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! 

My wishlist: Dear Santa, 10 things I would like to see come out in 2025

1. A Slit in my Dress - The illustrated biography of Ingrid Steeger

I am not necessarily a fan of Ingrid Steeger but her appearance and willingness to go all in was one of the remarkable popular culture phenomenoms of Germany in the 70ies. 

Easily the biggest star to come out of the Schulmädchen-Report series, she also starred in BDSM loops, Edgar Wallace Krimis, had affairs with some of the biggest players in the media industry and became a national icon as "Gaby" in the long running "Klimbim" series (which was the most anarchic thing ever to be shown on german TV). 

Her lead role in "Me, a Groupie", EC Dietrich's sleazefest about the drug- and girl-abusing music scene is legendary.

Although not well-off in the later years she stubbornly refused to be part of TVs star-at-the-end-of-their-lifecycle-shredding system consisting of humiliating dance-shows, jungle-challanges and voyeuristic container life. They don't make 'em like that anymore.

A yes, in case you do not know what I'm talking about...

There is this tremendously fascinating book about Brigitte Lahaye in France and that should be the benchmark.

2. Delirio Polsello - The definitive book on Renato Polselli. 

He is my favourite italian director. Audacious, mind-opening, daring and basically failing for pursuing his vision: The liberation of the audience's perception. When Jess Franco and all the others were only titillating our senses, promising more than delivered, he went all the way. His lesser known movies are dangerous to watch.

 The last INDICATOR release made it bluntly apparent: We need a thoroughly investigated book on him, with interviews with his relatives, friends, actors. Otherwise it's just the same old story: On the Indicator 4K release of Riti Neri we had the same sparse information given to us three times: In the booklet, in the documentary and in the audiocommentary by two totally unprepared brits who - well - had just read the booklet and watched the documentary. Thank you. I do not need that.

Maybe  David Flint and Kim Newman will read this and feel offended. I felt offended by their total lack of dedication. I know, there is a FULL Rita Calderoni interview on the movie on youtube, that was just ignored (in the booklet, in the documentary of course by the commentators). I mean, it is in italian, so it cannot be be important, right?. I consider that to be culturally condescending. Sorry. There are technical abilities to translate youtube videos, or just ask some random Italian here in one of the facebook groups to translate. 

                 - And of course HD-scans of his basically unavailable works. The prints are out there, I've                     seen one in a cinema .... lately.

3. All the Colors of the Dark - A revised and extended edtion by Tim Lucas

I missed out the first time, I had a mortage going on the house etc. This time I am willing and free to invest in an updated version of the book, but not willing to pay the ridiculous prices for the old one on the used-book auctions. Furthermore, all the information has already  popped up in the internet and Tim basically gave away the PDF-file for a while. Tim, if you're reading this, count me in  at EVERY 3-digit price.

4. The Peter Thomas Tribute Orchestra live Krimi Screening Tour 2025

Everybody's doing it. I just saw Hans Zimmer doing it. What I would give to have an authentic jazz orchestra performing "Witcher" live, with the best sequences projected in the back.

5. Raumpatrouille Orion relaunch

Friedrich Dürrenmatt's wife 
Charlotte Kerr being far too
dominant as General van Dyke (sic!).

Out of the Krimi-B-Picture sphere came the german SF TV series "Space Patrol Orion". Immensly popular in Germany and France, the 6 episodes of unhinged teutonic future predictions (complete with a quasi-Gestapo secret Police) and starring beloved Krimi-actors like Schönherr, Völz and Pflug (and of course General Lydia van Dyke (ugh!!!) - Charlotte Kerr being every man's uniform fetish dream).

There were preproductions at BAVARIA studios last year after their successful "Das Boot"-TV-relaunch but troubled multinational TV-producer SKY pulled the plug out of all german productions this year.

What a shame.

6. Krimi! The Magazine

A dedicated magazine to middle-european crime movie culture, throughly researched with new perspectives in each issues. 

Eye-opening new information and complete background stories about the movies, the actors, directors and the business. 

Just like my blog here... 

maybe I will grant me a wish...

 Anyone with me??

