THE BLACK ABBOTT (1963)

The Black Abbott on the prowl

THE BLACK ABBOTT (aka Der schwarze Abt/1963). Director: Franz Josef Gottlieb. 

Lord Harry Chelford (Dieter Borsche of Dead Eyes of London) lives on his estate -- which is reputed to be haunted by a Black-robed Abbott -- and is engaged to Leslie (Grit Boettcher), although she clearly prefers her fiance's cousin, Dick Alford (Joachim Fuchsberger). Leslie's brother, Arthur (Harry Wustenhagen), has a great deal of debts, and is taken advantage of by his employee, Fabian Gilder (Werner Peters) -- Arthur either talks his sister into marrying Gilder, or he will send Arthur to prison. In the meantime, Gilder, Mary (Eva Ingeborg Scholz) who wants Lord Chelford for herself, and others -- including the berobed abbott -- are searching the grounds of the Chelford estate for a rumored treasure of gold. Someone has already been stabbed to death -- who will be next?

Kinski with Fuchsberger

The Black Abbott is based on an old novel by Edgar Wallace which is convoluted and dull and which I never did manage to finish. This film version -- there have been several -- is almost too faithful to the story and is also convoluted and dull. Frankly, although I generally love West German krimi (crime) movies based on Edgar Wallace novels, if this had been the first one I watched I probably wouldn't have sat through the others. Fuchsberger and Peters are familiar players -- Klaus Kinski (of Web of the Spider) is also in this, playing a sinister butler with a criminal history -- and we are also plagued by the presence of the awful Eddi Arent in his usual role of police bumpkin and alleged comedy relief.  

Mismatch: Werner Peters with Grit Boettcher

The Black Abbott has some atmosphere but not much suspense despite so many different characters running around to little effect. More than one of them dress up as the Black Abbott on different occasions, although there usually isn't much sense to it. There was a British film version of the novel in the thirties, and other krimi movies were based on it afterwards (such as The College-Girl Murders in 1967), although these took a lot of liberties. If you're looking for a horror film with a sinister monk beheading people, this isn't it. What you will get instead is a tedious mystery film that fades from memory even as you're watching it. 

Verdict: Could have killed the West German Edgar Wallace sub-genre practically at the starting gate. *. 

WEB OF THE SPIDER

Klaus Kinski and Anthony Franciosa

WEB OF THE SPIDER (aka Nella stretta morsa del ragno/1971). Director: Antonio Margheriti.

While Edgar Allan Poe (Klaus Kinski of Slaughter Hotel) is visiting London, he is approached by an American reporter named Alan Foster (Anthony Franciosa of Tenebrae). Lord Blackwood (Enrico Osterman) offers Foster money if he can spend one night in his supposedly haunted estate from which no one has ever returned. Once there, Foster meets two beautiful women: Elisabeth (Michele Mercier) and jealous Julia (Karin Field), who has a hankering for the former. Dr. Carmus (Peter Carsten) appears out of nowhere and shows Foster visions of what transpired in the past: the sexual intrigues of Elisabeth, her husband, William (Silvano Tranquilli), her lover Herbert (Raf Baldassarre), and, of course, the horny Julia. It slowly dawns on Foster that he may be in a house of ghosts, or worse, vampires ... 

Franciosa with Mercier

Web of the Spider begins in an intriguing fashion, but it soon becomes apparent that its mess of a script is a stew of barely coherent cliches that hardly holds together. By the final quarter you're just hoping it will hurry up and end already. The tenuous connection of Poe -- who only appears at the opening and the very end -- is almost insulting, as this has nothing to do with the writer, despite the creepy house and the screwed up family who inhabit it -- this is no Fall of the House of Usher. 

Karin Field

Franciosa gives a decent, if dubbed, performance, the other actors are all fine, and the film can be quite good to look at. The trouble is that the movie is so over-lit that the atmosphere evaporates and it becomes comical how bright everything is when you're in a house at night with a couple of candles (sometimes no candles), and there isn't much moonlight, either. Sure, you want the audience to get a look at the sets, the superior art direction, and the attractive color schemes, but a few realistic shadows wouldn't have hurt that much. For all the ghosts running around the house, the film never works up an especially spooky ambiance. The picture does have a satisfactorily ironic conclusion for those willing to stick around until the end. Antonio Margheriti also directed Battle of the Worlds and many other lousy movies.

Verdict: Watch Tony in Career instead. **. 

