Women in Krimi (Part I): Ingrid Steeger

Unknown photo-models were often put into minor "sexy" roles in the Wallace-like Krimis. Their fates show remarkable similarities and even more remarkable differences. Very few stayed in the movie-business, even fewer made it big. Others just dropped out and I had/have a hard time finding them.

So I start with something easy (for me): 

Ingrid Steeger

Ingrid Steeger was some kind of cultural treasure in Germany. Everybody knew her. Clothed and naked. She made the transition from 8mm BDSM loops to a well booked stage and TV actress and certainly was an often invited celebrity. Few people know that her voyage in the movie industry started with two Edgar Wallace Movies. She died in 2023.

Born April 1st 1947 in war-torn Berlin into the not-so-ideal familiy of PTSD soldiers, returning from POW-camps, women raped by russian soldiers and kids playing in minefields she is basically both neglected and abused throughout her childhood. Having to live in one room as family in a bombed- out city, does not help either.

Predictably bad at school, the only way out of this greyish nightmare that is Berlin in the 60ies are the newly opened discotheques where she and her older sister Julia become regular visitors  and due to her unusual combination of being both boyish-slender and buxomesque, a well photographed motive for the reporting newspapers.

Ingrid, having won a bauty contest - but not the
car.

First nude shoots bring her to the attention of Horst Wendland of Rialto who explores the possibility of bringing their Edgar Wallace up-to-date with fresh female faces and bodies. They give her and another model - Heidrun Hankammer - their first roles in the ill-planned and ill-executed "Gorilla von Soho", which  stars Uschi Glas.

In Gloria's Club, she is a barmaid and is seen in two short segments. In the first one she comes in with a tray, walking down the stairs. She hits the behind of the male model with that tray and walks on.

In the  second scene she just serves Whisky.

But nothing came from "Gorilla" for Steeger and after that movie she gets some minor roles here and there and basically does everything needed to survive. 

One BDSM-loop survives.

Erwin C. Dietrich, always looking for loose girls had had considerable success with snatching Hankammer from Rialto and her starring-role in "The Colonel's Nieces" 1968. 

He gives Steeger the starring role in "Me, the Groupie" (1970), a sleazefest of epic proportions, depicting her "scandalous" journey from a young, innocent girl to a drug-infested, sex-crazed groupie. 

A cautionary tale, told to the fullest extent  (including black masses and rape) by Dietrich, of course.  Steeger later wrote in her autobiography "And I think it's marvelous" about the real rapes that happened to her during that time which makes watching her "play" being raped very uncomfortable. A huge hit. And obligatory viewing for every sleaze fanatic.

Completely harmless scene from "Ich, ein Groupie"

When the "Report" movies get big shortly afterwards, she becomes a star. Alongside hundreds of young women, ready to strip off their clothes, she stands out, becomes a recognizable face and name in the cycle. Both obedient and feisty, she attracts a lot of men eager to exploit her. Naming the sex-movies she was part of and even the star would be too much for this blog. 

I counted 24 report-style movies in the span of 18 months.

Erwin C. Dietrich, of course, is riding the wave too and produces his "Underage Seductresses" series starring Steeger. Later he would recut the movies and redistribute them under different names to further make profit from her new found fame after she had become a TV-star. Steeger was not too happy, cutting him out of her autobiography and just giving him one line as "this swiss guy that recut one of my movies".

Record Cover of one of those awful fake-hit-song
LPS where semigifted studio-musicians rerecorded
the original hits without telling you. This still happens,
on youtube, but at least you don't have to pay for it.

In 1972 she gets a role in the last "real" Rialto EW-Krimi "Die Tote aus der Themse", of course mostly clothes-free.

She actually has a name here: Kitty. She is a nude model, working for the Photographer David Armstrong, played by Vadim Glowna.

Reality is not so much different for her, going through the wild life of hippidom with the dark sides of abuse and rape occasionally happening to her. 

In 1973 she caught the attention of Michael Pfleghar, a bigtime TV director who is looking for a german Goldie Hawn and a new plaything for himself. In the role of Gaby, the unhinged daughter of the "KLIMBIM" (something loud, fancy, shining and completely unnecessary maybe "Flitter Flutter" would be an approach of a translation) family, she becomes a national celebrity. The "Klimbim" series about a completely anarchic and dysfunctional family runs for 5 seasons and has guest stars like Jerry Lewis, Karin Dor, Curd Jürgens, Maria Schell, Dietmar Schönherr and Horst Buchholz.

Gaby making it big on the cover
of Germany's biggest (and only 
relevant) youth culture magazine.

Meanwhile her personal life is dominated by Pfleghar and cocaine is her run-to "little helper". After "Klimbim" she still works for Pfleghar in a series called "Two heavenly Daughters" with Iris Berben, who became a big movie producer in her later years and coincidentally had started as actress in Edgar Wallace Krimis too.