7. Legislation that prohibits the exploitation of an artist's work by whoever inherits the rights if deemed so by the artist in his last will

Two incidents made me furious. The exploitation of Steve Ditko by his heirs and the publication of novels by Franz Kafka.

Ditko's last big drawing before leaving
Marvel. He really was free.

Both had explicitly deemed that specific parts of their work should not be sold or published. Then some nephew comes in and finds out that he now can become rich and "important" because his uncle (Ditko) has sacrificed EVERYTHING in his life because he did not want to become rich and important. 

If Ditko would have wanted it, he would have liquidated the 7-figure-sum cheque that Sony sent him for Spider-Man. But he did not. He despised every notion of this. He died a happy but poor man. Stan Lee died a completely unhappy and rich man, but then he had sold his soul. 

No one has the right to sell the soul of somebody else just because he's a distant relative.... or a publishing house and editor who can make good money out of a novel that Franz Kafka had expressively ordered to be "destroyed unread". Of course they all read it, they did not destroy it and now they publish it, because the "cultural treasure is too big". FU, this is just about fame and money. No it's just about money.

People suck. 

In a big way. 

Most of the time.

8. Recognition of Karin Dor as the ultimate Scream Queen of the 1960s

She assisted aliens in taking over the world

She loved Dracula

She resurrected Frankenstein's Monster and the Mummy

She fought the Werewolf

She tortured and loved James Bond

She was the OG razor-blade giallo slasher/ripper killer

She fled from Dr. Mabuse

She was Odin's Daughter 

She was raped by the invisible man

She knew the last of the Mohicans

She survived the Strangler of Blackmoor Castle, the Forger, the Green Archer, the Sinister Monk and Dr. Fu Manchu

She did not survive Che Guevara

She was strapped under the swinging blade pendulum 

She was Winnetou's great love

She worked with Alfred Hichcock, Sean Connery, Christopher Lee, Lex Barker, Paul Naschy

Can someone please write a definitve biography on her aknowledging her work in the genre (that she never distanced herself from)...

And just to drive the point home. She was the highest drawing female actor in Germany in the 1960s - internationally:

source: Forum user KXL556

9. Nicholas Winding Refn's Remake of "Grapes of Death"

We all know about NWR's obsession with Dario Argento, but watching his latest TV-Series "Copenhagen Cowboy" it was obvious that you cannot get more Rollin than that today. It should only be fitting to remake "Grapes of Death", officially or unofficially.....Or maybe he should do a biopic on the director. The live and movies of Rollin are worth to be told. Complete with an illustrated Filmography by Steven Thrower and all his XXX-rated stuff in 4K og camera-negative scans. Please.

10. Rita Calderoni at the Buio Omega Birthday Party

If you know what I'm talking about, you know. If you don't ... well than it is exactly how it should be.

Approaching the Grindhouse Phenomenon - what exactly is a "Grindhouse"?

Yes, we all know the term and we think to know what it means. But basically, all we know is the term "Grindhouse-movie". This refers to those movies shown in shabby cinemas to an uninterested crowd of hobos, dealers, homeless, prostitutes, trenchcoat-men and adventure-seeking juveniles like me. 

But what exactly is a Grindhouse, and how does it differ from a Cinema. 

Well, let's dive into this:

With the advance of 35mm-prints, movie reels became big and heavy. Rolled up, they would be too clumsy to handle. So big and heavy that it was impossible to lift and project a full-length feature at once. It helped that movies were split up into acts, like theatrical plays. So basically the movie was split into 3 acts (prime movie) or 2 acts (B-movie) roughly of the length of 30min each (hence around 60min for B-Pictures and 90min for A-Pictures).

Two, I said!

Yes, you needed 2 of them!

Because of this, if you use only one projector, you have to stop the "transmission" and give the audience an "intermission" where the projectionist has to unload the first reel and to upload and fiddle in the next reel. If you use 2 projectors and aim them at the same screen you can switch between the two reels and if you were a good projectionist, hardly anyone would notice. To give signal to the projectionist, when to start the second projector, small triangles were cut out of a frame in the movie, showing up as a white triangle on the upper right side. Sometimes the ends of those reels were damaged, then usually a projectionist would burn a hole with a cigarette into the print in the appropriate frame (refer to John Carpenter's phenomenal "Cigarette Burns" for more info on that subject). 

