Runtime: 90 minutes
Directed by: Harald Reinl
Starring: Joachim Fuchsberger, Karin Dor, Richard Haussler, Walter Rilla, Siegfried Schurenberg
From: A few different European companies
What a peculiar krimi film this was. As I haven’t watched one of these in awhile, I’ll briefly explain that these were German movies based on mystery novels from Edgar Wallace which usually had light horror elements. Here, the impact it had on Giallo was more pronounced; after all, there is a gloved killer who uses a razor and at one point a topless woman in a club is slashed in the neck. Not only does the viewer briefly see her bare breasts, so do we the blood spraying on a curtain. The earlier films I’ve seen weren’t like this.
Otherwise it was largely the same that I’ve come to expect, except for the fact that two different plots are smushed together. A detective gets involved in a case where besides the Giallo killer that is really only focused on for a few scenes, gangsters get a nobleman involved in a train robbery plot. There aren’t too many red herrings and regrettably, it was rather early that I deduced the killer’s identity. That thankfully did not leave a bad taste in my mouth as I tried to figure out how the slasher’s plot coincided w/ the train robbery plot, and why Karin Dor has a weird reaction to seeing portraits of her mother, who she is a spitting image of.
I managed to be entertained throughout; there are some faces familiar to the krimi world (Joachim Fuchsberger, Dor, Eddie Arent as wacky comic relief) along with a groovy score and a nice style. Even if the razor-wielding maniac was only a subplot, it will go onto my official Spooky Season list, which will be posted early November.
No comments:
Post a Comment