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 came across two little known German language productions from the 1960s that both feature Jack the Ripper.
Neither one is a traditional Krimi but both have elements of that genre that warrant an inclusion on this blog.
First up Lulu/No Orchids for Lulu (1962), a new adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s plays Erdgeist/Earth Spirit and Die Büchse der Pandora/Pandora’s Box and as such a remake of the classic silent movie Pandora’s Box (1929) with Louise Brooks.
In line with the original drama, a Jack the Ripper like character - he is never really named as such and though all the tropes are there the time period is wrong - is only introduced towards the end of this “burlesque tragedy” as a cipher for the rise and dramatic fall of the title character.
This Austrian movie is purposely theatrical and presented as a morality play, even down to having a narrator (a bald Charles Regnier who in real life was actually married to Frank Wedekind’s daughter Pamela) speaking into the camera and commenting on events in this movie.
When a teenage flower girl tries to steal Dr. Schön’s (O.E. Hasse) pocket watch, he takes her on Pygmalion style to make a lady out of her and eventually marry her off to an influential older medical officer (Hogan’s Heroes’ Leon Askin). Though not explicitly shown it is implied that he didn’t just introduce her to the ways of the world alone.
The first five minutes of this film are entirely without dialogue and instead filmed dreamlike through a blurry lens and underlined by cheerful music. We never see the face of the girl until we finally cut to her as an adult where she is shown to be portrayed by Austrian actress Nadja Tiller who would eventually appear in eleven movies by Rolf Thiele, the director of this movie.
All the men in her life project so much into her that throughout the film they all address her differently (Lulu, Nelly, Eva) and yet she eventually leaves a trail of dead husbands and destroyed lives behind her.
Lulu is portrayed as being both innocent but scheming, temptress and self destructive, Angel and Devil all in one. Her relationship with Hasse’s character bears traces of The Blue Angel and her rise and eventual downfall is mirrored in her appearance and the contrast to a portrait that was done of her by her second artist/husband (Sieghardt Rupp) and her being shaven haired after an escape in a coffin from a prison signals her downward slide.
Speaking of mirrors: They are ever present for her narcissistic glances.
Hildegard Knef plays an enigmatic Countess with more than just a maternal interest in Lulu who, to her own detriment, also succumbs to her destructive charms.
Also watch out for Mario Adorf as a sleazy acrobat, Rudolf Forster as a bum and the one constant companion of Lulu’s life from teenage years on and Herbert Fux in a bit part as a visitor to a nightclub.
Overall, Lulu is probably more interesting than genuinely good but definitely well worth a watch. It does appear to at one stage have seen an English language release as No Orchids for Lulu (a play on the then popular No Orchids for Miss Blandish) so there may be an English language version around out there somewhere.
In the meantime you can watch the original German version on YouTube (embedding on other websites is blocked so you need to visit the site directly).
When Mike Hilton (Helmut Wildt) gets released from prison after eight years behind bars, he swears revenge on those responsible for it and vows to prove his innocence. He teams up with Jack Bellamy (Hanns Lothar), the policeman responsible for his capture at the time, who has now become an alcoholic and left the service. Hilton learns that his previous landlady has since passed away but in no time at all starts flirting with her niece (Ann Smyrner). Bellamy on the other hand gets financial assistance from his lover Della (Marlene Warrlich), a happy hooker with a heart of gold who gets killed by her pimp Lee Costello (Karl Lieffen) when she wants to leave the business.
Hilton’s former lawyer Sir Reginald Cunningham (Pinkas Braun) and the sadistic albino “Whitey” Skipper (Klaus Kinski) play a crucial role in Hilton’s thirst for revenge.
And then we also have a large inheritance, a client suffering a heart attack while visiting a callgirl, some dodgy mask play and a few confusing narrative strands more.
A German Noir…. kind of
Francis Durbridge (1912-1998) was for German TV what Edgar Wallace was to the cinema.
Wallace’s Krimis were incredibly successful at the box office but also saw a few less impressive TV adaptations at the time. And where Durbridge had resounding success on German TV screens, his oeuvre also inspired a lesser known German cinematic feature film.
Durbridge was one of the prime source authors for a series of incredibly popular TV mini series that were widely known as “Strassenfeger”, i.e. “street sweepers”, productions that when they were broadcast quite literally emptied the streets as practically everyone with a television set ended up watching it.
The most famous as well as notorious of those was Das Halstuch (1962), starring past and future Wallace veterans like Heinz Drache, Dieter Borsche, Horst Tapper, Albert Lieven and Margot Trooger, and based on Durbridge’s novel The Scarf.
This series was involved in a famous scandal when just the day before its eagerly anticipated final episode, comedian Wolfgang Neuss posted a large size newspaper advert in which he revealed the identity of the main culprit, a stunt that shook up the nation and resulted in him getting death threats and being branded a traitor to the country by the yellow press.
