a multitude of highly suspicious characters he brought to life whilst on Rialto’s payroll. This time around, Klaus plays a neurotic secretary at a crooked life insurance company, and is just as much of a fidgety, tormented wreck as you might anticipate, sporting gleaming mirror shades in most of his scenes and – dur dur dur! – a pair of black leather driving gloves that his character likes to take on and off all day long, despite exhibiting no particular inclination toward driving.

Naturally, I will refrain from spoiling things by revealing the precise extent to which Kinski’s character is guilty or not guilty of the film’s assorted outrages, but needless to say, I think an aphorism much in the spirit of Chekhov’s gun could well be proposed, stating that if your murder mystery movie features Klaus Kinski skulking around in a pair of Ray-Bans, you probably won’t be needing that ID parade when it comes to fingering the killer, however elaborate his “obvious red herring” alibi may seem.

Inevitably, ‘The Dead Eyes of London’ features it’s fair share of procedural drag in between these assorted highlights, but, as in all the best entries in this series, touches of visual imagination and black humour often are used to liven up duller moments, as exemplified early in the film when a potentially tedious and exposition-heavy visit to the aforementioned life insurance company is livened up by a flick-knife welding blackmailer and some amusing business with a skull-shaped cigarette holder.

Also keeping things interesting meanwhile is an intermittently hair-raising score, as provided by the supremely named Heinz Funk. Though used only sparingly, Herr Funk’s compositions offer a mixture of beat-inflected suspense jazz and dissonant, primitive electronics that sounds somewhat like the result of John Barry and Pierre Boulez getting their demo reels mixed up in one of “London”s dark alleyways.

As a director, Vohrer’s camera tends to remain fairly static, but he does seem to display a love for odd stylistic twists that tend to make his compositions stand out, including a few fun process shots utilising complex arrangements of mirrors and reflections. In what is perhaps the film’s most bizarre moment, Vohrer utilises a truly odd “inside of mouth” shot, complete with giant cardboard teeth in the foreground, to dramatise the entirely unimportant detail of an old geezer spraying his gob with breath freshener prior to leaving the bathroom.

The time and effort taken to create such a weird shot, with no apparent narrative justification, seems entirely inexplicable within the normal working methods of low budget commercial cinema, but its presence does perhaps go some way toward demonstrating the kind of freedom that Rialto’s directors were allowed in this period – a freedom that possibly helps explain why the best of the Krimis stand out as so much more fun and inventive than most of their competitors in the early ‘60s Euro b-movie stakes.

And, insofar as I am qualified to pass judgment at this relatively early stage in my immersion in the genre, ‘Die Toten Augen von London’ would indeed appear to be a truly exemplary example of Krimi style – a creaky, meandering potboiler enlivened, and indeed even twisted into entirely new shapes, by an admirable combination of cinematic craftsmanship, grisly gallows humour and a rogue’s gallery of strikingly memorable character players; the result being an exquisitely sinister time-waster, enriched with enough weird visual fibre to make it a keeper over half a century after everyone should have stopped caring.

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(1) Other black & white era examples of the not-quite-horror-film that immediately spring to mind include ‘Tower of London’ (1939), Vincent Price’s break-out picture ‘Dragonwyck’ (1946) and the truly peculiar Charles Laughton vehicle ‘The Strange Door’ (1951), amongst many others.

(2) Whilst it is foolish of course to try to assign any direct chains of influence when dealing with vague and general notions such of these, the this scene in ‘Dead Eyes of London’ could be seen as anticipating Bava’s pivotal ‘Blood & Black Lace’ (1964) on several levels - not only via the aestheticised sadism of the murder and the anonymous, black gloved killer, but even the strobing effect provided by the flickering neon sign outside the window seems a precursor to that film’s antique shop sequence. (If you want to stretch the point even further, could even make the case that a memorable death-by-lift-shaft sequence elsewhere in the film could have provided the inspiration for the conclusion of Argento’s somewhat Krimi-informed ‘Cat O’ Nine Tails’ (1972) as well.)