(1966)
Overall: GOOD
The first Rialto Films Edgar Wallace adaptation to be shot in Eastmancolor, The Hunchback of Soho, (Der Bucklige von Soho), is one of the more deliberately silly with a combination of outrageous and gruesome details. As opposed to most of the other installments through the years, this one is not based on a specific work from Wallace and it is not much a mystery since all of the good and bad guys and gals are laid out from the onset, with no red herrings to be found. A woman returns to England from America in order to legally inherent her father's wealth, only to get immediately kidnapped by a group of masquerading criminals who run a reform school for girls. There is also a hunchback character to make good on the title who fulfills the usual role of the hulking, mute muscle that is used by the perpetrators to do villainous things. It is straightforward from a narrative perspective and director Alfred Vohrer keeps the pace up agreeably, but it is not as visually stylized as his earlier black and white efforts. The film also has a ridiculous, scatty musical score by Peter Thomas that conveys a mood which is miles away from sinister, but again, it fits the more goofy tone just fine.
(1967)
Overall: GOOD
Another Edgar Wallace-based outing from the Rialto Films production company by frequent director Alfred Vohrer, Creature with the Blue Hand, (Die blaue Hand), fuses whodunit and old dark house elements into its krimi format. It is also more deliberately silly with a wacky jazz soundtrack, cartoonish, villainous set pieces perpetrated by an insane asylum overseer with a monocle, and a topsy-turvy plot involving elaborate secret passages, an inheritance, a room full of mannequins for some reason, and a guy with a spiked medieval gauntlet at his disposal to murderize people. The cast seems to be enjoying themselves with such convoluted hoopla, though as always it is difficult to tell where Klaus Kinski is concerned, who plays twin brothers and seems almost physically incapable of producing a smile unless it is for the most disturbing of purposes. The plot is so nimble that at times that it is difficult to keep up with and at the end of the day, a generous amount of it falls apart under a microscope. It is certainly entertaining though in a kooky and amusing way, using its more gruesome components as fun window dressing while letting the absurd story take center stage.
(1967)
Overall: MEH
Though Edgar Wallace's 1926 novel The Black Abbot was already adapted two years earlier by Harald Reinl as The Sinister Monk, that did not stop Rialto Films from including it in their own long-running series. The Monk with the Whip, (Der Mönch mit der Peitsche, The College Girl Murders, The Prussic Factor), is also based on Wallace's stage play version The Terror, but screenwriter Herbert Reinecker's script throws in several extra convoluted details that make this one of the more absurd entries of the lot. A mad scientist invents a quick-acting poisonous vapor, kills his assistant, and then gets himself killed when he sells it to the highest bidder, and this is just in the opening. A series of murders follow that ultimately prove to be a pointless ruse to throw off the police; a scheme that also involves briefly releasing prison inmates to act as henchman even though the bad guy already has other non-incarcerated henchman, including a bloke in a red hood who likes to whip people. It is the kind of script that is needlessly overstuffed for the sake of making both the audience and the characters confused as they try to solve the mystery, but director Alfred Vohrer adapts the usual tongue-in-cheek vibe that at least makes the film not insulting in its logical blunders.
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