(1968)
Overall: MEH
Rialto Films' Edgar Wallace adaptation train continues with The Horror of Blackwood Castle, (Der Hund von Blackwood Castle, The Hound of Blackwood Castle), which can be described as a krimi version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes book The Hound of the Baskervilles. Well, that and a bit of old dark house mystery since it begins with a woman arriving at the spacious abode of the title in order to collect her inheritance from her dead sea captain father; an abode that is full of secret passages, pet snakes, skeletons on wires in doorways, and overall Gothic horror decor. For anyone who has seen other entries in director Alfred Vohrer and screenwriter Herbert Reinecker's Wallace cycle, they will recognize a few actors, several motifs, and the overall busy tone that is equipped this time by an elaborate plot for the books. Characters drop like flies, switch sides, go behind each other's backs, and come to conclusions that they only would because they read the tangled script, but part of the fun is how difficult these films are to keep up with in the first place.
(1968)
Overall: MEH
Despite what the American title may imply, The Zombie Walks, (Im Banne des Unheimlichen, The Hand of Power), does not in fact contain a mobile corpse. Well, not in the literal sense at least. Another in a long line of Edgar Wallace krimis, (with screenwriter Ladislas Fodor stepping in for director Alfred Vohrer's usual collaborator Herbert Reinecker in the script department), it is based on Wallace's 1927 novel The Hand of Power. It has blackmail, people faking their own deaths, people after big piles of money, a cocksure female journalist, ineffective police inspectors, and best of all, a villain dressed up as The Misfits mascot the Crimson Ghost with a fedora on, who murders people with a scorpion ring that goes "boink" when it springs into action. As is always the case with these films, the plot moves fast enough to afford several logical liberties like why do all of the victims freeze so that the killer can take his sweet time caressing their faces, why does no one question that a character has green skin, why would a poisonous gas kill anyone in a huge basement with plenty of ventilation, and why does a funeral full of people just shrug off the fact that they all heard laughing from inside of a coffin without checking it? Silly, head-scratching stuff to be sure.
(1969)
Overall: MEH
Stepping away from Edgar Wallace adaptations though sticking within a krimi formula of sorts, School of Fear, (Sieben Tage Frist, Seven Days of Grace), is a noticeably different affair from director Alfred Vohrer. Besides working with a new production company and screenwriter this time instead of Rialto Films and Herbert Reinecker, (Roxy Film and Manfred Purzer, respectfully, the latter adapting a novel from Paul Hendriks), the tone is far removed from the lighthearted and fast-paced style of the bulk of Vohrer's 1960s work. Set exclusively at a boarding school, this one still introduces a slew of characters for red herring purposes, but the humor is absent and the plot gets stuck in a repetitive muck that loses momentum all the way until the killer reveal. Bodies eventually turn up without the murders being shown on screen, people are questioned, the students and teachers all act like assholes, and it a slog to sit through. This is also due to the pedestrian presentation, lacking flare and seeming disinterested in its own story. Even with the racy reveal involving a homosexual affair and an ex-Nazi who identity swaps, it ends on a whimper instead of a bang and by that token, the entire movie can be considered a whimper.
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