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).

Der Hexer Slideshow

 So just did a thing and uploaded a slideshow to YouTube with posters, lobby cards and promotional images for the Rialto Edgar Wallace Krimi DER HEXER aka THE MYSTERIOUS MAGICIAN based on Wallace's novel THE RINGER.

Hope you like. I may do more along those lines sometime in the future.

The Avenger (German Film Program)

Neues Film Program #1967 

 This 4-page film program, in contrast to many others, is not particularly photo heavy and only displays images of scenes from Der Rächer/The Avenger (1960) on its front and back pages. 

This movie was the first non-Rialto Edgar Wallace movie of the 1960s and came very early on in the Wallace craze, following hot on the heels of Der Frosch mit der Maske/Fellowship of the Frog (1959) and Der rote Kreis/The Red Circle (1960). 

Produced by Kurt Ulrich Filmproduktion and directed by Karl Anton, both minor league in comparison to the behemoth that was Rialto and its talent, had a number of remarkable firsts as it featured the Wallace debuts of Klaus Kinski, Heinz Drache and Siegfried Schürenberg, who would all become major players for the main series. It also starred Ingrid van Bergen who would shoot one Rialto Wallace, Das Geheimnis der gelben Narzissen/The Devil’s Daffodil (1961). 

Unfortunately, that is where the interests ends as - instrumental as it may have been in its choice of acting talent - with regards to entertainment value, this is a terribly wasted opportunity and a fairly dull production.

Die Tür mit den 7 Schlössern/The Door With Seven Locks (1962)

One by one the owners of seven keys for a door leading to a mysterious treasure get killed off.

The Door With Seven Locks marks the Rialto Wallace debut of hedgehog lookalike Heinz Drache. He was previously seen in CCC’s The Avenger and an incredibly popular German TV star thanks to the mega success of the TV series Das Halstuch, based on Francis Durbridge’s novel The Scarf. Drache plays Inspector Martin, amateur Magician and fan of Krimi radio shows, who is assisted by Eddi Arent.

Siegfried Schürenberg also made his Wallace debut as Sir John. Klaus Kinski has an ultra short part as a Mac wearing nervous crook who approaches Inspector Martin for help and gets killed pretty much instantaneously.

Another Wallace debutant is Werner Peters who hams it up wonderfully as Bertram Cody: In one scene we seen him sitting on a throne-like chair that is quite obviously too large for him. His legs keep dangling in the air. The chair is in the shape of an African woman with legs ending in high heel shoes; its body contains a record player that plays Bach’s Toccata, a piece that Cody’s wife (Gisela Uhlen) pretends to play on an organ which in actuality hides a house bar.

Unfortunately, those inspired moments of madness are few and far between in this production. For its first hour The Door With Seven Locks is a very pedestrian affair with little to speak of in its favour. In the last half hour, however, it switches gears when Pinkas Braun’s Dr. Antonio Staletti surprisingly brings us into Mad Scientist territory.

We have previously seen Ady Berber killing people as a wonderfully sweaty brute with a huge scar around his forehead who gets distracted in a surprisingly innocent childlike fashion by a music box that plays God Save the Queen. We now discover that he is the result of one of Staletti’s experiments aimed at creating an immortal Übermensch by transposing human heads on simian bodies. We see Pinkas Braun holding a skull in true Hamlet style while an actor in ape suit grimaces behind the bars of an underground laboratory. When exposed as a charlatan, Braun goes into maniacally cackling overdrive and jumps on his laboratory table while shaking his head uncontrollably. One of Germany’s best and most OTT cinematic Modern Day Frankensteins who manages to save an otherwise very mediocre Wallace production.