Essays on classic european crime movies and giallos/gialli. Specifically on Edgar Wallace Krimis
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 is an excerpt of one page I did for the magazine:
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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.
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).
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| 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.
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| 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
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| 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...
99 Women
Girl from Rio
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| 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.
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| Receiving a life-time award in 2017 |
Montés at the Almeria Spaghetti-Western Festival
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| Woman No. 97 |
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| With her daughter |
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| 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.
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.
Residing in quiet Zurich, Romay and Franco seem to finally get their lifes together. Switzerland is known for discreet but bottomless sex experiences for sale. No wonder the OPEC and the IOC reside there. With Erwin C. Dietrich, Franco finally has found a producer who can handle him and the result are 15 movies in 2 years. And most of them pretty good.
Dietrich, freed from the burdon of directing himself (except for the very special "Rolls Royce Baby" Lina Romay feature), puts his energy into distribution and acquires the rights to distribute two movies about the inner workings of prisoner camps in unwieldy surroundings for the german-speaking market.
These sincere psychological studies, made by the renowned company of CINEPIX, of female behaviour when put in a situation of power (and powerlessness) obviously tingled something deep inside of Herr Dietrich (= he smelled money, big time)....
The Franchise: Ilsa, Greta, Wanda
Ok, this is a far stretch. Ilsa, is of course not a european franchise but a canadian one, but then it is based on Ilse Koch, who was German anyway, so I just have the liberty to include the series here. Forgive me. Furthermore, this is a european film as only Thorne is from overseas. Adding to this is the statement by Dietrich himself who always considered the german-language versions as the original ones. And as we will see at the end, it was Dietrich himself, who started this whole SHE-Thing of the SS in the first place....
The first one "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS" is distributed OUTSIDE of Germany by Dietrich as "Ilsa, die Hündin von Liebeslager 7" (Ilsa, the bitch of Love-Camp 7) and becomes a huge hit. In tiny Switzerland with 3 million german-speaking inhabitants 180.000 curious alpine moviegoers wanted to be informed what exactly had gone on with their neighbours 30 years ago. (if you scale that, that would be 12.000.000 tickets at the US-Box-office in 1975 - which would have secured a Top 5 spot on the US-charts!!!!).
Ilsa is said to be "based" on the the real-live KZ-witchbitch Ilse Koch, but even the american perception of her was deeply distorted and the camp version is even more. I would love to see a good movie be made about her interesting life. Giving Thorne's character red hair in Greta brings her historically closer to the real Ilse Koch.
I have absolutely no idea (joke!), why Dietrich missed the opportunity to distribute this valuable documentary in Germany itself. But let's be real: he obviously did not need another police intervention.
There is this myth about the movie being banned in Germany, which is not true. Of course it would have been, if it had been released there, but as it never crossed the Swiss border, no action could have been taken. Still, today, the movie is available with its german-language dubtrack in Switzerland, easily to be imported to Germany without any customs etc.
Ok. If you check my NIGHTS AT THE GRINDHOUSE, you will know that, at 18 years of age I witnessed a complete night consisting of 12 EC Dietrich-distributed films back in 1985. Man was I excited... I had heard rumours about Ilsa and when I finally saw impressive Dyanne Thorne with the oilsheiks I was underwhelmed. Aside from her, everything else felt cheap and bland. When I got lucky later to get a VHS copy of "She-Wolf" in a Belgium seaside-resort movie-shop (german with flemish subs) I could see the appeal of the eery fake-authenticity of "Hogan's Heroes" sets for US-viewers, but "Harem Keeper" was kind ofa bomb. Worse, though, much worse was "Tigress of Siberia". Now that is an absolute loser of a movie and a waste of everything, including my time (I actually watched it three times because the verions I saw HAD to be cut.... well they are not - the movie is simply worthless).
But hey, we're still with Dietrich and "Harem Keeper". His nose following the gold-trace and hearing that his canadian partner André Link (co-founder of CINEPIX and another one of the many east european exilees to be found in post-war cinema) was not too happy with Thorne he quickly made an offer: Thorne in a WIP-Ilsa-style movie directed by the inventor of sleazy WIP soft-erotica himself: Jess Franco. Congratulations, Erwin. Well done.
And it is so easy: Show the two previous films to Jess and tell him that all he has to do is to incorporate this into his next WIP he is preproducing anyway. And that he can shoot in Portugal.
The only problem was that André Link did not want Dietrich to use the name of ILSA.
Ok, let's get to the bottom of it by logical deduction. It is known that Link "lends out" Thorne to Elite/Dietrich - this could only been done if she would have been under exclusive contract with Cinepix. That contract could only been sealed after "She Wolf" as the success was not known beforehand. So they do "Oil-Sheik" with Thorne as part of a multi-picture exclusive.