Though some sources claim that Piccadilly Null Uhr Zwölf (1963, translation: “Piccadilly, Zero Hour 12”) was based on a novel or story by Durbridge called 12 Past 12, nothing under that title seems to exist and, similarly to the Bryan Edgar Wallace series, only the name of the author was employed to drum up interest in this production. The closest Durbridge came to being involved in this film was a discussion in London with producer Eberhard Meichsner at the height of the Profumo affair in which the two of them were throwing around some story ideas for a possible movie.
Piccadilly Null Uhr Zwölf is in many ways an anti-Wallace.
Rather than focus on outrageously masked super villains, bizarre angles and Gothic moods, this production is much more realistic and in many ways even somewhat Noir with its classic tale of a man seeking revenge in gritty urban streets and its depiction of a policeman haunted by his past and reverting to alcoholism.
On paper (or: celluloid) this film has so much going for it. It’s very rare e.g, to see one of the leads being financially supported by their escort-girlfriend and then, when she is being threatened, forgetting about their promise to protect her in favour of some more booze in a local bar and thereby carrying some responsibility for her brutal murder.
And yet there is a total lack of tension. Director Rudolf Zehetgruber proves yet again that even though his main cinematic output at the time were Krimis and thrillers, he missed more than he managed to hit.
The film just plots along without a genuine main, central mystery. Despite a variety of narrative threads there is a distinct loss of focus. It never even becomes quite clear what exactly happened eight years prior that led to Hilton’s incarceration and Bellamy’s descent into alcoholism. Indeed everybody and their mother seems to know that Hilton was innocent, so why did he need to spend that much time in prison?
All the other individual plot elements (the corpse of a man who hasn’t really died, several murders, an inheritance) just get listlessly thrown around and for the most part we never even get to see when yet another character gets killed. Instead, in its one single bit of comic relief we see a young boy (Ilja Richter, later to become presenter of Disco, Germany’s equivalent to Top of the Pops) discovering the bodies floating in the water and meticulously describing their state to a Bobby.
Oh, and the boy’s name? Edgar Wallace. (Har har!)
Though a lot of the advertisement for this production focussed on Klaus Kinski and Pinkas Braun, the actual lead actors, Helmut Wildt and Hanns Lothar, are virtual unknowns within the Krimi genre and not really able to carry the emotional weight and charisma required for what are essentially tragic and hardboiled roles. Especially Lothar as the alcoholic ex-cop looks genuinely out of his depth and is too dull and chinless to elicit any kind of interest in the viewer.
As such it is up to Kinski and Braun to instil any kind of interest in the production, a task they aimlessly master as usual.
Needless to say none of the scenes filmed in Berlin looks like anything resembling Piccadilly and the music by Russell Garcia (another person not genuinely associated with this genre) also just tootles along with little impact.
All in all there probably is a reason why this production never appears to have had an English language release. Kinski and Braun alone make this essential viewing but other than that this production could have been so very promising but ultimately just disappoints.
A year prior to the main events of the film, O’Connor, one of the heads of a Chicago gang, gets seemingly shot dead by a rival gang in the middle of a poker game. The only surviving member of his gang is “Beautiful Steve” (Klaus Kinski).
Twelve months later in London, a number of prominent businesspeople get killed after being blackmailed and refusing to pay protection money. All clues lead to the suspicion that the two gangs from Chicago are now setting up base in London.
Visiting American Capt. Allerman (Christopher Lee), an authority on those suspects, teams up with Inspector Weston from Scotland Yard (Adrian Hoven) to put a stop to these mobsters.
Weston has more than just a passing interest in Lilian Ranger (Marisa Mell) who works for Tanner (Fritz Rasp), an 86-year old whose grandfatherly interest in her lead him to suggest a marriage of convenience to ensure she is being looked after financially if something happens to him….
… which it does when he becomes one of the victims of the protection racket before she can even ponder the offer.
She still becomes the old man’s heiress just to discover that he apparently only left debts behind. She also gets introduced to his nephew Edwin (Pinkas Braun), an orchid hunter, who was absent for years and never around to look after Tanner himself.
And then there is Butler Parker (Eddi Aren’t), the “Butler of Death”, who just happens to always be employed by the very same rich who soon afterwards perish violently for non-payment.
Secret of the Red Orchid premiered on March 01, 1962 and was the ninth in the series of Edgar Wallace movies and followed on the heels of Die seltsame Gräfin/The Strange Countess (1961).
It was filmed between December 12, 1961 - January 15, 1962 in Hamburg (both the city and the local REAL Film Studio).
