Edgar Wallace: Der Hexer

Many of the German Krimi movies in the Edgar Wallace collection that I've seen thus far are enjoyable, for sure, but also excessively complex and featuring a climax that is both too grotesque and made less impactful by the many plot-twists that came before already. With that in mind, I can honestly state that "Der Hexer" is the best and most effective Krimi of the whole collection! The plot is simple, relatively straightforward, and steadily builds up to a fantastic climax. And the climax truly is fantastic, I assure you, with a dazzling revelation and an even more dazzling surprise ending.

Following the murder of his sister, a wanted criminal known as The Magician is expected by Scotland Yard to pop up in London and extract vengeance on the murderers. Inspector Higgens must even accept the help of the now retired but former Scotland Yard top-agent Warren, and meanwhile also uncover the reason by who and why The Magician's sister got murdered in the first place. The lame humor (as usual provided by Siegfried Schürenberg and Eddi Arent) is luckily kept to a minimum and replaced by good red herrings and feminine beauty. As the tense climax approaches, there's a joyous gimmick where the screen turns black and displays the question: "do YOU already know who The Magician is?". I loved it. Reminded me of William Castle, in fact.

I did enjoy this watch: to me, clearly a humorous take onto crime solving. The characters are vividly displayed (even if the femal leads remain rather dull and dump... by intention) and the storyline is a huge quest of "who is the actual murderer" as we don't know the face of the perpetrator as an audience.

Personally, I was especially drawn in by the set design with various historically accurate (and inaccurate) gadgets, such as secret doors, car telephones, underground pipelines, miniature submarines and (my highlight) a security system hidden in a taxidermied bear mounted to the wall with blinking eyes and switches pulled inside the bear's ear.

The movie is well paced, with many entertaining highlights, dialogues, chase scenes and those strange incidents that make you question who might be the 'bad man' in disguise.

Fun to watch! For me as film history student it was a must, but I'd recommend it to anyone who is in for a retro detective fun ride based on old stories transported to the 60s.

Who is the Witch (a male individual is also called a Witch right?)? Well maybe you can tell ... but then again, the movie is quite mean and I'd say it isn't that easy to figure out ... but the end reveal is quite crazy too. And then you get another twist thrown in for good measure.

But let's go back to the beginning: With some known players from other Edgar Wallace adaptations. I remember loving these movies when I was a kid ... I did like crime movies ... I actually still do. So while this has somewhat aged ... it still is fine entertainment to say the least ... there are many more of movies like this ... but this was one of the movies that even nowadays fans will remember ... because of the twists and turns and because a comedian made a somewhat "remake" of it - Wixxer it is called and it is more like a spoof ... just in case you want to check that (and its sequel) out.

When Gwenda Milton is murdered in London, her brother returns from Australia to find the killers. His nickname is "Hexer" ("wizard") because he wears many masks and can disappear without a trace. The police have a love/hate relationship with him, because he takes justice into his own hands, but justice it undeniably is. The success of this movie is owed to an excellent marketing strategy. The production company locked the final pages of the screenplay away, so that even the actors didn't know before the day of shooting who would be the Hexer in disguise. Neither will I tell you now. The whole movie builds up tension until this final revelation.

Of course there are the popular actors of the Edgar Wallace series (Fuchsberger, Drache, Lowitz, Aren't, Schürenberg), plus an excellent Margot Trooger - calm, yet charming -, but it's the story in the first place which makes "Der Hexer" memorable.

The sister of a famous, uncaught criminal named The Hexer is murdered. Inspector Higgins believes that The Hexer will surface to take revenge on the killers, and sets a trap to finally capture him. However, soon bodies start piling up...

An odd mixture of twisty turny cat and mouse game and tongue in cheek humour, which feature In many Wallace Krimis. It can be hard to keep up, and there's times you're scratching your head, but it has light touch, has some good gadgets, a very clever villain, and some good underwater sequences. Everything leads to the climax in neat fashion, and before the unraveling of the villain there's a William Castle-style gimmick - asking the viewers who they think is the ringer.