2025 Days at the Grindhouse III: May 17th

 For over 20 years now, I have been a member of this filmclub.  It's a secret one, so I won't tell you the name. The members of this filmclub go down into forgotten movie archives to unearth prints of very obscure or interesting movies. These prints are then shown in an old art deco cinema palace that still has 35mm and 70mm projection. This takes place on a Saturday morning, and only members are allowed.

Things start off nicely with a very, very entertaining and sensationalist trailer to DIE NÄCHTE DER WÜRGERIN/CAT GIRL 1957, which is obviously a really cheap'n'dirty rip-off of CAT PEOPLE. 

Young Barbara Shelley is looking good in it, though. But the effects. Boy. Anyway, this looks like fun. The German print is out on DVD. I just ordered it. Nice.

The next trailer is BUSCHTEUFEL IM DSCHUNGEL/JUNGLE DEVILS IN THE JUNGLE/PYGMY ISLAND/FORBIDDEN LAND, part one of the German edition of the Jungle Jim series, a poor Tarzan imitation with a poor Johnny Weismüller and poor effects. Obviously this one was called Pygmy Island in the US which I do not get, as I can clearly see Weismüller fighting with something that looks more like a werewolf than a pygmy, which means that this is a mash-up of PYGMY and FORBIDDEN LAND. 

Something that was usual in Germany - to get to a decent running time. The same happened to the Basil Rathborne Sherlock Holmes series. This one looks so bad that it is fun. But I don't think this is in my territory. I'll go with CAT GIRL anytime.

Finally, we get DIE VIER SCHÄDEL DES JONATHAN DRAKE/THE FOUR SCULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE, which is basically the international trailer but in German. 

The movie has become a minor voodoo classic, and I remember vividly seeing it back on TV in the early 1980s. Fine. 

Now to the first movie:  WOODOO - BLUTRAUSCH DES DSCHUNGELS / THE DISEMBODIED 1957 GERMAN EXTENDED VERSION (1957)

Allison Hayes should be remembered, and not only for her "Attack of the 50ft Woman" poster that has become a Hollywood icon. And here, the film club has unearthed something very special. A ten-minute-longer running German version of THE DISEMBODIED(1957).

 What? Well, in Germany, there was no "B"-movie, meaning there was no movie before the main attraction. They did show, though, a short movie of max 30 minutes. The main feature always had to have more than 70 minutes of running time. WOODOO- BLUTRAUSCH DES DSCHUNGELS/"VOODOO-THE DJUNGLE'S BLOOD-ECSTASY"/THE DISEMBODIED has an original running time of 62 and would not pass the censors as such. Ok, so they tacked a full new German sequence of opening credits on at the beginning. And believe me, this one takes its time (and they put the same sequence at the end, in case you forgot the cast and staff). This takes up about 4 minutes -- and the rest. Well. Each time we hear drums, or a dance scene is shown, the German distributed added old but sped-up documentary footage of various African tribal dances. You know, like in the Tarzan movies where you see elephants running faster in a different print quality - or Jungle Jim, if you want.

Allison is a voodoo-priestess and married to an Albert Schweitzer-like jungle hermit whom she hates, as she wants to devour young, muscular men. She does all kinds of things with him through her puppet and when three white boys with sequentially free upper bodies come around, she does all the funny things like soul-swapping, ecstatic dancing, kissing, scheming. You name it. 

Ridiculously low-budgeted, there is only one reason to look at it: beauty queen and pin-up model Allison Hayes who takes over every single scene with her. And in the end, this is all that remains after the long, long end credits have rolled. Without her - and the ridiculously funny documentary footage - this would be a heap of senseless boredom.

And no! WOODOO - DIE SCHRECKENSINSEL DER ZOMBIES is NOT a sequel!!!

After the break we start with

TOT UND BEGRABEN/DEAD AND BURIED the 1981 not-Dan O'Bannon movie (he disowned it although his name is on the print). The trailer is spectacular, and I remember this movie being a big, big hit in the videostores back then. 

But the trailer is something else. It even urges you not to come alone to this movie...because it is so frightening. Smart. Selling two tickets!!!

