KRIMI definition and sub-genres

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

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

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

Sensationalist
german "True-Krimi"
magazine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. German etc. (Co-) Production

2. Sensationalist/Outragous crime-plot

3. Recognizable German actors

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

5. Comic-Relief character

6. Good vs. Evil and no in-between

7. Hero saves/gets girl in peril

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is a short introduction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Green Spider

Mystery of the Green Scorpio

Scary, Hard and Refined

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

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

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

Jump to each chapter HERE 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Erwin C. Dietrich Strangler Krimis series:

Mexican poster for "The Strangler
of the Tower"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Black Market of Love

... and not even sixteen

Black Mink on Tender Skin

Porno Baby

Me, a Groupie 

Django Nudo and the Horny Women of Porno Hill

Underage seductresses (Part I & II) asf.

Black mink on tender flesh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lina has only a small role, which helps.

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

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

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

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

Josephine clearly not enjoying the multiple takes

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

So did Jess Franco kill the Krimis?

Verdict:

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

Acquittal

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

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

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

So next time it is Jess Franco vs. Ilsa

ADDENDUM:

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

Let's see:

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

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

Scotland Yard and Girlfriend of Inspector involved: Yes

Regularly appearing comic-reliev character: Yes

Mad Killer going round killing people in gruesome ways: Yes

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

Mad Doctor making mad experiments with his victims: Yes

Known Krimi Actors: Yes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources:

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

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

Sumuru, the Heir to Dr. Mabuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The question is: 

Did they know what they were doing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's what the AI thought:

Still here?

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

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

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.