Terror In The Fog: The Wallace Krimi at CCC
directed by Franz Josef Gottlieb, Harald Reinl
starring Karin Dor, Eddi Arent, Wolfgang Preiss
Eureka Entertainment
Although mostly forgotten today, for much of the first half of the 20th century there were few novelists as popular or prolific as Edgar Wallace. While he wrote in numerous genres, including sports journalism and real life adventure stories, it was his mysteries and thrillers that garnered him the most adulation. Unpretentious pulpy stories featured heroes from Scotland Yard as opposed to private detectives, as was the norm with other British authors like Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot) or Margery Allingham (Albert Campion). Wallace’s stories were full of secret societies, hooded killers, and twisty propulsive plots that kept the heroes in plenty of danger, with just enough time to sneak in a bit of romance. He even wrote the screenplay for King Kong (1933). In short, Wallace created perfect escapist fare.
Wallace’s stories were primed for film adaptation, which started in the silent era with dozens of films made in Great Britain well into the 1950s. The popularity of Wallace in his home country was understandable, but his fame in Germany is a bit stranger. One of the targets of the Nazis was escapist literature, and Edgar Wallace novels were banned under the Third Reich, so it became very fashionable for Germans to keep and read Edgar Wallace novels as a low-risk act of rebellion. For an entire generation, Edgar Wallace thrillers were treasured and beloved. When the West German film industry was allowed to rebuild in the aftermath of WW2, they found an instant hit with the 1958 adaptation of Wallace’s Fellowship of the Frog, and the German krimi film cycle was born. The kriminalfilm or krimi could refer to almost any mystery or thriller film. But the classic krimi cycle that started with Fellowship of the Frog is usually based on the works of Edgar Wallace or his son, Bryan Edgar Wallace. The krimi is a very specific, memorable, and influential niche of the genre film history.
The krimi films in the Eureka Entertainment Blu-ray set Terror In The Fog: The Wallace Krimi at CCC collects a half-dozen of the monochrome shockers, giving them a long overdue restoration and wide release. For decades these films were only available as 16mm home video transfers from Something Weird or Sinister Cinema mail order with, at best, mediocre picture and sound. But the krimi’s time has come, and these six films from CCC have arrived with beautiful restorations and tones of extras to thrill fans and newcomers alike.
Although CCC’s output is usually viewed as second tier to rival Rialto studio’s output, The Curse of the Yellow Snake, The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle, The Mad Executioners, The Monster of London City, and The Racetrack Murders are all terrific entries in the cycle. Rialto held the rights to the Edgar Wallace bibliography, so apart from The Curse of the Yellow Snake (which was co-produced with Rialto) Artur Brauner’s CCC fell back on the work of Wallace’s son Bryan Edgar Wallace. The differences between the two studios’ output and the nature of the two Wallace’s storytelling is not vastly different, with plenty of peppy, over the top villains, noble Scotland Yard detectives, and just enough romance and comic relief to keep the films balanced for around 90 minutes of trippy glee.
The films are a curious watch for the uninitiated, with a mix of mystery and horror tropes, often jarring comic relief, and sometimes incongruous jazz or electronic music scores, topped off by the often surreal insistence that these stories are indeed happening in England and about English people and not at all Germans in Germany. Apart from a bit of stock footage or second-unit photography, the films are entirely shot in Berlin.
Terror In The Fog: The Wallace Krimi at CCC kicks things off on a good foot with The Curse of the Yellow Snake. After the death of his father, a man discovers he has to get married to get his inheritance. Standing in the way of wealthy married bliss is his half-Chinese half-brother, who is the head of a secret cult and wants to take over the world, but has to have the stature of the yellow snake in order to achieve his plan for global domination. Even by the early 1960s, some of the overt racism of the original Edgar Wallace story had to be toned down, though it still retains a healthy dose of yellow peril tropes and laughably unconvincing Asian makeup. Racist tropes aside, The Curse of the Yellow Snake is quite entertaining with its delightful mix of mystery, action, and comedy, mostly in the form of Eddi Arent’s flamboyant and hapless antique collector. The film features some nice atmosphere and terrific escape and chases involving our millionaire playboy hero.
The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle moves the action out of the city to a vast country estate, where a killer decked in a black ski mask and gloves (a look that was common in krimi but would soon become synonymous with Italian giallo films) is out for revenge and a fortune in diamonds. Directed by the always interesting Harald Reinl and starring his then-wife Karin Dor, the film leans heavy into its gothic tropes, which move the film into borderline horror territory.
The Mad Executioners, aka The Executioner of London, deals with a secret star chamber where the black-hooded members of a secret society pass judgement and execute criminals they determined to have escaped justice. Their preferred method of execution is hanging, using the hangman’s noose on display in Scotland Yard’s Black Museum. While our beleaguered detective hero John Hillier tries to get to the bottom of the executioners, he is also trying to solve a sex killer case. Soon Hillier’s two cases collide with a head spinning final act.
Many have notated a direct link between the krimi films of Germany and the giallo films of Italy and Monster of London City certainly backs up that argument. The film’s killer, bedecked with a black ski mask and black leather gloves, is today more closely associated with giallo than krimi, even though the look started in Germany from books written by a Brit, so I guess it is a small world after all. A string of murders in Whitechappel have Scotland Yard convinced that Jack the Ripper is back. Is the actor playing the Ripper responsible for the murders? The film takes some non-subtle shots at the censors through the character of a Lord who wants to ban the Jack the Ripper play on moral grounds, without bothering to see it himself.
For a change of pace and place, The Racetrack Murders leaves the city behind for a country estate, giving the film a very different feel from the London-based titles. The setup is closer to an Agatha Christie novel than the purported Bryan Edgar Wallace adaptation promised. Duplicity seems to be a matter of course in the film, as virtually no one is who they claim to be, including the heroes of the story. The plot at times feels needlessly complicated, but it builds up momentum in the final act with a surprisingly good horse race, a tense shootout, and one of the most WTF endings in film history.
A string of murders with the same modus operandi committed by the masked Phantom of Soho takes place in a glamorous yet seedy fantasyland of 1960s London. As the murders continue and the clues rack up, it seems everyone connected with the nightclub Zanzibar is a suspect, including the head of Scotland Yard himself. Made with great panache by Franz Josef Gottlieb, who understands these films don’t need too much plot getting in the way of the story and takes great glee in setting up and knocking off various red herring characters until the climactic unmasking.
There is a great deal more to Eureka’s set than just handsome restorations of these films (note that bonus feature Phantom of Soho was only able to be included at standard definition, but is still a damn sight better than it looked in bootleg copies). All six films are accompanied by an in-depth introduction from Tim Lucas and audio commentaries from Kim Newman, Barry Forshaw, Stephen Jones, Kevin Lyons, and Jonathan Rigby. There is a terrific primer on the krimi cycle from Alexandra Heller-Nicholas called “Passing the Blade” that puts these films into context as inspiration for many of the tropes of giallo and slasher cinema and is a great kickoff to the set, while Tim Lucas and Stephen Bissette’s nearly 90-minute discussion on krimi is the perfect wrap-up to this long-needed Blu-ray set.