The film is based on When the Gangs Came to London. First published in 1932, the year of his death, this was Edgar Wallace’s final novel outside of some later post-humous releases.
Wallace died unexpectedly on February 10, 1932 in Hollywood where he had lived since November 1931 in order to work on the first King Kong script.
No doubt his exposure to the US influenced him when he introduced American gangs into London for the plot of this novel.
1932 was a time when Chicago Gangs were still very much in the news. It wasn’t until May 1932 that Al Capone would begin his sentence for tax invasion so having this kind of gangland related plot in a novel made more sense than seeing it as part of a contemporary movie from the 1960s.
Gangs with mysterious gang leaders are of course a popular trope both with Edgar Wallace in his novels in general as well as with the Rialto series up to this point in particular but here the focus is much more on the gangs and less on the mystery.
In actual fact Secret of the Red Orchid features neither a major secret nor a red orchid, never mind a red orchid that contains a secret.
The only mystery in this production is whether O’Connor, believed dead, is really still heading one of the two gangs and what disguise he may have assumed. This, however, for the most part, makes not an iota of difference to the film’s main plot that features sufficient enough gang murders, action and bloodshed even without an added forced upon mystery.
The film begins with scenes of individual murders before escalating into all out gang warfare when both gangs decide to put pressure on the same individual while not accepting gangland boundaries. Clearly everyone involved is guilty and when at the negotiating table, O’Connor is never needed so who cares about this particular mystery?
And as for the red orchid? Pinkas Braun’s character is a famous orchid hunter who hands out orchids left, right and centre to any woman that tickles his fancy, however, this is a black and white production so their colours are never that obvious and one orchid in particular is even described as being yellow!
The mystery aspect about O’Connor being alive or dead was an element that was added to the film and did not feature in the source novel. And whereas a lot of the plot was transferred over faithfully this additional forced bit of mystery as well as the humorous elements specifically with Eddi Arent’s “Butler of Death” change the overall mood quite significantly.
With Helmuth Ashley Secret of the Red Orchid featured a director who was generally not associated with the series so far and apart from Eddi Arent, Klaus Kinski and Fritz Rasp also featured a number actors who, though perfectly capable and occasionally seen in other Krimis as well, would also not usually be considered as typical for the series at the time.
Shooting this film does not seem to have been a pleasant experience for Lee.
In The Films of Christopher Lee he is quoted as saying:
“In this I played an FBI man. A very unremarkable film, although it did well in Germany. I did the entire film in the German language. Incredibly cold weather - - we were working in temperatures well below freezing.
The thing I remember most about that film was the director, Helmuth Ashley, apparently a well-known cameraman in Germany. He was excessively unpleasant, rude, and unhelpful.
He constantly criticized my German accent, which as a matter of fact is very good. It came to the point one day, where I had a bit of a blow-up on the set and I said: “Now I can understand how it was that Hitler was an Austrian.” That went down, of course, terribly well. Ashley was also from Austria - - which I already knew.
I am not accustomed to this sort of behavior, and I was not going to take the kind of Nazi attitude that Mr. Ashley indulged in every day, shouting and yelling at people.
Not a happy film for me, but I did it for the experience. I have worked in many pictures in various countries and in various languages during my career, in order to be accepted in a sense as a local actor. In these days of international co-production, this has proved invaluable because the public in many countries is accustomed to seeing me work in their own language, and this is a big plus for an actor today all over the world.”
In his autobiography he expands that Ashley specifically critisized his “American-German accent” and that openly falling out with a director was highly unusual as it was something he had “sworn never to do with any director”.
Lee was not the only actor to criticize Ashley. Others also mentioned that on set he appeared to be more interested in looking after his mastiffs than focus on the shoot at hand. As a result Wendlandt was so annoyed with him that he never rehired Ashley for any of his future productions and didn’t even invite him for the studio’s Christmas party in 1961.
Lee’s German can absolutely not be faulted as it is pretty much perfect with just a small trace of an English accent. It’s apparent that he speaks the language so fluently that he doesn’t just phonetically mimic the sounds but properly expresses himself and is comfortable acting in it.
Of course that wasn’t enough for Lee. Just as he perpetuated the myth that he spoke German with a Chinese accent for Das Geheimnis der gelben Narzissen/The Devil’s Daffodil (1961), his claims that for this production he didn’t just speak German but German with an American accent is equally exaggerated. After all, none of his fellow German actors on this movie made any attempts to disguise their native language and add English accents to their voices either.
And although Lee actually dubs himself for the original German version of the film, he is badly dubbed by someone else for the English language version. Go figure!
Lee is one of the main stars in this production and has some of the best scenes. He plays an FBI agent and an authority on Chicago gang crime who just happens to be in London professionally and is able to assist Scotland Yard.
