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.