| Krimi #11 THE AVENGER |
| Directed by Karl Anton Heinz Drache . Michael Brixan Ingrid van Bergen . Stella Mendoza Benno Sterzenbach . Sir Gregory Penn Ina Duscha . Ruth Sanders Ludwig Linkmann .Henry Longvale Siegfried Schürenberg . Major Staines Klaus Kinski . Lorenz Voss Al Hoosmann . Bhag After hearing some nice reviews about this film I finally tracked it down and settled in to watch it.This author had major problems with the first viewing.Felt it was slow and boring.But another viewing in the right frame of mind changed that opinion. It starts off promisingly enough.A limo bursts out of the night and dumps a box on the roadside.Two women out biking come upon it and open it up.SURPRISE!There is a decapitated head in it!Booga booga!It seems that human heads are being dropped off all over London. We're dumped right in the thick of things after the opening credits.In exposition we learn that there have been a dozen decapitations recently.Since a Special Branch officer was killed in this manner another,Michael Brixton is assigned to investigate the murders. We have a movie within a movie scenario which can either be fascinating or boring depending on your taste.The killer seems to be targeting the cast and crew of a movie being shot in the English countryside.As usual in these Edgar Wallace based films we have several red herrings.The slimy movie producer with a twisted sexual kink;the fading actress, the haughty arrogant blackmailing screenwriter,the ape like creature owned by the producer just to name a few.Most of them wind up with a haircut at the neck level. The killer's identity really comes as no surprise.The decapitation machine is rather gruesome. The film picks up in the last half hour with a frantic ending.But the script is slow at times The cast rises above the material. Some film critics claim that this film influenced Italian directors like Bava & Argento.I rather doubt that far fetched claim.Maybe a later film such as Strangler Of Blackmoor Castle with its black gloved killer contributed to the giallo mythos. This was the only Edgar Wallace film shot by this particular studio.A lawsuit was threatened and they folded their tent on the series.That is too bad because this film does not have the comedy relief that the other studios shoehorned ill fittingly into their films.It would have been nice to see what they would have done with other Edgar Wallace films |
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