Iris Berben, Ingrid Steeger and Theo Lingen

Finally freeing herself, she is offered a steady stream of occasional roles in german TV-productions and does a lot of stage-touring in the early 1980s.

Her personal life stays troubled as she obviously has a habit of falling for the completely wrong men. Reading her autobiography, this is a an endless series of physical and mental abuse, breakdowns and and complete personality drainage. One would like to shout at her: "Wake up, Girl. Get a farm and raise chicken." But even that fails.

The list of lovers is endless as she is a trophy. Simple as that - and was not able or willing to get out of this role.

Re-enacting her Role as Gaby in the later years
in Sesame-Street, to the right is Liselotte Pulver

The later years see her struggling to get a steady income, writing and selling multiple memoirs that show a passive-agressive streak, maybe she thought her misfortunes would boost sales or maybe she was that way... As of now, her last book "Meine Mannschaft" (My team of men) in which she just talks about her numerous lovers and nothing else can be bought as overstock: 2000 units for 500 EUR/US-$.

She finally has got to move in and live with her older sister but steadily refuses to become part of the burnt-out-stars cycle of endless humiliating shows, admirably.

She died in 2023, making, for the last time, national news.

Late 1980s

1980s

Czech Poster for "Dead Girl from the Themse"

The Klimbim-Family whith Elisabeth Volkmann,
another "Report" veteran who later worked with
Fassbinder

"Housewife-Report", here already co-starring with
Elisabeth Volkmann

With Horst Wendland 1979

Winning the "Miss Filmfest" competition. 

Klimbim Family Reunion ca 2000

"Fly Me", the title song of "Two heavenly daughters" 
was sung by her

In "Klimbim" she sang a lot.
Most notably "And then I slit my dress and 
think it's marvelous" becomes a hit.

Totally and utterly politically incorrect
advertisment for "Rolo" the candy-roll...

How to easily watch german krimis in english

 Through one of your comments I detected a very simple method to watch a movie in SPOKEN english even when there is no dub available. A lot of lesser-known KRIMIs are out there on youtube but without subs or dubs. Now this is no problem anymore.

I tried a short clip from "The Green Archer" I have used AI to translate it to english:

I have used the AI-Tool BLIPCUT : https://videotranslator.blipcut.com

Sure it takes a while: Here is the result:

Mind you, this was created from the original in about 5 Minutes. Here is the original clip:

The service costs 40 US-$ per 90 minutes, but I think that prices will go down eventually. Furthermore maybe a group of people will share the costs as AI generated content is always public domain.

No, I don't get any money for this....

And YES, AI IS SCARY!

Addendum: I thought about listing all the krimis available on youtube for you. But that task is maddening as I am not sure which movies are accessible where and where to use a VPN. Furthermore those links don't last long and I cannot update them. I would advise you to check my LIST OF KRIMIS and look for them on youtube under the german original title. There are a lot of them out there.

KRIMI definition and sub-genres

 The german KRIMI movie genre generally describes german crime movies that were produced mainly from 1959-1972 that have cheap production values, are highly entertaining, surreal and even funny. Around 100 were produced in that time. 

A new german magazine for crime literature
If you want to read it: HERE

In Germany, Krimi stands for either crime-related movies or books. It is the abbrevation AND diminuation of either "Kriminalfilm" or "Kriminalroman". The diminuitive character means that their purpose is to entertain, not to educate. 

Sensationalist
german "True-Krimi"
magazine

Outside of german-speaking countries, only the Edgar-Wallace related Krimis are defined as Krimis. This follows the same pattern as Giallo. Certainly an Edgar Wallace Krimi would be advertised as Giallo in Italy and vice versa.

Let's find out which features make a movie unmistakably "Krimi" : 

Color or B/W: The more popular Krimis are in B/W and stylistically go back to the Film Noir which goes back to Expressionist Cinema which, of course, was a germanic thing. In retrospect, the black and white Krimis just "feel" more krimi than the color ones (of which there are much fewer as it was much more expensive to produce them) and the "Eastmancolor 3-Strip" films feel more "krimi" than the "Technicolor"-movies. The Technicolor-movies feel more "real" and coincidentally belong more to the gialli.

Indoor/Outdoor: The unique feel of the Krimis is given to fact  that most of the indoor-shooting took place for nearly all of them at CCC-Studios in Berlin which basically means that EW/BEW/Mabuse/ Films all had the same lighting and overall look to them.

The timeframe 1959-1972 is fixed by Rialto's output of Edgar Wallace Krimis, starting in 1959 with "Der Frosch mit der Maske" and ending 1972 with "Das Geheimnis der grünen Stecknadel". It is very odd that such a date is set. Nobody would think of setting the timeframe for spymovies according to MGM's James Bond cycle. Nobody would define  "Gialli" as being only produced between 1963 and 1976...

