| Curse Of The Hidden Vault |
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| Curse Of The Hidden Vault has quite a few things going for it initially such as F J Gottlieb directing and Peter Thomas doing the music.The cast has the familiar faces of Klaus Kinski, Werner Peters, Eddie Arent and other usual Edgar Wallace suspects. But all is not well. The film revolves around an evil old man who used to run a crooked casino.He is dying and for some unexplained reason wants to leave his ill gotten gains to the daughter of one of the men he swindled. The kicker is he has the money in a very complicated vault that is lined with death traps. His house is also lined with killing devices. Ms Kent arrives in London at old man Real's request with her friend played by Eddie Arent.The duo are quickly kidnapped by a syndicate that wants to break in the vault and plunder it. But Jimmy Flynn who deals on both sides of the law is keeping an eye on her.Inspector Angel of Scotland Yard is also very interested. As is usual in these krimis double crosses, secret identities and murder abounds.There is the aforementioned vault that actually can be broken in to but seems impossible to get out of alive.It all ends up in a bleak windmill where quite a few of the cast meet gruesome deaths crushed in the machinery. This is where the film does have a surprise or two up its sleeve. There are quite a few problems with this film.First off the print viewed seems to have been edited with a meat cleaver. Later in the film we learn from discussion that Jimmy Flynn met Ms Kent on the train into London so obviously it was one of the scenes edited out. There are a few other annoying rough cuts and discussions about things that we never did see happen earlier. The comedy takes the forefront in this film.Maybe I'm being sacreligious here but it seemed like the director turned Arent loose and told him to burn some screentime as we've got a weak plot. For this writer a little of that goes a long way.In this case it goes too far. The movie struggles as it is but when the comedy relief takes over this really gets hard to sit through.Inspector Angel is rather dull as dry toast.Jimmy Flynn isn't quite dashing enough to cut it as a figure of mystery. Klaus Kinski just hangs around looking creepy and says little. So what we have is a decent cast wasted in a film that could have been much better. In fact the film was done to better advantage two years earlier in Door With Seven Locks. This film is cursed indeed. |