1960s Alfred Vohrer Part Two

THE HUNCHBACK OF SOHO
(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.

CREATURE WITH THE BLUE HAND
(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.
 

THE MONK WITH THE WHIP
(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.

1960s Alfred Vohrer Part One

THE DEAD EYES OF LONDON

(1961)

Overall: MEH

 

A West German crime film set in England and dubbed in English by people mostly with American accents, The Dead Eyes of London, (Die toten Augen von London, Dark Eyes of London), was an adaptation of the Edgar Wallace novel of the same name, the Bela Lugosi-stared British version proceeding it by twenty-two years.  Director Alfred Vohrer helmed a handful of other films based off of Wallace's works, this being the first of them.  Focusing more on the police investigation aspects of the story than any horror ones present in the 1939 version, it stylistically dips its toes into more macabre visuals with low angle framing, a heavy use of shadowy lighting, and creepy shots of hairy hands reaching out for doomed victims.  A few other odd embellishments such as a POV shot from the inside of someones mouth while spraying their teeth and a skeleton cigarette dispenser keep it at least visually quirky.  There is also a young Klaus Kinski playing a, (of course), scuzzy low life which is always a plus.  Still, for a German film made only a few short years before they would begin their own cinematic New Wave, the plot is confounding and it all inevitably comes off as dated in both presentation and subject matter.

 

THE DOOR WITH SEVEN LOCKS

(1962)

Overall: GOOD

 

Previous done as a British production by director Norman Lee in 1940, The Door with Seven Locks, (Die Tür mit den sieben Schlössern, Chamber of Horrors) is an adaptation of Edgar Wallace's 1926 novel of the same name.  Klaus Kinski has a brief part early on, playing against type as a paranoid weasel before the story starts to weave its intricate plot of family members being picked off systematically from within due to an vast inheritance that is up for grabs.  We also get some stuff about a mad scientist and a fair amount of Gothic window dressing to push the film closer into the horror realm.  There are MacGuffins, (including the well-locked door of the title), a hulking and dim-witted brute, a gorilla in a cage, snakes, a comic relief police inspector named Holms, a guy with a gun for a hand, and Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" pops up on the soundtrack.  Some of the plot points are hilariously convenient and the scheme of Pinkas Braun's character proves to be too ridiculous to buy into, but this is not an issue since director Alfred Vohrer takes a breezy and humorous approach to the typically over-stuffed material.

 

THE SQUEAKER

(1963)

Dir - Alfred Vohrer

Overall: MEH

 

Director Alfred Vohrer continues his series of Edgar Wallace krimis with The Squeaker, (Der Zinker), based on Wallace's 1927 novel of the same name.  This was producer Horst Wendlandt's twelfth such movie and the fourth version of the Wallace book, as well as the only one not made in the 1930s.  Concerning a killer who is dubbed "The Squealer" for ratting on his victims to the police before doing away with them by way of Black Mamba venom, it has Klaus Kinski in his usual role as the unwholesome culprit, (Or is he?), who barely utters any dialog.  There are still some zany closeups courtesy of cinematographer Karl Löb, (a frequent Vohrer collaborator), as well as a flash of animated blood in the opening title sequence to spice things up.  As far as the plot goes, it follows the usual beats and is overstuffed with characters, red herrings, and the usual bouts of comic relief surrounding an ambitious journalist, which is a trope that goes back several decades at least.  It is overly-talky and difficult to stay invested in, but Vohrer and Löb keep the camera moving and there are some macabre set pieces sprinkled in that tip-toe this enough into horror terrain to appease genre fans.