Then we got the setting. This is a surreal England as portrayed in the popular Miss Marple movies starring Agatha Rutherford with scary old ladies and spleeny husbands, preferrably nobility. In that, of course, the Edgar Wallace movies owe as much to Agatha Christie as they owe to EW. Out of budgetary reasons, germanic towns have to stand in for London, mostly Hamburg and Berlin but Munich as well as Vienna and Zurich or Welfian Hanover.

Joachim Fuchsberger was the male star of the 
Krimis, Karen Dor the female one.

Creepyness and humour. The Krimis were desingned to be as creepy as humerous, sometims silly. "The indian scarf" is the best example. Not only being basically an Agatha Christie movie, but it also boast the serial killings of the later gialli and a very ironic ending, trying to release the audience with a smile (which in this special case backfired).

A Scotland Yard Whodunnit. Typically, though not always the case, the killer is not known to us and will be revealed at the end. And it is Scotland Yard that investigates, sometimes there is an independent investigator (PI or simply boyfriend of damsel).

Gimmick-Killer. He's a monk, a nun, a priest, a skeleton, you name it. Sometimes.

Add to this to the existing definition by  HG Steinbauer, published on his "Krimihomepage":

1. German etc. (Co-) Production

2. Sensationalist/Outragous crime-plot

3. Recognizable German actors

4. Set in an idealized England, but shot mostly in a german country..

5. Comic-Relief character

6. Good vs. Evil and no in-between

7. Hero saves/gets girl in peril

Now let's have a look a the sub-genres:

A. "Edgar Wallace Style" Krimi: As described above, ideally based on a published Krimi (book), best if it was published in the "Goldman" Krimi-book series with its recognizable red covers. Those movies tried to mimic the style of the original "Rialto" - Edgar Wallace movies.

B. "Exotic" Krimi: Derived from the Edgar Wallace "Sanders"-Franchise, they mix exotic locations sometimes with spy activity. A "Fu Manchu" would be considered that.

C "Mabuse-Style" Krimi: Derived from the 1961 Movie "Die Tausend Augen des Dr. Mabuse", these are "Classic" Krimis but with a sci-fi touch and the aim of the criminal is "mind-control" and "world domination".

D "Giallo" Krimis: Starting with "6 Donne", most of the early italian thrillers were co-produced by the germans to sell them as "Krimis" to their audience. With the german and french movie markets dwindling quickly at the end of the 1960ies, the italians still were going strong at the BO until they caught up in 1976. 

"In the Style of Edgar Wallace",
otherwise german buyers would
be confused.

E "TV" Krimis: Yes, television was VERY quick to copy the Edgar Wallace style and produce some Krimi-highlights like "Das Halstuch" by Francis Durbridge. F. Durbridge became the Edgar Wallace equivalent for the small screen. These very well produced mini-series (each of the F. Durbridge Krimis had 4-6 episodes) absolutely have to be discovered outside of Germany. Some of them were even shot at CCC-studios like the "real" Krimis.

F "Grusel" Krimis. The scary ones, sometimes even supernatural, like "The Curse of the Green Eyes". I bet you never heard of this one.

Here is a short introduction.

The differences between Giallo and Krimi are quite obvious: The aim of the Krimis were to adress also a female audience. The target groups were young couples and thus, the girlfriend should have been not too frightened to get home. The Giallo does not care this and adresses a mostly male audience with an added south-european machismo. 

For the different Krimi movie franchises, please check THIS post.

Last words: As you might know, the germans don't get this when you talk to them about "Krimis". They would use "Edgar-Wallace-Style Krimi" or "Edgar-Wallace Epigonenkrimi" to describe these specific kinds of films.

This is original work, please refer to this blog when quoting. If you are interested in the german TV-Krimis, I wholeheartedly recommend this page : www.krimihomepage.de (translated by Google).

Yeah, ok, you want to know which 7 movies are in the DVD-box above:

1. Das Rätsel der Grünen Spinne (Mystery of the Green Spider) a musical Krimi (NO!!! Sub-Genre!!!) done by the folks that later gave us "Hotel der Toten Gäste". A curio.

2. Die Nylonschlinge.(The Nylon Noose) EC Dietrich's first KRIMI-style... eh... Krimi. Worthwhile though done on a very cheap budget. Dietmar Schönherr is a fine lead. Starring Laya Raki and her world-famous striptease routine (twice!!!) Come in folks,, come on in!!!

3. Das Geheimnis der Roten Quaste (The Mystery of the Red Tassel). "Tassel" Really. Strictly and 100% Austrian Krimistuff that was completely forgotten until this print showed up. An even greater curio.

4. Das Wirtshaus von Dartmoor (The Dartmoor Inn) is a better known EW-clone with better budget and some actual actors. They wanted to start their own series with it (based on the novel by famous crime author "Victor Gunn"who actually was a best-seller in 1964).Solid.