After Oil-Sheik, Link lends out Thorne to Elite but does not allow Elite to use the name of Ilsa, although they are going to distribute the movie in the US. This is odd. Only if Link would not have been able to give Dietrich the rights to the ILSA-character this would make sense somehow. But maybe Thorne had something to say in ILSA too...
So maybe they were already selling/transferring the rights to Corman/Reitman for "Siberia". Or there were two seperate deals - one on Thorne and one for the rights and Dietrich simply did not want to pay for the latter - which would not astonish me a bit.
You can say about Jess Franco what you want, but this guy had been around. Instead of fantasyzing about Ilse Koch in cheap hollywoood sets done by ex-hippies on drugs, he had seen things. Living in fascist Gerneralissimo Franco-Spain was no joke and as strange as it may sound: The strength of Franco's WIP movies were an expression of the conditions in a) Spain b) Portugal c) South America at that time. Paired with his love for the female body, his WIP-films are something different. They just hit harder than the italian processed productions and american irreality.
I have in person witnessed half of the audience leaving, sickened at a secret theatrical screening of "Woman of Cell Block 9" although it was obviously all "fake".
So here we have him with very good human ressources (Lina&EC-Dietrich crew&Thorne), well-funded sets and obviously a carte blanche by Dietrich to go all in.
Case opened: Greta, Haus ohne Männer (Greta, House without Men)
The Plot: Murder, needle torture, flogging, mass rape of lobotomized women, licking a diarrhea-ridden butt, a cat fight, vagina torture, suffocation with a plastic bag, torture by electric shocks, disfigurement, cannibalism. Great fun for the whole family, which, as Dietrich noted with delight, was just as successful in the cinemas as "The Omen", which had been released just three months earlier. He truly was a real gold-digger.
Ilsa/Greta here has the red hair of Ilse Koch and things move different. We have a very hairy undercover agent who tries to solve the mystery of lost girls and goes in as inmate into a forensic asylum. We have Thorne, giving her rare evil comedy performance and a strong one by Romay. Even Franco himself is not that bad as witness.
The movie looks good. Not a single distorted take, no cringe moments, even the zooms are kept to a minimum. Franco could take his time here concentrating on untamed bodyhair and cold showers, sadistic set-pieces and sex.
There are stylistic differences between the first two Ilsa-movies and this one, but in all regards, (except for the strinking image of Thorne in a SS-Uniform), the canadian movies are inferior.
I am pretty close to calling this movie Franco's best, because this is a carefully constructed piece in a field where the director felt comfortable. Some might rave about "Shining Sex" and I absolutely admire his "Blue Sumuru (hehe!)" venture. But this here is his natural habitat. A complete vision of sex, torture and ... fun. Nothing distracts, nothing is loose and if you can stomach the positively spoken cartoonish effects the only thing regrettable is the little screentime Thorne has.
I have always wondered about the title "Greta, Haus ohne Männer" (still accepting that this is the original title of this movie - as told by Dietrich). This seems such an odd choice. The wallonic-french one "Greta, the torturer" comes much closer. The german title translates as the harmless "Greta - House without Men" which at the end is not even true.
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| Eeexcuse me??? I did not get this at first. "Irving" C Dietrich!!!!! oh man. |
And then there is Dietrich's own venture into Nazi sadism "She Devils of the SS/Frauleins in Uniform", made in 1973 and OBVIOUSLY an inspiration to "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS". Based on the two books "Gretchen in Uniform" and "Gretchen out of Uniform", this is the first real deal of Nazi Sexploitation and distributed in Canada by.... CINEPIX. This now comes full circle as "She-Devils" was made under the original name of "Eine Armee Gretchen" "An Army of Gretchens" playing with the idea that the nazis "created" sexually willful female slaves to pleasure the soldiers. That name refers to the girl "Gretchen" in the play of "Faust" by Johann Goethe that - out of idealism - becomes a "fallen girl".
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| Gretchen, here, Greta there... |
"Gretchen" is the diminuitive form of Margarete and the short/but not diminuitive form of Margarete is "Greta". Nice.
But the "House without Men" I still don't get.
This movie has so many titles, from Greta, to Wanda and then finally to Ilsa when Cinepix themselves gave it up and put the movie correctly into their franchise. Best title of all, however, must be the bulgarian: "Ilsa, the whistleblower-theorem" obvioulsy depicts the most scandalous of all the plot elements: Franco as a whistleblower!!!
So did Jess Franco kill Ilsa/Greta ?
