There's something to be said about journeyman directors, directors who never really truly shine but keep showing up and regularly produce watchable fare.
I generally have nothing but the greatest respect for those cinematic work horses. The downside, however, is that this type of director tends to rise and fall with the material and supporting talent that is given to them.
A true master may elevate average stories into something magnificent and even hide tremendous plot holes from the viewer.
A hack on the other hand highlights all those faults and amplifies them to the nth degree and thereby may come up with some involuntary entertaining results.
A journeyman? Well, they just plod along in that case and neither properly thrill nor entertain.
Rudolf Zehetgruber is exactly one such director.
In the two years of 1963/64 he shot a handful of standalone Krimis before directing two Kommissar X and other action movies and finally finding his calling in a series of Herbie clones about a VW superbug called Dudu in which he also played the leading role, a character called Jimmy Bondi.
Two of his films I have reviewed on this blog - Die schwarze Kobra/The Black Cobra (1963) and Piccadilly Null Uhr Zwölf (1963) - and the overall impression for me was mainly a very decided "Meh!"
Die Nylonschlinge/Nylon Noose (1963) in all its averageness is probably the best of the lot as it does successfully incorporate some of the much loved tropes like secret passageways, catacombs and eccentric scientists.
Nylon Noose is a standalone Krimi and not based on any novel.
Produced by Erwin C. Dietrich, who in the 1970s would be in charge of a range of German sex comedies, it’s fairly statically filmed with only two actors more widely known for an International Krimi audience: Dietmar Schönherr and Ady Berber.
Dietmar Schönherr (Das Ungeheuer von London City/The Monster of London City) carries off the role of the charming Inspector well.
And Ady Berber’s already imposing features are further disfigured by having his face covered in gruesome scars from an accident. His character is told to always stay out off sight from all the guests in the manor so as not to frighten them which explains why he is always seen lurking about in the catacombs or climbing up the outside walls as opposed to just enter the place through the front door. Ultimately he is, however, more of a gentle giant type with a heart of gold.
Individually there is a lot to be enjoyed in this production: We have an eccentric professor type (Gustav Kloster) who experiments on mummies for the secret to a prolonged life. We got creepy underground passageways and a bit more skin on show than normal for a film of its time. It is indeed the actresses that mainly remain in the viewers' memory:
Helga Sommerfeld (who can also be spotted in the two Bryan Edgar Wallace Krimis Das Geheimnis der schwarzen Koffer/The Secret of the Black Trunk (1962) and Das Phantom von Soho/The Phantom of Soho (1964)) is the main female lead and love interest for Dietmar Schönherr’s character and one wishes she’d have more often been placed in prominent roles in those films.
Real life dancing sensation Laya Raki brings an exotic touch to the story by… playing an exotic dancer. Whenever the lights quickly go off during her performance, either money changes hands or someone gets killed, though it is never quite clear a) why the nightclub doesn’t get closed down with such a death count at this very moment and b) why from all the places in good ol’ foggy London Town it is this sleazy establishment that gets chosen all the time for this transaction. (Well, there are some possible hints about this towards the end but I’ll be damned if I understood them.)
The soundtrack is also of interest as it combines traditional swinging Krimi tunes with experimental sound effects.
So, it all sounds great.
And yet as a whole the film doesn’t really quite blend it all together all that well. Various of the narrative strands have little to nothing to do with the case and its solution which is indeed ultimately more than mundane and in contrast to some of the set pieces.
The direction is quite flat and lifeless and at times it feels as if they’re just ticking off a check list of motions to go through. We even have a bowler hatted comic relief (Denys Seiler) who actually really does nothing remotely funny and for the most part plays everything straight.
The remaining group of male supporting characters are all united in just being presented as being a very unpleasant bunch one and all that as a viewer one can’t ever hope that any one of them will remain alive. In one particularly head scratching and icky moment the uncle of Sommerfeld’s character (Gustav Knuth) is clearly hitting on his own niece which leaves Schönherr’s Inspector to comment that he really can’t blame him. As much as I am enamoured by Sommerfeld myself, I still draw a line at praising incest.
All in all this is a good but not a great production.
Though one of the lesser known Krimis, in contrast to other similar films the English dubbed version of this film is easily available but that cut runs six minutes shorter than the original.
WATCH IT IN GERMAN
WATCH IT IN ENGLISH
BUY THE DVD