When followed by a gang member aimed to kill him, he whips out not one but two guns out of his mackintosh, shoots the threat, then whirls the guns around in Western movie fashion, blows the gun smoke away and utters a one-liner.
In another scene he is meant to resemble a worker at a building site but is instead wearing a beret and dressed in commando gear more suitable for general warfare while being involved in yet another massive shoot out.
Despite the number of movies Lee ended up having under his belt, it is rare to see him actually being involved in contemporary action scenes so for that alone Secret of the Red Orchid is worth watching.
When confronting Kinski in one the scenes he also makes good use of his height by towering over him.
Though one of the main stars, this film is not one to rely on a single hero. It is more an ensemble piece and as such we have a variety of performers next to him.
Adrian Hoven is the regular Scotland Yard detective, who at this time in the series would more typically be played by Joachim Fuchsberger, and Marisa Mell, the Karin Dor-Ersatz romantic interest.
Austrian Hoven in the 1950s was a very popular actor mainly known for his Sonny Boy image, playing young romantic heroes and charmers. Yet despite his type casting he comes across as somewhat stiff when trying to flirt with the stunning Marisa Mell. From the mid-1960s on he changed direction and started directing and producing some notorious Trash, most notably the witch/torture shocker Mark of the Devil (1973). He also acted in a number of Jess Franco films (Necronomicon, Sadisterotica, Kiss Me Monster).
Fellow Austrian Marisa Mell is one of those actresses who, regardless of the quality of the movies she appeared in, just can’t do no wrong.
Best known for Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik (1968). She would return to Rialto at the very end of the Wallace cycle for another unrelated orchid themed thriller: Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972), an Italian-German co-production that in Germany was promoted as the 32nd and final entry to its Edgar Wallace cycle but that abroad is mainly considered a classic giallo.
For Secret Mell was at the beginning of her career and this was one of her first bigger productions. Her character, Lilian Ranger, oozes charm and charisma and it’s no wonder (but no less creepy) when her octogenarian employer (played by Fritz Rasp in his fifth and final Wallace performance) offers to marry her in order to secure her future. Wallace movies often have some sleazy elderly gentlemen with an eye for younger ladies but this is still one of the weirder “arrangements” on offer, even more so as Rasp’s character genuinely seems to operate out of a feeling of concern for her. But when one looks like Rasp, it does get wonderfully icky easily.
And then we have Eddi Arent as the butler who comically always seems to pick employment in the very same households that fall victim to the extortion rings and is in his element when he helps to fortify a rural castle belonging to a Colonel under attack by one of the gangs.
Of course the baddies always have more fun and are generally more memorable. And amidst all the machine gun carnage in good old London Town, Klaus Kinski as “Der schöne Steve” (Beautiful Steve) and Eric Pohlmann stick out.
Both play opposing gang leaders (Kinski is working for the mysterious O’Connor) intent on taking over London with their rivalling extortion schemes and in one scene can be seen on opposite sides of a gigantic office table in diplomatic talks over the division of the city.
Kinski is dressed in classic Chicago gangster style and operates a tobacco shop with a secret passage way and a parrot that warns him of the oncoming police.
And Pohlmann is wonderfully hen pecked by his wife.
If you never saw Pohlmann before you’re still bound to have heard him nevertheless as he had provided the voice of Blofeld in From Russia With Love and Fireball.
And in between the good’uns and the bad’uns we have Pinkas Braun’s as Edwin, Rasp’s globetrotting nephew.
Swiss born Braun is one of the series' most powerful and convincing actors. Secret was only his first appearance in a Krimi but over the years he became a semi-regular for Rialto and other companies and can also be seen in the next movie of the series Die Tür mit den 7 Schlössern/The Door With Seven Locks (1962).
Braun’s character is by far the most interesting as he operates in an obscure twilight sphere. Little is known of his whereabouts and he can be both charming and genteel as well as ice cold and threatening when the situation demands it. When the police is unable to guarantee Lilian Ranger’s safety after her unexpected windfall, Edwin not only doesn’t take the loss of his inheritance personal but also contacts Minelli’s wife, the wonderfully ditzy Cora (Christiane Nielsen), and manages to scare her so much by way of some very well placed ambiguous compliments that she alone manages to convince her husband to turn the pressure off Lilian and apologise for the “misunderstanding”.
Overall Secret of the Red Orchid is worth a watch as an entertaining riff on the already fading classic gangster genre. For the most part lacking any of the familiar Gothic elements that are usually associated with the series, it is understandable that it tends to always play second fiddle to some of their more famous entries but taken on its own, this is a fast moving well acted ensemble piece. Ashley, the director, may not have made a lot of friends on set but did still manage to create a very decent workmanlike production.
At least in its original German version.
Tread carefully before you approach the English dub.
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.
