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).
Entertainingly over-the-top film, one of the best colour krimis IMO. You're never bored, put it that way, and isn't that what movies are for?
ReplyDeleteI've got the DVD version of that box-set; I doubt I'd buy the Blu Ray set unless I get promoted, or they start doing to the Rialto krimis what Eureka have done to the CCC krimis with their Terror In The Fog boxset, which is unlikely, given the number of movies lol.
Oh I also have the DVD box sets and they suit me perfectly. I rarely ever upgrade once I have something in a decent enough condition.
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