(1963)
Dir - Edwin Zbonek
Overall: MEH
Sex murders and a kangaroo court of hooded gentleman who have an underground lair to capture, sentence, and execute all manner of corporate scoundrel join forces for screen time in The Mad Executioners, (Der Henker von London); a film which packs a good amount of horror motifs into its otherwise bog-standard krimi framework. This was one of several Bryce Edgar Wallace adaptions done during the 1960s that competed with the cinematic retellings of Bryce's more famed father Edgar, whose pulp novels were being brought to the screen by various studios at a hefty rate. Tonally, it bounces around with light comic relief and grisly killings that never get visually explicit, as is common within the genre. The hooded executioners of the title make a striking and malevolent impression though, condemning their victims before even going through their redundant sentencing rituals, throwing them into a coffin while the hapless saps scream their innocence, and then taking them somewhere to be hung by a museum piece rope that they keep managing to steal.
(1964)
Dir - Janusz Majewski
Overall: MEH
This adaptation of the Théophile Gautier short story "Avatar" was adapted for the small screen and written and directed by Janusz Majewski, who would later go on to make the famed Polish folk horror film Lokis. Quirky in tone, "Awatar”, czyli zamiana dusz, (Avatar or Exchange of Souls), is more of a light and fantastical melodrama than a proper work in Gothic horror, but its premise at least has an otherworldly undercurrent that may appease genre hounds. It concerns a mysterious "doctor", (who may or may not officially be Satan), who proceeds to switch the bodies of a Count and a lowly Parisian man, the latter seeking the doctor's services to get his hands on the Count's Countess. Even at less than an hour in length, it is a labored watch, with an elongated first act that takes its time getting to the soul switcheroo, at which point the narrative spins its wheels some more until the doctor pulls off one more mischievous trick on the humbled sap who came to him in the first place. It can be viewed as a cautionary tale of misplaced wish fulfillment warranting some comeuppance, or just the usual lesson of not realizing the merit of one's own life until living in the shoes of another. There have been plenty of body-swap movies over the decades, but this one is less memorable than the lot of them and has understandably lingered in obscurity.
(1966)
Dir - John Llewellyn Moxey
Overall: MEH
A British/West German co-production, Circus of Fear, (Das Rätsel des silbernen Dreieck, Mystery of the Silver Triangle, Scotland Yard auf heißer Spur, Circus of Terror, Psycho-Circus), has a top-billed Christopher Lee, who is joined by fellow English actors Skip Martin, Suzy Kendell, Leo Genn, and Anthony Newlands, all of whom had and/or would appear in other horror-adjacent works. Lee's role is actually supporting yet still prominent, but Klaus Kinski has an even smaller part, doing his usual krimi shtick of lurking around silently while looking unwholesome. Speaking of krimis, this technically qualifies with it being barely adapted from Edgar Wallace's 1928 novel Again the Three Just Men, even if it is shot in color and the big top setting is miles removed from the usual hustle and bustle of a wet and shadowy London. The plot still has pretty girls getting harassed, someone out for revenge, blackmail, coveted money, and someone posing as a person that they are not, but the body count is comparatively low, and the character with the personal vendetta is actually not out for murdering unrelated circus performers left and right. Lee talks with a German accent and gets picked on by a little person though, so there is that.
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