It is always a bad sign when I have to check my smartphone to find out which was the second trailer. I completely forgot it ... like 6 hours after seeing it. Bad job. DAS ENGELSGESICHT/THE BEAST WITHIN (1981). Check it out. I cannot remember a single thing about this trailer. 

It is something about "Three Nights of Terror".

And finally, HOTEL ZUR HÖLLE/ MOTEL HELL which is a bad trailer for a bad movie. I had already watched the movie with the film club, so I know that this lame trailer is truly a sign of things to come in that regard. The less I write about this movie, the better.

Feature movie #2: ANGEL HEART (1987)

And yes, it's the Mickey Rourke/Alan Parker movie. I had seen it back then when it came out in the cinemas. It had been really hyped in Germany as being the next big thing in horror. Like, being equal to ROSEMARY's BABY... you know, that kind of talk. But basically it is BLADE RUNNER with VOODOO. And it suffers from the same flaws that BLADE RUNNER suffers from: over-indulgence and an unsatisfying end. Alan Parker though, does not have the class of Ridley Scott, so most of his images and pastiches run into a void, simply evoking nothing, not even awe. 

In this big budget movie, co-starring Robert de Niro and Charlotte Rampling, Mickey Rourke is a PI who is sent to find a missing musician in the 1950s. The musician has (or so it is told) sold his soul to the devil, but when the reports about his whereabouts fail to be delivered, Rourke comes in  to find out where he is. In his journey he discovers a hidden world of secret voodoo-rituals and strange magic, dislocation, incest, and lots of chicken. This looks much smoother and more polished than THE DISEMBODIED, but it is strangely the same. Chicken.

Knowing the end, I enjoyed it more than I did back then, as I could trace the slight hints Parker gives us. But then, sadly, watching this movie two times in a lifetime is enough. 

Women in Krimi VI: Kai Fischer

There are defining women of Krimi like Karin Dor and Karin Baal. But she was the original Krimi-girl and later became the leading Krimi-woman, and then even got her own TV-Krimi series in the 1960s (!) that lasted for three seasons. No one would come close to:

KAI FISCHER

Born in 1934 in Prague as "Kai Anne Inge Fischer" she had to move/flee/was deported with her family (her father was a railway administrator, her mother a former opera singer) at the end of 1945 to Halle (Russian Occupation Zone), where they had to live with other refugees in an abandoned water-reservoir tower and then to (American Occupation Zone) Munich. Due to some mishap of fate, she attended an all-boy school, and when puberty hit, her parents were told to take her off that school as she "was too much women for the boys to handle.". Needless to say, it was told, she attended the church choir for the sole reason to "rough up" boys afterwards. (Stern, May, 23rd, 1959)

Photo-Model

After leaving high school in 1952, she was part of a trapeze cabaret act and posed as a model. Then, after extensively visiting the natural hunting ground for obese film producers (like coffee bars and lakeshores), she was finally bought in by producer Joe Stöckl (whom she admittedly would not even have looked at in these places) for "Die lieben Verwandten" a heimat-comedy. As usual.

(Stern, May 30th 1959)

 A natural red-head with an ironic smirk she was then cast as the sexual attractive female lead theat either would seduce married men or be the female "loose" buddy to the chaste leading girl of the German 1950s romantic comedies. As part of the thieves in "Wirtshaus im Spessart"  (The Spessard Inn)1958 she became a national celebrity alongside "naive" Liselotte Pulver, the star of this historical scary comedy. Her other qualities like her exquisite piano-play, singing and certified ballet-dancing sadly was not showcased at all. Instead, she gains the nick-name "Corsage-Kai," as not a single of her appearences takes place without that kind of clothing.

Spessart Inn

She was perfect for the wave of sexually seductive krimis that followed and found her type in "Mädchen für die Mambo Bar" a light-hearted movie about girl trafficking. She made her way up to international productions like the similarly themed "Too Hot to Handle" with Jane Mansfield and Karlheinz Boehm or "The Hellfire Club", where her nude scenes were cut (or so it is told in the ancient tales...). 

