‘It’s an ancient drawing of the secret passage; really simple to open, sir.’
A young nobleman is convicted of murder and sentenced to permanent incarceration in an asylum. One night someone helps him to escape and he flees to his ancestral family home. Meanwhile, a series of killings is being perpetrated by a cloaked figure using a mechanical blue hand…
There was a tremendous upsurge in the popularity of thriller writer Edgar Wallace in Germany in the 1960’s. Film producers flocked to turn these crime dramas into films, and quite often recruited director Alfred Vohrer for the job. Between the years 1961 and 1969, he made a series of 14 films based on the author’s work and often recruited the same actors to take part. Here we get regulars Harald Leipnitz as the police inspector and Klaus Kinski as both the prime suspect and his twin brother! Given that this was one of the later entries in this unofficial series, there is efficiency and a smart professionalism to the work, but there’s also the inevitable feeling of ‘production line’ entertainment.
After his trial, something is definitely a little off about the asylum where Kinski is sent to be held under the benign care of Dr Mangrove (Carl Lange). When Kinski’s pretty sister (Diana Körner) disappears, it becomes obvious that something far more sinister is going on than just a deranged Kinski having murdered the family gardener. Unfortunately, the plot lacks logic and loses focus when it decides to concentrate on Leipnitz’s investigation, rather than Kinski’s situation. Also later story developments push credibility beyond the point where the audience can successfully suspend their disbelief. Just how did Kinski get convicted in the first place? I hope Leipnitz wasn’t in charge of the original investigation!
Performances are generally good and Vohrer does manage to create some atmosphere with the gloomy interiors of the old dark house where the vast majority of the action takes place. However, the entire ‘blue hand’ element of the story comes over as little more than a gimmick, and the scenes with Körner trapped in a cell with rats and snakes may be the best thing here, but they look like they belong in a different film.
🎵Pleased to meet you… Hope you guess my name🎶
Perhaps those adapting Wallace were to blame but he was mostly active from 1921 to his death in 1933, so it may simply be that his work hasn’t stood the test of time. Also he was incredibly prolific, writing over 170 novels, and 900 short stories as well as 18 stage plays! So quality control may have been an issue… I can’t claim to have read any of them myself but, after having watched several of these film adaptations coming out of Germany in the 1960’s, l’m not in any hurry to start…
20 years after its original release, father and son Walter F Disbrow (Snr & Jnr) added extra scenes and put it out as ‘The Bloody Dead’ to general disappointment and derision. Kinski went onto fame (and some level of infamy!) after career making turns working with director Werner Herzog, including the title role in ‘Nosferatu, the Vampyre’ (1979). Körner landed a major supporting role in Stanley Kubrick’s gorgeous but sterile ‘Barry Lyndon’ (1975). As for Wallace? Well, the movie production line may have slowed down a bit over the last half century, but there’s still an occasional adaptation, and having written the script for the original ‘King Kong’ (1933), he still gets a credit each time the giant ape roars across our screens…
A middling Euro-thriller with some interesting elements but let down by a script that pushes the credibility envelope a little too far…
Mark David Welsh 