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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AVAILABILITY 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Die Gruft mit dem Rätselschloss/The Curse of the Hidden Vault (1964) - Lobby Cards

 Time for some lobby cards again, this time for Die Gruft mit dem Rätselschloss/The Curse of the Hidden Vault (1964).

Der Hund von Blackwood Castle/The Hound of Blackwood Castle (1968)

When Captain Wilson (Otto Stern) unexpectedly dies, his daughter Jane (Karin Baal) is due to inherit his castle. She soon discovers that a string of suspicious characters also show an interest in the ancient building. It all seems to be connected with an old jewellery heist. Everybody congregates at the local inn to the initial delight of the eccentric old female inn keeper (Agnes Windeck) who much to her dismay, however, quickly realises that her guests die faster than they can pay their bills. 

 Der Hund von Blackwood Castle/The Hound of Blackwood Castle (1968) was Rialto’s 25th Edgar Wallace production and is a total hoot and pure unadulterated fun. 

It wasn’t based on any actual book by Wallace himself but - as a quick look at the title alone will tell - instead clearly inspired by at least elements of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.

 Several killings are courtesy of a vicious Doberman with poisonous fangs that roams the Moors which in a roundabout way does bring us back to Wallace again. After all in 1931 he had written the screenplay for the first sound version of this Sherlock Holmes novel. 

Mysterious inheritances have also always been a popular trope for this writer and especially the idea of having a gang meet up again years later to finally get their hands on loot that the gang leader had absconded with bears quite a resemblance to Wallace’s play/novella The Terror that would subsequently be adapted by Rialto as Der unheimliche Mönch/The Sinister Monk (1965). 

 Hound begins with one of Peter Thomas’ most manic and crazed title songs so that right from the start the audience is aware that director Alfred Vohrer together with screen writer Herbert Reinecker (aka Alex Berg) have pulled no punches to deliver their own curious brand of cinematic Wallace madness. 

The presence of reptiles in a Krimi was always something of a Vohrer trademark so it will come as no surprise that snakes feature prominently in this production, most notably when Karin Baal in her second Wallace production (after The Dead Eyes of London, 1961) gets threatened by one of them. 

 But we also get a brutish one eyed butler (Arthur Binder), a giant stuffed polar bear with a hidden telephone, dangling skeletons, paintings falling off the wall and cobwebs galore. 

And quick sand! (Where would we ever be without quick sand?) 

And a mysterious castle crypt with a remote controlled sarcophagus containing a vanishing corpse. The film is remarkable in that it for once does not feature a younger Scotland Yard investigator. Instead Sir John (Siegfried Schürenberg) takes the case over himself in his own inimitable style and with the help of Ilse Pagé as Miss Mabel Finley. 

For the most part Hound relies on new or lesser known faces but we do still get Heinz Drache as an insurance inspector with a secret. His character is named Humphrey Connery (sic!) and writer Reinecker was further inspired (or should that read: uninspired) by classic film stars when Horst Tappert in his Wallace debut gets introduced as Douglas Fairbanks. 

Tappert’s gang member when faced with the spooky shenanigans in the castle can often be seen in panic mode which makes for a welcome change of pace when compared to his usual hangdog expression in other films or series. 

He is accompanied by Uta Levka. Her gangster moll was her third and final appearance in a Wallace film following Der unheimliche Mönch/The Sinister Monk (1965) and Der Bucklige von Soho/The Hunchback of Soho (1966). 

One of the standout performances is courtesy of Mady Rahl who plays Captain Wilson’s divorced wife and Jane’s mother. When we first meet her she is a performer in the Red Rose Cabaret but still under delusions of grandeur and longing for the days of former glory. She sees her daughter’s inheritance as her final chance to regain the life status she clearly thinks she deserved. 

Also look out for Hans Söhnker as the dubious lawyer who is trying to sell off the castle well under value. Söhnker had previously played Prof Moriarty in Terence Fisher’s Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962) and was Sir Philip, the Head of Scotland Yard, in the Bryan Edgar Wallace production Das Phantom von Soho/The Phantom of Soho (1964).

Karin Baal (September 19, 1940 - November 26, 2024)

Following her death last year I decided to explore Karin Baal’s career a little bit. 

Having had no previous acting experience and coming from a poor working class background, the 15-year old Baal was instantly catapulted to stardom when she was chosen as the female lead next to Horst Buchholz in the juvenile delinquency drama Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (1956) in which she played a seductive rebellious teenager. 

 Given her lack of acting nous for this production she was dubbed by Brigitte Grothum (who would later also feature in Das Gasthaus an der Themse/The Inn on the River and the CCC Wallace Der Fluch der gelben Schlange/The Curse of the Yellow Snake). 

The film was not just a tremendous success at the box office but it aligned with the Zeitgeist and struck a chord with the post-war generation for whom Baal became an instant icon. 

Baal became known as the “German Brigitte Bardot” and for a while was typecast in roles similar to the ones she had played for her debut. 

Over a decade, she appeared in three Rialto Wallaces and with her roles went from naive ingénue to confident young woman and middle aged wife. 

In Die toten Augen von London/Dead Eyes of London (1961), she is Nora Ward who first assists Fuchsberger’s inspector with reading messages in braille and then becomes a crucial part of the mystery.

 In Der Hund von Blackwood Castle/The Monster of Blackwood Castle (1968) she plays the stylish heiress of a mysterious castle that becomes the focal point for a series of strange killings. 

 She reunited with Fuchsberger for the Krimi/Giallo hybrid Das Geheimnis der grünen Stecknadel/What Have You Done to Solange?/Cosa avete fatto a Solange? (1972) in which she is the frumpy wife of Fabio Testi's philandering sports and Italian teacher. Once she learns to accept her husband’s slimy cheating ways she dons eye shadow again, wears a negligée and lies lasciviously on her bed when not helping him to investigate the murders and free him from suspicion. 

Baal starred next to Oliver Reed in Michael Winner’s Hannibal Brooks (1969) though international stardom eluded her. 

She was, however, a constant feature in German cinemas, on TV as well as on stage. In the 1980s she became a muse for Rainer Werner Fassbinder and featured in three of his productions: the then controversial TV series Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) and the two movies Lili Marleen und Lola (both 1981). 

She can also be seen in Hans-Christoph Blumenberg’s Tausend Augen (1984, tr. “Thousand Eyes”) in which she plays an elderly ticket lady at a strip joint who spies on her boss to the female head of a mafia-like ring of video pirates. Despite not being an actual Mabuse film, this movie does carry a lot of Mabusian references and undertones. 

Though professionally successful and publicly celebrated, Baal’s private life was often turbulent. She was married four times, battled alcoholism and, not having properly secured her finances in preparation for retirement, faced poverty in her old age.

She published her memoirs in 2012 under the title Ungezähmt: Mein Leben (tr. "Untamed: My Life").