Basically that meant that each 30 minutes, the projectionist had to be ready to change the reels, and in between he would do the rewinding of the first reel and so on. Basically, he was busy the whole film long.

Only the plates, not the projectors

The German Willi Burth then thought of two things, why not project the reels from the horizontal, and is there a way to run them all through one projector and do you need to rewind it? These are three things. I know. Well he came up with the "Platter System" that looks like this: 

Going horizontally of course means that the movie has to be brought into the vertical positon for projection wich of course would stress the material, esp the surface that held the colors/the image. Now you could project even bigger formats like 70mm.

The movies were still distributed to the cinemas in 3-7 reels, but by taping them together and using a complicated system of angular feeders a movie could be projected in a near-endless loop.

All the projectionist now had to do was to switch the thing on and off and switch the plates. And thus, the multiplexes were invented, where one projectionist could operat up to 4 platter-systems at once.

Of course this damaged the films, As the picture is just a chemical sunstance ON the Film, not IN it, it would wear off.. Taping the reel-endings together too. But still, we are not in a grindhouse. 

The grindhouse was one (or one room in multiplex) cinema where they showed one movie basically 24/7, where you could enter when you wanted and leave too. The movies played there were low on plot and technique but high of "entertainment": A middle aged man in trenchcoat would have his cinematic desires satisfied after 20-30 minutes, so every 20 minutes, there had to be a stimulus. 

The movie print absolutely did not like this kind of handling and wore off. Basically at the end of 2-3 weeks the print was unusable, which is why only the cheapest prints (at the end of their lifespan or cheap movies made especially for those movies) were shown.

And that, I might close, was a grindhouse. 

I am not familiar with the legal workings in other countries. In Germany however, it was illegal to show pornography in a cinema, but legal to show in a club. A club was defined through the amount that was spent on beverages and cigarrettes. So the work around was that with each ticket, beverages or cigarretes were sold which made up 51% of the bill, to be consumed inside the cinema. 

Jess Franco, the walking death of Eurocrime (Part VI): The Case of Dr. Mabuse

   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 

Jess had delivered the "Akasava" on time, had sheltered the money put into "Deadly Avenger" by Tele-Cine and now obviously the last of Arthur Brauner's investment opportunities had quickly to be made into celluloid, Dr. Mabuse.

This leads us to "The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse" or "Dr. M schlägt zu", the semi-inofficial entry in the Dr. Mabuse series. Semi-official because the original holder of the rights, CCC-Films, never used the name on this film. And in the german dialogue, Dr. Krenko, the main villain, is only subordinate of an unspecified "Organisation". Anyway, the movie had already been sold to the partners as "Mabuse" movie and so you get the name in basically all foreign versions of this movie.

CCC-Films today  do have an own "Jess Franco" category in their "classics" department (so it is "Karl May", "Dr. Mabuse", "(Bryan) Edgar Wallace" AND "Jess Franco" (!!!) on their official website!) and there it is complete with all foreign titles referring to Dr. Mabuse. CCC-Films too give the original working titles as "The Man who called himself Mabuse" and "Mabuse 70". 

Official CCC-Films archive-card for Dr. M

The Franchise:

You know him. Let's make it short. Based on a pulp-novel, the first two silent adaptations of Dr. Mabuse by Fritz Lang are absolute milestones of crime-cinema and if you've not watched them by now... come on. There is NO excuse.

Dr. Mabuse is a crime-lord in the booming black markets of defeated germany, he has the power of mind-control and uses various disguises for his deeds. He tries to found an international organisation with the money gained by his crimes. 

Aim of the stories and of the first movies is to show how rotten the capitalistic society was. These are highly political films, with the third, the talkie "Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse" actually replacing Mabuse with Hitler, the movie cannot be released and director Lang went to the US on a long vacation until 1950....