5. Der Nebelmörder (Killer in the Fog) started off as TV-Krimi, then became a movie to be shot in color, then became this black and white something. I have not seen it yet, so I cannot judge.

6. Der Würger vom Tower (The Tower's Strangler). Another EC cheapo Krimi, this time completely swissmade. But don't let that fool you. You won't find neither quality nor chocolate here. Adi Berber's last movie.

7. Der Spinnenmörder (The Bat / The SpiderKiller) based on "The Bat" this is a 1978 TV-Krimi, and not at all bad (ugh ...)

The Green Spider

Mystery of the Green Scorpio

Scary, Hard and Refined

The side effects of watching
too many Krimis AND
being a Krimiaut(h)or

Jess Franco, the walking death of Eurocrime (Part VII): The case of Jack the Ripper

    The Thesis: Every Eurocrime-Franchise that Jess Franco touched, had to be buried afterwards. Basically his movies are the sleazy epitaphs of once-well-regarded serials and characters: the last chance to squeeze some money out of an already dead topic.

Jump to each chapter HERE 

Clearly playing on
Profondo Rosso. There
was no competition,
though.

Jess Franco had not set a foot into Germany since 1971 and French soil had become too hot for him too. His habit of outspending his generous income had led to several vacated suitcases in unpaid hotels and whoever wanted to employ him had to do that on safe grounds and/or bail him out.

In comes Erwin C. Dietrich, who had already earned his credentials by being very ruthless when it comes to making money with movies, virtually stopping nowhere. He too had suspiciously closed down (or better stopped working in) his german companies and with the money transferred into Switzerland built his own movie empire there, in the end becoming one of the most successful entrepreneurs in that field.

Luckily, Dietrich was native Swiss, so he could cross borders as he wished and had nothing to fear from the German or French or Italian IRS. Furthermore he was fluent in all three languages and english. Very coincidentally, Jess Franco too had set up a company in Liechtenstein wich is basically the appendix of Switzerland with even less international obligations when it comes to money laundring.

Dietrich recalled the day they met for the first time when Franco just stepped into his Elite Films Zurich office, followed obviously by a financial creditor in person who would not leave his side until his depths were paid by Dietrich. 

Dietrich was aware of Franco's habit of repaying credits using extra takes from already financed movies (and making a new one out of it, and giving that as payment). So he had him watched. The length of the movie was contractually agreed before shooting and Franco only received 20% more footage than the film would have (basically on a 6000ft movie, he would get 7200ft) and had to pay if he used more. Furthermore there was always at least one Elite Film Zurich employee on the set to make sure that Franco did not change lenses "accidentaly" to shoot in another format. That one was Peter Baumgartner, Dietrich's pal and very capable in-house cameraman - which helped a lot.

This explains the relatively high quality of Franco's work for Dietrich. But the limitation on second or third takes still makes these movies unmissable Francoflicks.

The Erwin C. Dietrich Strangler Krimis series:

Mexican poster for "The Strangler
of the Tower"

I will dwell on the EC-Dietrich Krimis some other time. But here just quickly. EC Dietrich produced 3 Krimis during the 60ies, all of them have in one version or another "The Strangler" in the title. First one was "The Strangler of the Castle" which later became "The Nylon Noose". Although shot on a shoestring, it did exceptionally well, maybe because of the presence of Laya Raki who was - at that time - a worldwide celebrity and burlesque star.

 The money that came in was quickly distributed into different companys - bought as quickly as sold and always by longtime employees of Dietrich -. The follow-up would be "The Strangler with the Mask", which would be shot in color in Italy by an experienced director called Mario Bava. The 30% financing that Monachia (EC Dietrich) had, with the additional payment of the "German" stars gave him some leverage on the production. 

Sadly, all of Monachia's files accidentally fell into the Zurich Lake when the German police were looking for them (in 1972...). So we will never know how much of "Blood and Black Lace" actually is by Dietrich (who liked to write his own scripts as well). 

"Der Würger mit der Maske/Blutige Seide/Blood and Black Lace/6 Donne" did very well for a "foreign" Krimi, eventually proving that it was possible to build up the tension in color. And maybe (together with the phenomal success of "Fantomas") leading to distribution monopolist Constantin's decision only to distribute Krimis shot in color after 1964.

1965 Dietrich (as "Urania") invested the money gained  in a Krimi called "The Strangler of the Tower", Adi Berber's last movie. This one was handled by Dietrich, already in Switzerland,  alone. It did surprisingly well for a small b/w krimi, maybe beacause CCC had left the market and some people did like to watch black and white still. 

