L'ago sotto la pelle

Curd Jürgens plays the title role, the doctor from St. Pauli, Jan Diffring. He is the good guy, of the breed of good guys that mostly went out of fashion during the 1960s if not earlier. He heals the sick (sometimes just by touch), protects the innocent (even from the police) and punishes the guilty. He is just short of tights and a cape to become a superhero.

His main adversary is his brother Klaus, also a doctor. His female patients are rich, and if they are good-looking they are lured into his sordid parties where they are drugged and taken advantage of. And when other evil-doers photograph all this depravity for blackmailing purposes Klaus intervenes ruthlessly and the story of this film gets really going.

More than 30 years on one can only watch this with a sense of awe and fascination. Characters as black and white as this are rarely seen outside comicdom, even the heroes and villains of the Love Bug series possess a wider moral range than these citizens of Hamburg.

The great Curd Jürgens as a noble knight in this grubby little film about grubby streets full of grubby servants. In addition to his special character role, he also takes on this as a talented mime among mostly amateurs and unfortunately allows himself to be dragged down with them. Basically, he only appears at the beginning and the end, presumably it was just about a few hard marks. In terms of feel, it seems to be Edgar Wallace, 60s West Germany, capitalism at its worst. A bit of crime thriller, a bit of drama, some bosom, lots of interesting tracking shots, but not enough Pauli in terms of the title. Not quite sleaze, but pulp. Welcome to station cinema. It has charm, but no quality. Four years later, director Rolf Olsens has his peak, 'Bloody Friday'. Wait, I already mentioned it briefly. There's some optical gold among all the trash, lighting, perspective, colours. Focus on the camera, Franz Xaver Lederle. Finally, a question that the film raised for me: are the young Fritz Wepper and Karoline Herfurth one person?