Let's play word-memory: Black Market / Crime Lord / Mind Control / Defeated Germany/ Better World/ International Organisation

CCC was founded by Arthur Brauner AND Joseph Einstein who was THE DON of Berlin's black markets after WWII. And Arthur Brauner only gets the licence for filming by the american occupiers under the obligation to re-educate the defeated german people with internationally produced movies and all will life in a better world. 

I do NOT make these things up. I just draw the line between the dots!!

No wonder, Brauner was keen to do a Mabuse film. He obtained the rights and even got Fritz Lang to do a fourth movie (The 1000 Eyes - which is not based on an original Mabuse story but rather on the very obscure "Mr. Tott kauft 1000 Augen" (transl: "Mr. Deass buys a 1000 eyes" by Jan Fethke, written in Esperanto!!!!!! and published in German 1932)). 

Before Lang decided to do "1000 Eyes", the first Mabuse script was a direct sequel to "Testament" called "Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse" (sic!), so this script is around since 1954!

After that, Lang does not want to do another one, so Brauner just takes the usual suspects of Krimi-entertiainment through 5-6 more movies, including a team-up with Bryan Edgar Wallace. All have a certain SF-element in them and gadgetry ("invisible rays") and Mabuse is using super-advanced technology. The last one as a thinly veiled James-Bond wannebe. 

Please note that after 1933's "Testament", the real Dr. Mabuse is actually dead, only his spirit is set free in the world and through mind-control he now controls subordinate "master-criminals".

You might be wondering why the figure for the french release of "Death Rays" is missing. As the CNC only records the top 30 of each month, some movies drop off the charts unnoticed. I would assume a figure somewhere between 200.000 and 250.000 would be a sensible suggestion.

The series has a steady but stable decrease in ticket sales and did well in foreign markets, obviously due to the prestigious name. Brauner stopped 1964 after "Death Rays of Dr. Mabuse" but with over 1.200.000 million tickets sold, this was still going strong. He had cut down his BEW-franchise the same year but that last movie "7th Victim" at least had had very low box-office returns. 

I do not see a reason for Brauner stopping the Mabuse-Franchise commercially. Getting in lots of co-financers from foreign fiefdoms (ha!) the financial risk was not big and Spain was virtually begging him to finally produce "Die Rache"/La Venganca, a scipt that had been lying around since before the 1st Mabuse film...

Maybe Brauner wanted to get out of the B-movie bracket that the BEW and Mabuse-Films had been. From 1965 to 1968 he would do big budgeted color-scope movies that did cost a lot of money like the Nibelungen-Remake, Kampf um Rom (A Fight for Rome) and 5 oriental Karl-May extravaganzas with whom he tried to fight the Rialto-Karl-May-Western success. 

All of these were intended to make Brauner, who - basically - had been a smut-peddler, an honorable man. Kampf um Rom was the biggest budgeted german movie up to this point but failed to reach the 1.000.000 ticket sales that the last Mabuse easily had trespassed. Brauner later fumed that he could have "produced 10 Wallace movies with the money spent on Fight for Rome". So he was regretting pulling out of these franchises and maybe decided to get back in again with Jess Franco on his side. 

The Living Corpses of Dr. Mabuse (1971)

A curiosum inside the "Mabuse"-franchise is that  Berlin-born Gordon Hessler's "Scream and Scream Again" was marketed as "Dr. Mabuse" film in Germany in 1971 (!). This could only have been done if Artur Brauner had sold or sub-licensed the rights to the name at that point. "Scream and Scream again" boasts the magnificent german title of "Dr. Mabuse's Living Corpses"

"Dr. Mabuse's Living Corpses" movie did not fare too bad just edging inside the year's Top 100 movies with around 500.000 tickets sold, still beating "Cat O Nine Tails" by 100.000 tickets. 

I have already checked into this anomaly very deeply and found some very interesting facts but that will be something for the future.... just trust me: 

Scream and Scram again IS a real Mabuse-film!

Obviously there was still flesh on the rotting corpse of Mabuse.