Too Hot to Handle

Her private life seemed to be quite tumultuous. It was an open secret that she needed "real men" that sometimes used force during the fierce arguments. When she was asked whether it bothered her to be the girl in the movie that was on the receiving end of staged violence, she smirkingly replied: "But those who hit me in the movies, they are not even real men...". In 1959 she even caused a gang war between two hard-hitting gang leaders who both wanted to protect her from the other guy. Numerous affairs with influental (Peter Kraus, Peter van Eyck) or rich men follow, each boiling up to fist-handed dramas with her "friend", the shady film-merchant Joe Metzger.

With the emergence of the Krimi in 1958 she was the first choice for femme fatales, basically repeating her real-life situation in the proto-Krimi "Grabenplatz 17" by Krimi veteran Erich Engl. There she met scriptwriter Wolf Neumeister,  with whom she drafted a series of movies around a female PI, obviously influenced by the Honey West Novels by G.G. Fickling (a married couple, both writing).

On the set of "Denn keiner ist ohne Sünde"
flirting with Roberto Baldini, who 
was got beaten up by one of her "muscle"-
boyfriends after the premiere-show of
that movie...

When Wolfgang Hartwig gave her the role of "Lilly" in the classic sleaze-bomb "Die Nackte und der Satan" (The Head) 1959, he insisted that she had to go topless. Kai did not agree and sent some "friends" over to make her point. Hartwig then replaced her and deleted all her scenes. Her response was filing a lawsuit over 4000 DM, which she won, later claiming that she received 10.000 DM from Hartwig, that she donated.

Kai in "The Head"

With her star ascending, Fischer now entered the glitzy world of the Jet-Set, brawling her way through numerous high-class-club fistfights with women and men. She did not discriminate and was obviously highly entertaining, both for her partners and for the readers of the yellow press. Aiming higher, she seriously dated a minor from an ancient Austrian noblehouse until the head of the house forbade contact by law with her...

Needless to say, Wim Wenders (City of Angels) admitted to having a huge boyhood crush on her and cast her for one of his early films (Die Angst des Torwarts vor dem Elfmeter).

Pre-Nose-Job Fischer Profile

In 1961 she underwent cosmetic surgery (a nose-job, apparently) to prepare for her long prepared TV-series: In 1963 she got the leading role in "Die Karte mit dem Luchskopf" (The Card with the Lynx-head), a TV-series, designed to cater to the female Krimi tastes (as the Rialto-movies were a tad too scary...). 

Here she played the head of a private-eye agency where she has to pose as secretary as the clients and the thugs would not accept her as a dangerous investigator. She co-wrote most of the stories. The series ran for 13 episodes in three seasons until 1965 and is the total Kai Fischer overdose.  With that her market value increased  even more in the Krimi movies and she appeared in quick succession in:

Zimmer 13 (Room 13)

Wirtshaus von Dartmoor

Ungeheuer von London City (Monster of London BEW CCC)

                            Der Würger vom Tower (Strangler of the Tower E.C. Dietrich)

and more TV-krimis always as either call-girl, head of a strip-club, or seductress. Besides that, she toured with  the 1950s pop star Peter Kraus (again) in the comedic musical "Bel Ami" - based on the works of Guy de Montpassant whom she'll meet later again....

1967 sees her top-billing the Ernst von Theumer produced schlock-opus "Maneater of Hydra/Island of the Doomed" where she performed alongside Krimi-actress Elisa Montes. She is eaten up by plants in that. If you wanted to know. Director Mel Welles stated that she was in a tense state due to relationship problems and nearly had a nervous breakdown on the set (thanks Robert for that info!).

In 1968 she starred alongside Heidrun Hankammer (Gorilla of Soho) and real-life assassination plotter Tamara Baroni (just out of prison...) in the E.C. Dietrich smutpiece "Die Nichten der Frau Oberst" (The Colonel's Nieces), which was incredibly successful (a top-10 grossing movie of that year) and started the cycle of sex movies based on "literature" (which made it easier for those teachers and professors of language to go into cinemas and watch the movies "Dear, I'm going out to see a movie by Guy de Monpassant, it's for work, you know?"—"Certainly my darling...."). On the set, she had a big fallout with director/producer Dietrich, who claimed to have her hired specifically for going naked, which she refused.