But Dietrich had produced another movie simultanously: "Black Market of Love" a sleaze-crime-epic that had a ridiculously high return on investment. Dietrich immediately dropped all plans to do another mainstream Krimi and went into sleazestream Krimis instead. With huge success. The titles alone are connoiseur's work: 

Black Market of Love

... and not even sixteen

Black Mink on Tender Skin

Porno Baby

Me, a Groupie 

Django Nudo and the Horny Women of Porno Hill

Underage seductresses (Part I & II) asf.

Black mink on tender flesh

But EC Dietrich never buried his plans of doing a "proper" Krimi.

This recut version is only available
on old VHS-tapes.Current releases
are the giallo-cuts.

A test-balloon had been set free in 1971 when Elite-Ascot bought the rights to "The Beast kills in cold blood" and recut this Kinski-vehicle for a german release as a Krimi "Das Schloß der Blauen Vögel" (The Castle of the Blue Birds) credited to popular german author Heinz G. Konsalik. Dietrich was trying to build up a new Krimi-brand after Edgar Wallace heavyweight Alfred Vohrer had successfully switched to the Mario Simmel (another german author) Krimis. 

In 1972 there is a strong connection to "The Red Queen Kills 7 Times", a very well made "Krimi/Giallo" hybrid, but I'll have to dive deeper into this.

With Jess Franco on board, obvious rehashs of the director's past films came naturally. Scifi-femdom (Sumuru/Blue Rita), Krimis (Deadly Avenger/Downtown), WIP (99 Women/Women behind bars). Plus he had recently added experience in period movies like Dracula. 

Furthermore, Erwin C. Dietrich was trapped: With porn going all the way in the early 70s, his simulated sex pictures went out of date and as close as he got to porn, he stayed clear from the actual act. But with his sensationalist movies he had been excluded from the mainstream, something he dearly wanted to achieve. The only movies of his that had  made reasonable money AND had been part of the mainstream were his Krimis. So why not try a new one?

With the Krimi-idea still hanging in Dietrich's head, Franco suggests a period drama on the case of Jack the Ripper and going with the times with additional gore and sex. If you have watched the uncut Bryan-Edgar-Wallace movies, you were surprised (like me) to see nudity and gore there already.

Who better to get as lead role than Klaus Kinski - an OG Krimi veteran. 

Case opened:  Der Dirnenmörder von London (The Whore-Killer of London) / Jack the Ripper

Come on, do I really have to tell you the plot?

Klaus is a doctor by day and sadistic slasher by night who likes to have sexual intercourse with the still warm bodies. He kills prostitutes as he needs to kill his mother over and over again. The girlfriend of the inspector lures him into a trap and he is caught....

Original German VHS Cover. 
Released in 1982 it was easily
one of the biggest selling item and 
immediately banned. 

If you think this sounds like a variation of "Das Ungeheuer von London", the 1964 Bryan Edgar Wallace (proto-) Giallo, you are not very far off the mark. Just imagine this all in  b/w with Joachim Fuchsberger and Karin Dor (and Kinski of course) set in the 1960s and you got a clean EW-type-Krimi. They even kept the comic relief character in. From the beginning this is so Krimi with the opening shot being the standard stock-footage of the Tower/London and immediately switching to Zurich as a probable stand-in. Color-coding is the same as in Franco's "Death Avenger" BEW, complete with a blind man at the killings and barrel-organ sound. There is a nice comparison between "The Sinister Dr. Orloff" and this movie which you can find here.

Never mind the modern windows or the prominently featured glass building blocks, never mind that a lake is not a river and never mind there basically is no fog in most of the scenes. Picture is most of the time sharp and there are even some fancy camera-work-shots going on.

Kinski is ... Kinski. You get what you pay for. With the knowledge we have today it is hard for me to appreaciate him and I literally felt very uneasy when the camera lingered long on his face in close-up. I wished I had not watched it on a 200" screen in my home cinema.

There is of course violence and heavy but unconvincing gore and surprisingly little sex. The whole structure is like a Krimi, coming in hard, then exploration then two or three set-pieces and in the end the killer is caught, which of course did not happen in the true-crime case.

Lina has only a small role, which helps.

It is a decent film with the odd anachronistic (Bryan)EW-feeling. But considering that this was the same year and the same market in which "Profondo Rosso" was released, these are worlds apart.

Hello, this is Jack the Ripper speaking....

Returns were good but not overwhelming (as always with EC-Dietrich Krimis), the movie made it big when released to the VHS-market in the early 80ies. Given the strictly meager budget, the movie drives it's point home and that is - of course - also to the credit of Jess Franco who wrote the script.

The most remarkable thing Dietrich stated was that "the scene that has Kinski rape Chaplin for the camera took an unnecessary amount of takes, and Franco enjoyed his perfectionism very much." No wonder that Josephine Chaplin quit movie making to work on television from then on (wait... this is the second time I write this, first time was Shirley Eaton after Sumuru II....).

