A journey through Krimiland. Read all about the Teutonic fascination with Edgar Wallace, Bryan Edgar Wallace, Dr Mabuse, Jerry Cotton, Kommissar X, Father Brown or even Louis-Weinert Wilton and discover a world of hidden vaults, madmen in masks and bumbling butlers.
I recently ventured into the attic that swallows all and retrieved some of my film memorabilia: stuff that I hadn't seen in years, things that I forgot I had and then even collectibles that I can't even remember I ever bought like those three Spanish film posters.
Der Fluch der gelben Schlange (1963) was released in Spain as La maldición amarilla. This is an adaption of Edgar Wallace's The Curse of the Yellow Snake. It was produced by Rialto rival CCC-Film and to the best of my knowledge has never been released in English.
And last but not least a Spanish film poster for Jerry Cotton film Der Mörderclub von Brooklyn/Murderers Club of Brooklyn (1967) aka El club de asasinos de Brooklyn.
Looking at all those posters reminds me about all the films I still need to write about....
Despite the fact that the previous 5 Cotton movies had been filmed by four different directors, it is ironic that the series started falling apart just when Harald Reinl came on board to direct the last three movies. Having Germany’s best known action director of the time in charge for a continuous string of movies should have been an opportunity to streamline the success formula and raise the movie series to new heights.
Instead pretty much everything that had made the films so popular was discarded for Cases 6 and 7:
Richard Münch had enough of playing Mr High and went back to stage acting in Vienna. Rather than to replace him with another actor, the following movies had various non-descript actors playing Cotton’s superiors and often make clumsy attempts at having High involved despite his absence. We regularly see other actors relay High’s messages to Cotton and Decker or see Cotton talk to him on the phone off screen.
Both Death and Diamonds as well as Death in the Red Jaguar also see Cotton leave his familiar New York territory and go to California. In actual fact if watched close together it becomes painfully obvious that the two films had to rely on a very limited amount of Californian stock footage. We often see very similar looking shots of roads and airports. The semi-documentary approach was abandoned altogether for these last movies and no narrator was employed to provide commentary to the action. Even Cotton’s famous red Jaguar is rarely ever seen!
And even though the Cotton series of movies was never exactly renowned for their sophisticated plot devices, with the first two Reinl movies plot holes reached mythic proportions. In Death and Diamonds Cotton becomes the world’s worst undercover agent: Rather than draw attention away from himself when he infiltrates a gang, he behaves like an elephant in a china store and rarely misses an opportunity to start a fight, ask stupid questions or otherwise raise suspicion. Never mind his attempts at playing an Englishman. His ineptness in this department is only outmatched by the gang of killers in Death in the Red Jaguar who - even though they are very clearly on the list of suspects – can’t help but to continue killing their victims in the most obvious way and drive attention to themselves. At one stage we even see Cotton about to be crushed by an oncoming train. He is tied and bound at a railway junction and this despite the fact that the gangsters are trying to make this look like an accident!
If all this sounds as if Cases 6 and 7 are a miss, well, they’re not. These movies still are very fast paced and entertaining, but lack a certain je-ne-sais-quoi. Despite both of them having some very memorable stand out scenes, they often come across as more conventional paint-by-numbers actioneers than their predecessors. One fight scene follows the next, but is often missing a critical over-the-top ingredient. Or at least an over the top location: Cotton seems to have also lost his love for high wire stunts.
Mind you: When these films do manage to shine, they do so with an ingenious punch that sets them clearly apart from similar productions of the area.
Following the theft of a large quantity of poisoned gas in preparation of an upcoming diamond heist, Cotton is required to go underground and expose the gang leader, a mysterious shadow figure called Stone, behind the robbery. In his guise he is not allowed to smoke, drink whisky or eat fish. He has to take a crash course in electronics in order to pose convincingly as the safecracker, is allowed to chase blondes (though we still don’t see him in any kind of romantic shenanigans) and….. play with little toy cars! Apparently the real alarm system specialist (Claus Tinney) he is impersonating is a dedicated fan of the truly manly game of model car racing and if you didn’t know it, this film will teach you that Mini Racing Centres in the 1960s were really cool places to mingle with fellow aficionados! The red toy Jaguar we see Cotton playing with is a sad reminder of the real McCoy, however, that in this film does not get an opportunity to crash.
We also learn that bars frequented by gangsters inevitably have a bunch of Go-Go Girls dancing around pool tables. A very ingenious shot has one of the pool player’s looks turn back and forward between two very tantalisingly placed pool balls and the jiggling brimming bra of one of the dancers. The gang’s HQ hangout is called “Green Silk” and explains the German and the alternative English title of the movie. Somewhat.
Following the diamond heist, Cotton gets trapped in an incinerator out of which he miraculously manages to escape, prior to running off with the diamonds himself which he then uses as a ruse to identify the master mind behind the theft.
