El diablo ataca de noche

Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam is directed by Robert Siodmak and written by Will Berthold (article) and Werner Jörg Lüddecke. It stars Claus Holm, Annemarie Düringer, Mario Adorf, Hannes Messemer, Carl Lange and Werner Peters. Music is by Siegfried Franz and cinematography by Georg Krause.

A serial killer is terrorising Hamburg, Germany, during World War II. When the local police struggle to catch him, the Gestapo are brought in to crack the case.

The basis for the story is that of real life serial killer Bruno Lüdke, here played by Adorf. Yet this is only a side-bar to the actuality of Siodmak's film, for it's a clinical deconstruction of Nazi Germany at the time, a look at the final throes of that regime. It shows how the corrupt powers would do anything to not make their government look bad, with orders even coming from Adolf himself! It's all very fascinating and potent, and well performed. There's some nice visual touches via the night sequences, though you reasonably expect to have more from Siodmak, a fine purveyor of expressionism and noir chiaroscuro. There's some contrivances and a couple of badly staged action sequences, but this remains a tough political drama with mystery shadings. 8/10

Afterwards I'd watched this picture, on bonus material the Italian actor Mario Adorf spoke about his recollections concerning the productions that reveals some possible disagreement over the veracity of the case occurred on WWII during the Nazi period, starting this point almost majority of the facts really happened, aside some sequence added under the pretext of the dramatization without stir in the real events.

Then the plot took place at Germany in 1944 when the war is closing on behalf of the allied, when a Germany serial killer called Bruno Ludke (Adorf) has been committed many murders on different spots at country, when a former army officer took over as police commissioner Axel Kersten (Claus Holm) delves into the odd case suspecting that the man caught in crime scene couldn't commit a murder due he didn't fits as enough strong hands an unusual throttling applied by the real killer.

When he finally finds Bruno and arresting him to able to extract further strongest elements to ascertaining the truth, during the Bruno's stateman the whole staff of the local police they reach a bottom line that the killer murdered around 80 victims, in the meantime a Gestapo officer following the case carefully under other pretext, in a nutshell hush it up due the possible damage to Nazi party on so-called new Germany that now is in the hands of the Fuher.

The picture has many qualities enforced and approached by the esteemed director Robert Siodmak, also the Noir proposition, fine photograph and embellished by a sharpy dialogue between the Gestapo officer and the Commissaire Axel over the Arian progeny as pure German race, however paradoxically Bruno Ludke belong from this ethnic group!!

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First watch: 2022 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.5.

Yo, Super Mario. Though while later Eurocrime "cult" actor Mario Adorf does quite a convincing job as the retarded serial killer in Robert Siodmak's Nazi noir The Devil Strikes at Night, ex-boxing-champion Claus Holm – imagine a German Van Heflin – as the crippled police Kommissar and Hannes Messemer as his SS-Obergruppenfuehrer opponent easily steal the show from him: Their confrontations, chock-full of icy dialogue, constitute the epicentre of this sardonic high tensioner that doesn't lose its momentum for a single second, due to Siodmak's remarkably concentrated direction, aided by the unobtrusive, but perfectly effective camera work by unjustly forgotten cinematographer Georg Krause (who did Kubrick's Paths of Glory – !! – a year before), competent editing by Walter Boos (who went on to do some Schulmaedchen-Reports in the 70s), and excellent supporting performances by Werner Peters and the strikingly beautiful Annemarie Dueringer. "Belief? Where did you dig up that word?", Messemer's slick SS herrenmensch asks the crushed Kommissar. Once, they even had great screenwriters in Germany, among them Werner Joerg Lueddecke, who sets the fast-paced, bitter, cynical and sometimes darkly humorous tone of the movie. When the Kommissar is sent to war in the end – the year is 1944 –, he reassures his trembling girlfriend: "It won't take much longer. Soon, you can reach the front line by city train."

"Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" is a film from the second German period of Robert Siodmak. Leaving Germany with the rise of Nazism in 1933 he returned to his home country after the Second World War in 1952. In the USA his film career suffered from his image of being a film noir director, in Germany this same image was more of a blessing. Also "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" is a good example of the film noir genre.

In German films the serial killer is portrayed in a different way than in for example American films. In American films he is portrayed as a savage beast who likes to kill. In German films the serial killer is both perpetrator and victim. He is a psychopat who has to kill. This is most clearly in "M" (1931, Fritz Lang), but is also the case in "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" (1957) and "Es geschah am hellichten Tag" (1958, Ladislao Vajda). Most convincing in his role as psychpat remains however Peter Lorre in his role as Hans Beckert in "M". In "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" Mario Adorf as Bruno Luedke can not match that performance, and he is hardly te blame for that.

In "M" the serial killer is hunted down by organised crime (who wants to keep the level of police activity at a low level). In "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" there is also some sort of organised crime, namely state crime in the form of the Nazi government. They are however not interested in the real killer, whose identity is uncovered by an honest detective. For reasons of public relations they prefer to give a death sentence to an innocent man, thereby showing their contempt for the value of a human live.

"Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" takes place in 1944, at the end of the war. A great deal of the film is devoted to the (miserable) life of German citizens. In this way there are similarities with films such as "Germania anno zero" (1948, Roberto Rossellini) or "Der Untergang" (2004, Oliver Hirschbiegel).

I watched The Devil Strikes at Night after browsing Son of Dracula director Robert Siodmak's IMDB credits and reading the film's extremely interesting synopsis.

Disillusioned German detective Axel Kersten investigates the identity of a serial killer who possesses the incredible strength of shattering the tiny u-shaped throat bone in his roughly 80 female victims.

Axel initially finds the full support of the Nazis, until the findings of his investigation threaten public perception of Hitler's SS. What could have been a more straightforward movie about a serial killer during Nazi Germany turns into a story about how quickly the lines of culpability can become blurred in such a bleak place as Germany towards the end of World War II. It's a great movie with excellent performances that really holds your attention for its two-hour runtime of reading subtitles.

It blew my mind to learn after watching The Devil Strikes at Night that it's story was loosely based on real-life serial killer Bruno Lüdke who shares his name with the character in the film.