Josephine clearly not enjoying the multiple takes

So this is the last of the Krimis and the last crime-movie EC-Dietrich would do. There can be a discussion about whether "Enigma Rosso" is the actual last one coming from that era, but not now and not here.

So did Jess Franco kill the Krimis?

Verdict:

This is a decent Krimi with heavy gore and sex. It definitively feels more Edgar Wallace than Argento. The times for these kinds of movies, however were gone and Franco was the wrong man to bring in new impulses. EC Dietrich never made a krimi again, but that is more attributed to the fact that he just could make more money out of utter sleaze, to which he (and Franco) went back after the lacklustre financial results of "Der Dirnenmörder von London".

Acquittal

Dietrich and Kinski did not get along well. Curtuosies aside this was not an option for a future collaboration which had been left open by the movie. If things had gone well, Dietrich would have been the first to milk the cow. The reviving of the old school Krimi had failed.

This is the last decently budgeted mainstream movie that Franco would be doing. But clearly, Krimis are not his thing. Franco - in all his Krimis - is more an emulator than giving the feeling that he is actually comfortable. His thing were naked women. Simple as that.

Dietrich now again went all sleaze-in because that was where the money lay. He had previously distributed the first two Ilsa-films in the german-language countries, so the contacts were there to let Jess Franco put his hands on something he himself had started back in the day with "99 Women". WIP

So next time it is Jess Franco vs. Ilsa

ADDENDUM:

There have been discussions on whether "Jack the Ripper" is a "real" Krimi or not. But there is no scientific explanation to what is a "Krimi". There is only one objective argument that this is not a "Krimi": It was shot in 1975, whereas the "authors" take 1959-1972 as the period of the "Krimi". But this is nonsense. Is "Opera" not a Giallo because it was made after 1980??? You cannot simply choose a timeframe when a movie that meets all other criteria is made outside of it.

Let's see:

Orginal Version German, made by a German-Language company in a German-Language country with german-speaking actors: yes

Crime Movie set in a fantazised London with a germanic town standing in: Yes

Scotland Yard and Girlfriend of Inspector involved: Yes

Regularly appearing comic-reliev character: Yes

Mad Killer going round killing people in gruesome ways: Yes

Camera-work relying more on basic shots that on fancy camera movement: Yes

Mad Doctor making mad experiments with his victims: Yes

Known Krimi Actors: Yes

So one might argue that it is not a Krimi as it has certain features not in other krimis:

Manic Killer instead of money-motivated Killer. Come on. "Room 13" has a (female) mad razor-blade slashing killer in all graphic detail (though b/w) and is of course considered a "Krimi".

Set in the past instead of a alternate-present London. That was done before in "Sherlock Holmes and the Necklace of Death" and nobody disputes that this is a "Krimi".

Not made by CCC or Rialto and not distributed by CONSTANTIN. True, but made by Erwin C. Dietrich who at least had two (if you count Blood and Black Lace in, three) picture-perfect Krimis (Nylon Noose and Strangler of the Tower) that had not been distributed by CONSTANTIN either. 

Sex and graphic splatter effects. The sex is very much toned down even by 1975 standards which  suggests that the movie is aware of being a Krimi. The graphic splatter effects are there and vicious but take a look at "Room 13", "Phantom of Soho" and especially "Monster of London City" in all their Scope-restored-4k-uncut glory there is just more in length (in seconds) but not more in viciousness of the splatter effects. 

Corpse abuse: Well, yes. The corpse-abusing we have in "Jack the Ripper" is never shown so openly in the other KRIMIS but it is hinted at. This is more because it is 1975 and not 1968. 

Foreign movie director: really? REALLY? Artur Brauner was foreign, even Horst Wendlandt was foreign (not his real name), Hugo Fregonese was foreign, asf. come on. And besides that, Franco had already shot two official KRIMIS before.

So no. I do not see any reason that this movie is not a KRIMI. It may even be the last one. 

But I will do a post on this in the near future.

Sources:

I do not want to repeat myself, but the section on "Jack the Ripper" in Stephen Thrower's book is really huge and I simply did not want to copy all the information there out of respect. Get the book while you can, or wait some years till Roberto Curti gets there.

Most of the new information here is taken from "Mädchen, Machos und Moneten" a very good and healthy biography of Erwin C Dietrich and his multi-part interview he did for the phenomenally good magazine Splatting Image. 

Sumuru, the Heir to Dr. Mabuse

Thesis:  "The Girl From Rio" owes much more to the (then) unpublished fragment "Mabuse's Kolonie (Colony)" than to any Sumuru book. 

If you have not read it, please check my post on how Jess Franco killed off Sumuru first, for a better understanding.... ... and then to how Jess Franco exterminated Dr. Mabuse .... now you can start: 

In 1930 Norbert Jacques wrote a fragment called "Mabuses Kolonie" which was abandoned for "Testament of Dr. Mabuse". In this fragment, a new "villain" called Frau Kristina is after the heritage of Dr. Mabuse to build an utopian colony, ruled by her to give peace and prosperity to mankind ... in Brazil. Something that Sumuru never did in her books...