DR. MABUSE VS SCOTLAND YARD

Possessed by Dr. Mabuse: Walter Rilla

DR. MABUSE VS SCOTLAND YARD (aka Scotland Yard jagt Dr. Mabuse/1963). Director: Paul May.

Although the evil criminal mastermind Dr. Mabuse (Wolfgang Preiss) has died, his spirit has taken over the mind of sanitarium director, Professor Pohland (Walter Rilla). Therefore there is a new Dr. Mabuse afoot, one who is determined to take over the British government. To that end he enlists the aid of Ernest (Wolfgang Lukschy), whom he helps escape from police and who gets a new face. Ernest and others steal a device invented by Professor Merton (uncredited) -- this can take over the minds of anyone the device is trained upon and turn them into Mabuse's slaves. Fighting Mabuse are Inspector Vulpius (Werner Peters), and agent Bill Tern (Peter van Eyck), who lives with his feisty mother, Gwendolyn (Agnes Windeck). There are assorted plots and counter-plots; successful and abortive assassinations; the kidnapping of a princess (Ruth Wilbert) and Bill's steady, Nancy (Sabine Bethmann); a train robbery and a copter chase; but none of this is very interesting or handled with any real suspense or excitement. Along with van Eyck, Klaus Kinsiki is another familiar face as an agent who is temporarily mind-controlled by Mabuse. An interesting touch is how "Mabuse," once captured, is just a harmless, pitiful old man after the master criminal's spirit has left his body. This is a sequel to The Terror of Dr. Mabuse. Peter van Eyck also appeared in The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse but played a different character. Mabuse would return. By this time the Mabuse films had turned into nominal spy pictures with Mabuse in the place of, say, Dr. No.

Verdict: Manages the amazing feat of making Mabuse very dull. *1/2.

THE AVENGER (1960)

Heinz Drach

THE AVENGER (aka Der Racher/1960). Director: Karl Anton.

An unknown person who calls himself the "Executioner," has been running about decapitating criminals and the terminally ill and leaving their heads in boxes. Special agent Michael Brixan (Heinz Drach) follows a lead at a film set where he finds a clue in an old script. He is convinced that someone connected to the film company may be either the Executioner or an ally. Suspects and other characters include the director, Jackson (Friedrich Schoenfelder); his temperamental star, Stella Mendoza (Ingrid van Bergen); the elderly Henry Longvale (Ludwig Linkmann); the perverse Sir Gregory (Benno Sterzenbach); Bhag (Al Hoosmann), Gregory's brutish native manservant; the scriptwriter Voss (Klaus Kinski); and Ruth Sanders (Ina Duscha), the niece of the latest victim and an aspiring actress. Based on another novel by the prolific Edgar Wallace, The Avenger is not as horrific or gory as the plot may suggest, but there are some creepy final scenes taking place in old tunnels and caverns beneath an estate. Lots of red herrings in this but the wind-up is satisfying. Many more West German Wallace adaptations would follow.

Verdict: Another convoluted but entertaining Wallace story. **1/2.

DEAD EYES OF LONDON

DEAD EYES OF LONDON (aka Die toten Augen von London/1961). Director: Alfred Vohrer.

In London, there is a series of "accidental drownings" of vision-impaired men on foggy nights. These deaths are tied in with the Greenwich insurance company and may have something to do with a home for blind pensioners run by Reverend Dearborn (Dieter Borsche). Then there are the infamous, possibly mythical "blind killers of London" run by Jacob Farrell aka "Blind Jack" (Tor Johnson lookalike Ady Berber). Inspector Holt (Joachim Fuchsberger) and a braille teacher named Nora (Karin Beal) nearly pay a heavy price for getting involved in this mystery. Dead Eyes of London is a remake of an old Bela Lugosi film of the same title (aka The Human Monster), and it is an extremely suspenseful movie with some very good plot twists. Karl Lob has contributed some unusual camera work, such as a shot from inside a man's mouth as he sprays his throat! There's an exciting climax, and a well-handled murder inside an elevator shaft. The biggest "name" in the cast is Klaus Kinski [Doctor Zhivago] as Edgar Strauss. Based on a novel by the prolific Edgar Wallace.

Verdict: Well-done West German suspense thriller. ***

THAT MAN IN ISTANBUL

Horst Buchholz

THAT MAN IN ISTANBUL (aka Estambul '65/1965). Director: Antonio Isasi.