Case opened: Dr. M schlägt zu ("Dr. M strikes") / Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse

-or-

Plan 10 from Dr. M

Translation of the german title is NOT "strikes back" it is "strikes", "Strikes back" would imply that this is a sequel, while "strikes" does not. Furthermore, the german movie title for the 1960 french Eddie Constantine movie "Ca va etre ta fete" was "Lemmy Caution schlägt zu=Lemmy Caution strikes" althogh this was not a Lemmy Caution movie. Check out the first installment of my series for the Jess Franco - Lemmy Caution connection. And yes... the movie title game is NOT incidential. These titles, I have learned are like a code, but more on that in my "Scream and Scream Again Post"....

Obviously A. Brauner had fun too, rewriting the script for the german version, our supervillain is called "Dr. Franco" (script), although in the actual dub he called Dr. Cranko/Krenko 

Plot: This is as bad as it can get. There is virtually nothing here except that it is something about a device used to get a deadly weapon and therefor we have to kill/kidnap some people which our trusty Andros - the one from Franco's "Secreto del Dr. Orloff "(1964) does (Andros here looks stiched together...so he is obviously one of the superhuman "living corpses" that Dr. Browning had created in "Scream and Scream again"....). 

Andros, still crazy after all these years

"Secreto del Dr. Orloff" was relased as "Die Lebenden Leichen des Dr. Jeckyll" (Living Corpses of Dr. Jekyll") in Germany. See what I mean with the name-game?

I tried to try. I tried to care. But I could not help it. This is Plan 10 from Dr. M. 

Man. It sucks, in a big way. 

If you really, really want to see some Dr. Mabuse in it, maybe it is from the "Chemiker Null" novel but this is just about stealing secrets from a scientist. So not much flesh in here.

The problem is that it did not need to. Photography is fine to stunning (with some occasional lapses) but acting and script are below the lowest par on every level. This feels like an Ed Wood movie. I honestly do not know what Franco tried here. A complete lack of stars  doing their least to hide their desintrest. This is all ridiculous but not in a funny way. 

I am aware that post-modernists in the 70ies tended to make fun of the old heritage, but this is an insult. Mabuse always had a social commentary, crime evolving out of capitalism and disproportion of wealth distribution. This here is just a Orloff/Monster on the Campus copy with no meaning at all.

Charades, charades.

As with the movie, the title and the distribution, the actors play charades. Siegfried Lowitz, who had already played in a Dr. Mabuse movie and was a staple face of the Krimis but no-one to draw crowds, here has to play a completely different character  (Prof. Dr. Orloff (!)) for a day (maybe less - obviously he owed this to Brauner as he had he had dropped out of the movie business in 1965 to work exclusively for TV).  Lowitz dubbed himself too in this movie, which would mean that a theatrical release was planned. Overall the dubbing, though done by professionals (the german actors here dubbed themselves), seems rushed, as if there had not been any second takes. 

The actors behave as if they do not have a clue what's going on and frankly I believe them. I'm with sheriff  Thomas who intentionally does not get at all what this movie is about. 

It does not help that Brauner again uses the same score he had already reused for "Deadly Avenger", taken from previous year's sleaze-crime-fest "Perrak". This whole thing just feels wrong. 

Original spanish artwork by the  co-producers. There is no german original filmposter.

Original spanish artwork by the 

co-producers. There is no german

original filmposter. 

Franco had held back this movie for over a year before handing it over to Brauner, for reasons unknown. When he finally could lay eyes on the product he had produced, Brauner was said to be furious. Instead of using the script given to him, Franco had just made another Orloff-movie.

It could well be that Franco had used the money given to him by Brauner to remake his own "Secreto" and then just delivered that in an audacious move that quickly ended the collab.

From the title "Dr. M" it is clear that Brauner did not want to use the "Mabuse" license he had optained from N. Jacques. Putting it on the movie would have cost him 1000 DM in license fee, which would today amount to around 2000 US-$ maybe even more. As a business man he would  have calculated the costs against an additional income through the use of the name. And having no star-power (or anything else) to lure people in, he  simply let it be. Maybe he was even fearful of Fritz Lang, the man who co-created the movie character of Mabuse together with Norman Jacques back in the 20ies. I don't know.

On an interesting note, although Jacques did own the rights to his creation it is said that Fritz Lang and his then-wife Thea von Harbou (Metropolis) held similar rights to the movie-character of Dr. Mabuse which meant that he had a say in forthcoming movies with Mabuse. But there is just one source about that.