The story: Slender, young "Frau Kristina" (yes, FRAU is part of the name!) is a master thief with the ability to appear and disappear miraculously. She can also detect if somebody tells the truth. She uses these powers to infiltrate an organisation called  EITOPOMAR that raises money and appears to attract mostly female settlers/donors to create an utopian settlement in Brazil. This organisation wants her to find the lost documents of Dr. Mabuse that would give ownership to the land that Mabuse bought in Brazil as well as to his financial assets. 

Meanwhile Reichs-attorney and enemy of Mabuse Dr. Wenk is being killed in his home-office. Frau Kristina, looking for clues, steals the asylum case files of Dr. Mabuse which are now part of the murder investigation by the police. 

She discovers that the crucial one (no. 299) is already missing and must have been stolen either by the killer of Wenk or his widow. Interrogating the widow, she detects that Mrs. Wenk does not know anything about these files. 

Frau Kristina travels from Berlin to Cologne. There the Reichswehr has taken over power after fighting nazi AND communist revolutions (Jacques throws both groups together and calls the movement "The Greens" (sic!)). In the seedy quarters of Cologne she is sure to find information about the killer/thief. She is attacked there but "saved" by the charming mobster Orbs whom she identifies as either having the files or looking for them as well.

The crime-lord and the master-thief now battle all over the world in various manners, but the final confrontantion will be in Brazil, where Frau Katarina is to create an utopian, women-ruled state on Mabuse's land. The head of EITOPOMAR is killed in a plane-crash that seems to have been plotted by Frau Kristina to take over the organisation. Meanwhile it becomes clear that Orbs is the killer of Wenk but that he did not take the file either.

Basically this is where all the information (written pages and story outlines) by Norbert Jacques stop. Whether or not he had discussed further developments with Fritz Lang or Artur Brauner is not known. Maybe we will find the missing Dr. Mabuse scripts, then we will know more.

We do not know whether Orbs is in fact in possession of the money and how the story will end. But let's make a sensible suggestion for a sequel:

Frau Kristina  has erected the colony by using Mabuse's land in Brazil. Building it up she used the money and (mostly female) settlers of EITOPOMAR. Meanwhile a male master thief  steals the remaining heritage of Mabuse (=the money) from the crime-lord. After doing so, he escapes on a plane that coincidentally flies to EITOPOMAR, full of female settlers who had already been equipped and trained in Europe. Following the trail, the crime-lord then attacks Frau Kristina's settlement to finally get the complete heritage of Mabuse. 

What I wrote here is basically the story of "Girl from Rio". Just replace the names. That would explain a lot of things in the movie.

One could even twist this further: The thief was originally sent by Frau Kristina and Orbs did let him escape on purpose to lead Orbs to EITOPOMAR - something that would be more in the vein of N. Jacques.

Background info: Frau Kristina comes across as very gifted but extremely idealistic figure. She has borderline-superhero abilites, a cross between Fantomas and Mabuse being physically and mentally superior. But she believes in an utopian state where peace and harmony rule and wants to get out of Germany that is being taken over by military coups to prevent extremists to gain power.

Frau Kistina imagined by Jean Rollin as 
Countess Ixe (maybe not, but the first image that came to my mind 
when I read Mabuses Kolonie)

So she wants to use Mabuse's heritage for higher purposes but her means are criminal. 

The organisation "Eitopomar" is like the jewish utopian settlement organisations that came to life all over Europe in the 1930s with training (warfare and agriculture), where money was raised and jews were trained to set up "kibbutzim" that would be socialist dreamlands.

The building of a "modern" colony in south america was popular after "Fordlandia" had been founded. Norbert Jacques had travelled there with a german documentary film team. Later the movie "Kautschuk" was filmed, based on his experiences, whose writer "Franz Eichhorn" is also credited for "Girl from Rio" in ImdB

.

The Reichswehr-coup is interesting. In the troubled Weimar end-game, only the Reichswehr was a guarantee for NON-communism, -nazism, an -monarchism, so the Reichswehr was the key for the "Iron Front" that tried to stabilize the Republic from the extremist's onsloughts. In "Mabuse's Colony" the military has taken over control and as Frau Kristina is trying to do the right thing by doing the wrong thing, establishing a military dictatorship. 

In the real Weimar Republic, the only mass movement to actually fight for democracy and against nazis, communist and monarchists were the social-democratic "Iron Front", that originally used three arrows that were painted over hanging NSDAP election posters. This will become important later...

The original design was meant to easily grafitti over the nazi flag,
Now the design is still being used by the Antifa in the red/white/black coding.

