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").

Das Geheimnis der grünen Stecknadel/What Have You Done to Solange? (1972) - Lobby Cards

 A set of German lobby cards for Das Geheimnis der grünen Stecknadel (1972). 

This was the 31st and second last Rialto Wallace and is internationally better known as a giallo under the title What Have You Done to Solange? 

This international version is actually a longer cut to the German one and one of these days I'll need to compare the two versions properly.