No, that was done by cinepix themselves. They did not know what to do with their asset. Or maybe they had trouble with Thorne. Somebody should research the strange license-situation around Ilsa in 1976-77 and why nobody (except for "Werewolf-women of the SS") has revived it yet. The death stroke to Ilsa was not Greta - in fact she was the best thing in this series- but the ill-concepted "Tigress of Siberia" vehicle which is a bad joke.
Acquittal
but can someone tell me what Jess Franco did with all the footage he shot when he did keep the camera rolling after the take was done? Did he keep it for his own pleasure? Did he produce secret exclusive loops for private financiers?? One wonders in whose vaults those lost "outtakes" still lie around, acetating themselves into oblivion....
So here I come to the end of my small journey. Starting from a question: "How come, Jess Franco was involved in the last movies of all of my favourite series" I ventured into the shady realm of eurolicenses and personal business networks, shake-hand-agreements and quid-pro-quo deals. I made so many notes for future things to explore and have met a lot of very, very nice people personally and online on the way. I really, really enjoyed that.
And no. Jess Franco did not kill the licenses off. He was not even cynical about it (maybe Dr. M - but I do not count that as Mabuse anyway).He was just put into the position of a pallbearer by the producers, not eager to revive, but to exploit the already dead corpses of their franchises.
I have to admit that I was not a huge (like HUGE) fan of Franco before this series started. But now I can fully understand the appreciation and admiration he gets.
If you have not read the other chapters of my journey-journal about how Jess Franco killed off Eurocrime... here they are:
1. Jess Franco vs. Lemmy Caution
2. Jess Franco vs. Dr. Fu Manchu
4. Jess Franco vs. Edgar Wallace
5. Jess Franco vs. Bryan Edgar Wallace
7. Jess Franco vs. Jack the Ripper
All of this will be expanded with future knowledge and extended with the bits and piece I left out here in further installments of KRIMI!... See ya.
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| another case of shameless self- promotion.... |
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| French: Prison Ward of the perverted Women. |
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| Flemish: The Sadistic Greta Wallonic: Greta the torturer |
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| Strange they are, those bulgarians. "Ilsa, the whistleblower-theoremistress" obvioulsy depicts the most scandalous of all the plot elements: Jess Franco as a whistleblower!!! - but maybe it is some kind of wordplay that I don't get. |
The first issue will be issue #0 that we will just put out to get familiar with the technology and the economy behind this. There will be newly revised and extended features in it though. So it will be worthwhile, even if you have already read about these topics in the blogs. But then, this is #0 and we will delete it, once #1 has come out (that will feature completely new topics and insights), making it a collector's item.
We have chosen Amazon as it has the best platform for us and it will be available worldwide. Issue #0 will be available both as kindle-epub and as printed paperback but we're thinking about going print-only as we feel that will do justice to the weight of the contens.
- an extended and completely revised entrance on Jess Franco and (Bryan) Edgar Wallace
- an extended and completely revised entrance on Heather Gardiner, who wrote the crime-novel "Money on Murder" on which "Das Hotel der Toten Gäste" is based and had a very interesting but untold (worldwide!!) life.
- a new feature on how the Fantomas-series was ended although being the most successful of all of eurospy (including James Bond).
- and a definitive definition of Krimi with the best Krimi-Movies presented for each example given.
We're not finished so things might change. But we will keep you informed.
KRIMI has its own blog, so you might check this one out regularly....
A lot has been written about the leading Krimi/Giallo ladies like Karin Dor, Karin Baal or Edwige Fenech, but looking into the lives and works of the lesser known "starlets" that starred in the european trash movies of the 60ies and 70ies often shows another, more complicated and interesting side: These were women who stood on their own and made their way by using the rules to their advantage instead of trying to change them.
One of them is Laya Raki. Why her? Well she co-starred in "Die Nylonschlinge" which is part of the EC Dietrich Strangler-Krimi-Cycle and by researching that movie I suddenly realised what an interesting person Raki must have been.
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| Back from Moscow, Adolf Althoff presents "The Tiger on the Horse" - oh dear. |
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| Actress La Jana, early idol of Laya, she died 1940 in the war. |
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| On her wedding 1957 with australian actor Ron Randell, they stayed together until his death in 2005 |
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| Laya (to the left) is some kind of assistant |
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| ooh, cats, I always wanted to have some kitty- pictures in my blog |
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| around 1955 |
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| On the cover of the british "TODAY" magazine |
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| Double A side with the french version "Faire L'Amour" on the other side. |
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| A more introverted picture |
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| Oh come on, this is an official still for the austrian movie "Haus auf dem Hügel"... .oh those austrians |
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| The movie novel to "House on the Hill" |
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| With her husband, Ron Randell |
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| There is even a duochromatic 3D magazine out there....
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| Gerald Flood (to the left) and Laya on the set of Crane |
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| Early model shoot (pre-op) |