The 1930 story has a slight sf-utopian character with high-speed travel by car and a "new british aircraft" that flies to Brazil obviously has the capacity of a Boing 747 and space to walk around like in a Zeppelin (and crashes in Portugal).

Fancy Black/Red/White uniforms, where have I seen 
this ticolor before???

Norbert Jacques annotated that this story is basically not about Dr. Mabuse but only about the hunt and the purpose of his heritage (not testament!), and allowed the name to  be left out in possible movies based on the fragment!!! - Furthermore, the EITOPOMAR-storyline is already in the original Mabuse novel but was not used by Lang. Thus, Lang had no "rights" in it. There are three important conclusions: 

1st: This could very well be a legally correct movie just that they decided to go with the Sumuru-name in germany as no-one would understand this movie to be a Dr. Mabuse film.

2nd: Fritz Lang's developmental rights on Mabuse are not touched because it is only based on characters written by Norman Jacques before he recreated Mabuse  together with Lang and Thea von Harbou.

3rd: The same-sex relationship that Sumuru has in "Girl from Rio" is described (sort of) in the originial "Dr. Mabuse" novel as that of Countess Toldt (later Miss Wenk - the widow) with an exotic, red haired dancer , who Mabuse both had brought to EITOPOMAR. Franco very well catches the steamy, fever-dreamish-like quality that N. Jacques used in his description. That scene featured Shirley Eaton intercut with another actress with blond hair.

No joke but an impressive art-installation:
by Eva Grubinger "Embassy of Eitopomar" on
display at the Galeria Vermelho Sao Paulo

The question is: 

Did they know what they were doing?

Come on, I hear you say, this could all be incidental. Franco came up with the idea beacuse of feminism (Femina!!) and the boys wanted to have fun and film cheaply in brazil.  The rest is spy movie standard fare. Well. Almost.

Franco had worked with Artur Brauner (the license holder for Mabuse) before in the spoof-spy film "Lucky the inscrutable" which takes (again) some elements of Mabuse (this time the satirical "Mabuse at the Press Party"). At that time, Brauner was deciding whether he should do Mabuse in color or finish the series and was tossing around possible scripts for a follow up. Mabuse original material is very rare (only 3 1/2 slim books and one essay (basically 500 pages of original material)) so this material was all on the table for possible partners.

Jacques and Lang had developed Mabuse from "The Gambler" on to "The Testament", which made all movies based on "The Testament" to be licensed by Fritz Lang too, but not the ones not directly linked to the characters and developments in "The Testament of Dr. Mabuse". 

Here, Sumuru has to run around with a big "S" on the shirt, making it impossible to rename her Frau Kristina and basically signalling "No, I'm not Frau Kristina". Obviously Sax Rohmer's widow was not amused as this was not Sumuru here on display so the name had to be changed from Sumuru to something similar with "S" (why wasn't she called Saunara?). In 1969 it became basically impossible to alter the character against the will of the originator/their heirs.

In Germany it was crucial for the movie to be called "Sumuru" because, well otherwise one could argue that it is a Mabuse -Film all along. And maybe that is why we find a snippet of "Sumuru" in "The Blood of Fu Manchu". It looks like someone was really trying had. Really trying hard.

"Jess, do I really have to wear this stupid costume..., As if
people would not know that I am Sumuru." "No, the S is for 
Shirley, my dear" "Don't call me Shriley!" no wonder Eaton quit movie making after he
made her wear this...

A movie that N. Jacques had written in 1927 was called "The Brothel from/in Rio", which depicts "The enslaving and luring of young european girls into south american brothels" and the "amusing game two mobsters play with each other while battling for control over the market".  The movie was a scandal and is said to be bottom of the barrel morally with numerous scenes of rape and humiliation shown. It also was a huge hit. Of course. It was remade in 1950 under the title "Export in Blond". Jess Franco would never watch these kinds of movies.

uhh."Trade with naked female slaves"...
where have I heard of this one before...???

These license-things going back and forth between AIP, Towers and Brauner in the second half of the sixties are very hard to decipher. But I think it's save to assume that Franco had knowledge of "Mabuse's Colony" and had worked it into the Sumuru-sequel. That sequel could not be named "Sumuru" as it violated the character Sax Rohmer created  - at least that's the story Towers told .

Why it could be sold in Germany as Sumuru (and in fact had to because otherwise the heirs to Norbert Jacques would have sued for the Frau Kristina license) is an open question as of now. Please add a comment, if you got more or even condradicting information. I appreciate it all.

If you've come here, maybe you will think, this is all a bit far stretched, so let's finish with a cliff-hanger:

In which Mabuse movie, made around the same time as Girl from Rio and also distributed by AIP do we find this symbol?  Have a good night...

Here's what the AI thought:

Still here?

Dr. Mabuse has 1000 Eyes, I got 
a million! In the movie business it's all 
about competition.

And here is a nice post about "The Brothel from Rio" --- see you!