Since the extremely popular From Russia With Love took place mostly in Istanbul, is it any wonder that a spy film made the following year would also use the city as its setting? But this flick is perhaps more similar to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in that the hero is a shady character who gets into the spy action for money. An atomic scientist named Pendergast (Umberto Raho) has been kidnapped, but just as he is being returned his plane blows up -- but was he on it? American agent Kelly (Sylvia Koscina) suspects that Tony Mecenas (Horst Buchholz), who has a gambling operation, a few henchmen and many female admirers, might be behind this deception. However, the two wind up working together as a bunch of Chinese (who seem to work for a Spectre-like organization that also has its own island) and assorted roughnecks are out to find Pendergast and kill off anyone who gets in their way. That Man in Istanbul doesn't make a lot of sense, and doesn't begin auspiciously, but it gets a bit better and has some effective sequences, chief among them a fight high in a minaret-like tower, and a suspenseful climax when Tony and Kelly try hard to get away from a boat that's about to explode. Klaus Kinski [The Million Eyes of Sumuru] shows up briefly but has a decent fight-to-the-death with Tony, who runs half-naked through a Woman-Only sauna and winds up in the back seat of a limo with a startled dowager. The film is essentially farcical, with Buchholz turning to the audience at one point and saying, "What -- me worry?" Tony's affectionate nickname for Kelly is "baby fat" and there's another lady named Elisabeth (Perette Pradier) who gets involved in the action. Buchholz [Dead of Night] does not give a bad performance as a "cute" light-hearted operative, but no one would have cast him as Bond. An international "eurospy" co-production.

Verdict: A really good-looking hero never hurts. **1/2.

THE MILLION EYES OF SUMURU

Shirley Eaton as the evil Sumuru

 THE MILLION EYES OF SUMURU (1967).  Director: Lindsay Shonteff.

 Back in the 1950s Sax Rohmer, the creator of Fu   Manchu, decided to start another series about a  mysterious master villainess named Sumuru.  There were five books in this series. I've only  read two of the five books so far, and they are  fun, if below the fiendish and suspenseful level  of the Fu Manchu novels. But they are all  masterpieces compared to this woeful film  adaptation. In this Sumuru (Shirley Eaton), like  in the books, wants to create a new golden world  via her female helpmates and doesn't care who  she has to kill to get it. Tommy Carter (Frankie  Avalon) and Nick West (George Nader) are  some kind of agents out to stop Sumuru from various plots and assassinations. Million Eyes is cheap and cheap-looking, but the worst problem is the approach, which is meant to be light, even tongue-in-cheek, like a sixties spy film, but instead comes off as stupid. The shame of it is that Eaton [Your Past is Showing] not only looks beautiful in her dark wig but gives an excellent performance, perfectly embodying Sumuru in a way that would probably have pleased Sax Rohmer. The less said about Frankie Avalon, who wandered in from a beach party movie, and  George Nader [Shannon] the better. Nader was capable of some excellent performances, such as in a sixth season episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but he doesn't seem to have a clue as to how to play his role in a mish mosh like this. As in the novels, Sumuru has a habit of turning her enemies into stone. Wilfred Hyde-White adds a touch of class as Colonel Baisbrook and Klaus Kinski [Circus of Fear] is sort of fun as President Boong and his double. That same year James Coburn starred in In Like Flint, which was also about an all-female organization trying to take over the world. Maybe the screenwriter was a Sumuru fan.

Verdict: Both Sumuru and Sax Rohmer deserve better. Hell, even Frankie Avalon does! *1/2.

CIRCUS OF FEAR aka PSYCHO-CIRCUS

CIRCUS OF FEAR (1967/British). Director: John Moxey. AKA Psycho-Circus.

The American title of Psycho-Circus tried to make this sound like a horror film even more than the original British title, but this is actually a big top mystery based on a story by the prolific Edgar Wallace. Police trace a member of a gang that robbed an armored car to Barberini's circus, but it turns out there are already a number of other suspicious characters there, including a lion tamer named Gregor (Christopher Lee) who is supposedly disfigured and constantly wears a black hood over his head. There are a couple of mostly off-screen murders, assorted histrionics, and a fair amount of tedium. Aside from Lee, Klaus Kinski and Suzy Kendall (Torso) are the best-known names in the cast. Like a low-grade TV production for the most part.

Verdict: You can skip this one. *1/2.