That decision must have been made early as the original german opening titles have the new name properly displayed. Brauner obviously did not want or could not use the name here. 

Does it matter? No. This movie has nothing to do with Dr. Mabuse.

If the premiere of this movie actually took place on Dec. 26 in Berlin's very cosy Capitol Theatre I  expect that half of the audience would have walked out. I am not aware of the ownership of this theatre back then, but I would not be the least surprised that it belonged to Brauner somehow and that it was just just a test-screening and no official premiere as no poster or other material proving a german release is available anywhere.

This movie release was so rushed (Board of Censors certificate on 20th Dec!, "release" 26th Dec) and then buried that suspicion arises. Cooperation with Jess Franco was abruptly terminated and the release of the last BEW-franchise movie "The Etruscan kills again" was on Dec .31st of 1972.

Brauner stated that "he never had any problem of any kind at any time with Jess Franco" but Franco did not touch German soil in 1972 and for some years later...

In the 1990s, when Dr. M finally appeared on the surface in Germany, the heirs to N. Jacques sued Brauner  for using "Mabuse" on this film (yes, they sued him for the 1000 DM). The court however ruled in Brauner's favour that the Mabuse license option had not been drawn on this film.

So it is officially (and court-proven) not part of the Mabuse-franchise. 

The spanish version, which is significantly different though, was marketed as "Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse", the old title that already had been sold to the spanish market in the 1960s on the script with the same name, that was not used in this movie.

Verdict:

Acquittal

Did he kill "Mabuse" off? No, because the movie in question is not a "Mabuse" movie. If it were, though, Franco surely would have killed Mabuse as profitable franchise once and for all. This is more in the vein of his relapses on "Fu Manchu" and "Edgar Wallace" -- too meaningless to have any impact at all.

Parole violation: Hm. As this is an Orloff-movie and Orloff is a creation of Franco himself, of course he came back to him a 1000 times. But Franco never trespassed the line and used the Mabuse-tag somewhere. So here he behaved himself.

Cliffhanger: I don't make these things up, I just draw the lines between the dots. And one dot is a certain "Dr. M", who is not the fictional character of Dr. Mabuse but a real-life person/villain/crime-lord that actively pushed the low-budget german cinema industry over the edge in 1972. Certain things make sense, like Franco not setting a foot into germany from the end of 1971 and Brauner, clearing it all off in Dec. 1972.... but you, my dear readers have to be patient. This will still take me a year or so to fully research this complex situation.

Questions remain: 

Why did Brauner stop Mabuse in 1964 although returns were not bad at all?

Why did AIP shoot two obvious Mabuse movies while co-producing "De Sade" with CCC? (yes, two!)

Why did the METROPOL (name of the theatre of "Invisible Dr. Mabuse") distributor call Gordon Hessler's Ninja-epic "Pray for death"  "1000 Eyes of the Ninja" in Gemany???? 

Man, I am curious... I will tackle all of these questions when I get back to "Scream and Scream again", but for now, let's continue our journey:

Jess Franco did not set a foot an German soil after 1971 and purely coincidentally sleazemonger EC Dietrich had just retreated to  neutral and tax-havenly Switzerland. So after a brief stay in France (and lots of accumulated depths by Franco) both teamed up to try to feast on another film-series. Next time we have:

Jess Franco vs. The Strangler

Here is a list of the books I used (besides many, many websites with singular information):

Peter Osterried's big format, colorfully illustrated
Hardcover from 2011 is complete with stunning photos.
A bit lightweight on the actual background of the moves.
All Dr. Mabuse movies are covered. Essential.

This is edited by one Solveig Wrage, a semiprofessional
publication but with lots of real archival material. If
you want to know who wrote what to whom and when, then that's the
book to go for, very lightweight on the "why" and simply
nonchalentely omits all non Lang/CCC movies.

Good english language overview by Holger Haase,
basically summarising all you need to know. Excellent 
value for the money asked by amazon kindle.
Holger got his own, worthwile blog here:
https://krimifilm.blogspot.com