Colonel's Nieces

Dietrich should not have worried. Hankammer and Bertoni made this movie an international success.

Bertoni and Hankammer

After that, she  took part in the Holy Grail of lost Gialli "Y-XX: Formel des Bösen" an ultra-sleazy "inspiration" to "Cat o' nine tails" AND "Delirio Caldo" of which no moving sequence seems to have survived (KRIMI! is working on this!) but then concentrated on work for tv where she was regularly cast in krimis, though little else. She began theatrical work and wrote her own Krimis under an alias. 

Y-XX: Formula of Evil

She even recorded an LP in 1970 called "Kai Fidelity" with self-penned songs, some were co-written by Jan Hammer (later of Miami-Vice fame). Always to be in the center of the Munich bohemians, she had been present at the "Domicile" Jazz Club where he had recorded his first LP (Live/Jan Hammer Trio/Malma Maliny) Aug.30th 1968. There seems to be another interesting story beneath all of this: Fischer, herself a german-bohemian refugee and center of the munich-bohemian-bohemians (sic!) might actually have been instrumental to this concert. She was close frieds with Friedrich Gulda's wife, the actress Paola Loew. Hammer had just won Gulda's (a renowned pianist) annual newcomer jazz festival earlier. Besides that, Jan Hammer's bassist George Mraz had already played at the domicile too.

Needless to say, both records are published on the same record label by the same publisher. And the owner of the "Domicile" and the "Domicile" publishing company was Ernst Knauff, who at that time, was Kai's current "partner". 

The themes revolve around "fidelity" both in a sexual and a philosophical (Wittgenstein) manner. It was lavishly produced but obviously failed to make any impression.  A follow up called "Kai Society", for which she had already written some songs, was not released. Her new boyfriend obviously did not own a record company... (source: HörZu 21/1970)

In 1977, Ingmar Bergman casted her alongside David Carradine as aging prostitute in "The Serpent's Egg". Regularly she returned to the realm of  TV-Krimis (Derrick) and exploitation pictures like "Holocaust 2 - The Revenge" from 1980.  She stayed politically active in numerouse grass-root movements and was an outspoken protagonist for liberal civil rights.

Until 2002 she had one or more  photographic-equipment-stores in Munich,  and worked as a phtotographer in arts, from there, the traces vanish, but she is still alive.

She could tell us so much, we surely hope she's doing well! And if anyone of you, dear readers, know of her whereabouts, let us know! 

In the TV-Krimi series "Derrick" ca 1980

1984

Casting Card

1975

The genre movies:

1958         Madeleine Tel. 13 62 11 (Sleaze Krimi)

                 Grabenplatz 17 (Krimi)

1959         Schwarze Nylons - Heiße Nächte (Sleaze Krimi)

                 Lockvogel der Nacht (Sleaze Krimi)

                 Mädchen für die Mambo Bar (Sleaze Krimi)

                 Too hot to handle (Sleaze Krimi)

                 Tempi duri per i vampiri (Horror Comedy)

1960         Freddy und die Melodie der Nacht (Schlager Krimi)

                 The Hellfire Club (Sleaze)

1962-64    Die Karte mit dem Luchskopf (3 Seasons) (Krimi)

1964         Das Wirtshaus von Dartmoor (Krimi)

                 Zimmer 13 (Krimi)

                 Das Ungeheuer von London-City (Krimi)

1966         Thunder Mission (Mercenary)

                 Der Würger vom Tower (Krimi)

1967         Das Geheimnis der Todesinsel (Horror)

1968         Die Nichten der Frau Oberst (Erotic)

1970         Y+XX Formel des Bösen (Krimi/Giallo) (presumed to be lost)

                 Immer bei Vollmond (Krimi/Giallo) (ultra-rare only one known copy)

                 Josefine Mutzenbacher (Erotic) 

1972         Paura (pre-Stage Fright Giallo - Lost/uncompleted)

1973         Studio Legale per Una Rapina (Heist)

1975         Die Sündige Kleinstadt (Erotic)

                 Fermi Tutti! E una Rapina! (Heist)