KRIMI! The Magazine Preview

 On Nov. 29th 2024, the first, experimental, issue (#0) of KRIMI! The Magazine for Continental European Crime Cinema Cultur will be published on AMAZON (worldwide).

The stats:

80 Pages

Letter Format

Full Color

English Language

20 Pages of source material and movie posters

Price: US-$/€ 8.99

Here are two pages of the finished product:

Contens + Source Material + Posters

Sample Page

Sample Page

Women in Krimi (V): Elisa Montés, the real girl from Rio...

 As I am finishing the last touches to our KRIMI! magazine, the last article I wrote was about "Todesrächer von Soho" co-star Elisa Montés, just to find out that she died yesterday, (Oct, 9th 2024) at the age of 89. 

Elisa Montés was born in Granada as Elisa Rosario Valeriana Angustias Francisca de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Penella , December 15 , 1929. She was the  daughter of the  fascist politician Ramón Ruiz Alonso but the family had a strong artistic background. Her father was a staunch supporter of  Generalissimo Franco and left Spain a few days after his death and moved to the USA.

At a young age she decided to dedicate herself to the world of acting, debuting on the big screen in 1954 with the film Elena, by Jesús Pascual and she won an award for her performance.

Throughout the decade of the 1950s she worked assiduously in the cinematographic medium with remarkable interpretations, but her movies were almost never internationally distributed (outside of the spanish-language world, that is).

With her daughter Emma in 1961, she seperated from her
husband in 1970 and divorced in 1982. Her daughter lived
with the father.

With the emergence of the german-spanish-italian co-productions she and her "exotic" looks get some roles in peplum and western movies. 

The joyous spanish only Krimi la Cuarta Ventana
sees her and her female buddies (her actual sisters
Emma Penella and Teresa Pavez) entangled in some
strange crime...

She starred in 

the Eddie Constantine movie "As if it was raining"

the Hildegard Knef-vehicle Geheimagentin in Gibraltar /"Female Spy of Gibraltar"

the Viking-epos (!) "Erik the Viking"

the peplum "Samson and the Mighty Challange"

the spaghetti-westerns: "Django the honorable Killer", "Mutinity at Fort Sharpe", "7 Dollars to kill", "Texas Adios", "The Taste of Vengeance"

the hollywood-made Return of the Magnificent Seven

In "The Return of the Magnificent Seven"

the spy movies "An Ace and Four Queens" and "The Cobra"

the extremely obscure German-Spanish horror film Das Geheimnis der Todesinsel by German schlockmeister Ernst von Theumer...

... and of course she became a regular actrice for Jess Franco, starting with

99 Women

Girl from Rio 

Poor Irene, what is Sumuru going to do with her??

In Girl from Rio she played Irene, the secretary of Sir Marcius, who is captured and tortured by Sumuru. Ironically, Irene is from Rio while Sumuru is not. So I assume that the movie is about Irene and not Sumuru or Ulla ;-)

Her last big-screen appearance would be in the Jess Franco-Bryan Edgar Wallace movie Der Todesrächer von Soho where she played alongside krimi-heavyweights Horst Tappert, Barbara Rütting and Siegfried Schürenberg a woman called Helen Bennett, the wife of one of the suspects...

Above: Montés scenes in "Todesrächer"

Subsequently, her appearances in film and television gradually decreased, although in spain she stayed popular through her role in one of the best spanish tv-novellas ever: Verano azul (1981). She played the mother of two teenagers on summer vacation in a small costal town; the 19-part series drew 20 million viewers and has become part of Spain’s common cultural memory. 

She did extensive stage-work throughout the 1980s and returned to the big screen in spanish productions in the early 1990s and then retired. Her daughter Emma Ozores became a TV actress too. 

Receiving a life-time award in 2017

Montés at the Almeria Spaghetti-Western Festival

Woman No. 97

With her daughter

Lost Krimi Places: CCC Filmkunst Studios in Berlin

 

Pictures are HUGE, you have to wait a little until
they load

 On September 16, 1946, Brauner founded the Central Cinema Comp.-Film GmbH with Joseph Einstein with a share capital of 21,000 Reichsmarks. Just two months later, Einstein left the company and Brauner became the sole shareholder.

The first film produced by the CCC was the 1947 comedy The King of Hearts, directed by Helmut Weiss. In 1949, he began building a film studio on the 35,000 square meter site of a former chemical weapons testing facility in Spandau. Initially, work began in two halls of 400-500 square meters.

The site thus became one of the most modernly equipped film studios in Europe. Television stations from the USA took advantage of these opportunities and regularly produced programs there.

Most of the Krimis were shot here as Brauner himself had the Bryan Edgar Wallace and Dr. Mabuse franchises going and Horst Wendlandt of Rialto (the "real" Edgar Wallace Krimis) had been executive director of the studio-complex for Brauner before joining Rialto.

 As early as 1965, Brauner had to significantly reduce the size of his studio premises when ZDF (Germany's national TV station) stopped producing there and moved completely to Mainz. This partially ended the Bryan Edgar Wallace and Mabuse series, although Brauner desperately tried to find new, international partners for his franchises (and found one in Salvatore Argento....).

At the beginning of the 1970s, Brauner closed his studios and laid off the last remaining 85 employees.

Parts of the studios still exist and are still in operation under the name Filmatelier Haselhorst. Instead of continuous film production, Brauner and the CCC focused on individual projects. The area with the former dubbing studios on it no longer belonged to the CCC Studios and was demolished.

Please visit www.modernruins.de for more information.