Up til that point Death and Diamonds was a fast paced, somewhat routine, slightly uninspired actioneer. The last half hour or so, however, raises the bar by a gear or three. The moment the real Trevor is released from prison, he starts tracking his impostor’s moves and connects with a common acquaintance: an equally common damsel in a delightfully see-through négligé who writes down a contact number on a packet of Lucky Strike.
Mabel (Marlies Dräger), a mysterious brunette in green, helps to kidnap Cotton and blonde gangster moll Lana (Sylvie 3-2-1 Countdown for Manhattan Solar). Cotton had previously prevented Lana from being raped, but she is now being bullwhipped by Mabel in order to have Cotton confess. This is a violently fetishistic scene of a kind that would have previously been unimaginable for a Cotton movie, but was soon becoming symptomatic for the Reinl directed films and taken to an extreme with the last production, Fatal Gunshots on Broadway.
When Cotton manages to escape from the gang he stops an approaching car by karate jumping feet first (!) through the windscreen and knocking out the driver. In a subsequent manic chase sequence he makes quite a great figure on a motor bike.
In Tip Not Included Yvonne Monlaur plays Violet, a nightclub singer in a Playboy Bunny-esque lounge, and gets to sing two of Peter Thomas’ catchy tunes. (“I want to be near to you/I want to be kissing you/If I close my eyes/I’m in paradise.”) Truth be told it may not necessarily be Monlaur herself who sings – I strongly suspect that she was dubbed – but she nevertheless strikes quite a stylish pose in this black and white thriller. Her character is involved with an unemployed chemist (Christian Doermer) whose expertise is needed to develop bombs for an ingenious heist by the Charles Gang. His attempt to double-cross his gang by selling the info out to a mysterious stranger (Rainer Brandt) leads to his early death.
Cotton first encounters Violet and her boyfriend when he visits the bar in which she performs in order to enjoy a relaxing after work whiskey. Needless to say, he is not able to finish his drink: A little bit less than a sip later he is already madly involved in an elevator brawl with a couple of thugs who are after Violet’s sweetheart.
From then on the film takes off with the usual breathtaking speed that can be expected from a movie of the series. The film’s heist of an armed treasury van involves a clever magnetic bomb device that gets attached to the van from underneath a bridge and blows the car to pieces. Cotton nobly accepts responsibility for sending the multi million dollar transport off to prevent the suicide of the guilt ridden director of the treasury department (Walter Rilla)… just to see him succumb to a heart attack only seconds later! That temporarily costs Cotton his licence, though it’s still him who Violet prefers to call when she gets kidnapped. When Cotton takes the call in his swell apartment he is seen wearing a suave bathrobe with JC monogram. He straight away jumps into his Jaguar to save the damsel. He can save Violet in a big shoot out, nearly gets arrested – suspended FBI agents shouldn’t carry guns! –, then follows a lead into a wrestling arena. One double cross follows the other. There just ain’t no loyalty amongst thieves any more. And just when the pace threatens to slow down we see gangster moll Mary (Birke Bruck) taking a very revealing shower. She wears nothing but her glasses which manage to stay steam free. Wow, that was a first for a Cotton Krimi! Cotton generally has little time for romantic hanky panky so fast forward to a scene where he nonchalantly jumps off a sky scraper (!) to hang on to an escaping helicopter. The subsequent flight action is marred by the dodgy rear projection, yet picks up when the helicopter approaches a lake and we see the stunt man hanging on for his life when his feet are gliding through the water.
For Monlaur this proved to be her final motion picture. She subsequently only had one more appearance in Der Tod läuft hinterher, an incredibly popular German TV Krimi serial in three parts that also starred a bunch of familiar faces from the Edgar Wallace movies such as Joachim Fuchsberger, Pinkas Braun and Elisabeth Flickenschildt.
Horst Tappert secured the part as the head of the treasury robbing Charles Gang after playing a similar part as the “Major” earlier on that year in Die Gentlemen bitten zur Kasse, a 3-part German TV mini-series based on the Great Train Robbery in 1963.
Rainer Brandt makes for a very convincing menacingly mysterious figure looming in the shadows. Though he is an excellent actor in his own right, he is primarily known for his dubbing work as he owns the most famous dubbing studio in Germany. He already had his first encounter with Jerry Cotton in the previous film 3-2-1 Countdown for Manhattan for which he dubbed Allen Pinson’s character Harry. Ironically for someone who is widely known for his dubbing work, his part in Tip Not Included required him for the largest part to loom silently in background.
Overall Tip Not Included is a very typical and entertaining example of the Jerry Cotton series at its best. This would be the last black and white production. The remaining movies were all shot in colour, though the subsequent one (Der Mörderclub von Brooklyn/Body in Central Park) still started with a black and white pre-credit scene that consisted of material shot but not used for Tip Not Included in which Cotton and Decker discover a bunch of gangsters hidden in Cotton’s apartment that is accessed with a private lift and contains a private mini race track with toy Jaguar.
