Der Würger von Schloß Blackmoor

A strangler is loose on a British estate, and he not only strangles his victims but brands an "M" onto their foreheads before he decapitates them.

The letter M features heavily in the story, scrawled on the foreheads of the victims, one head is mailed to someone, which quite gruesome. Complicated and dullness hinders the film, making it not so gripping. Castle, strangler, diamonds and light and shadow atmosphere- quirky and mysterious characters all with their own sinister motivations is here, and sounds enticing, however the direction is pedestrian and the excitement is lacking. It's just passable, but of its ilk it's not top tier. Karin Dor is great as always. The killer here is like those fiends from a 1980's slasher film -sometimes strangling his victims, but also machine-gunning them or chopping their heads off. For its time, there's a fairly gruesome scene where a guy gets his head lopped off while on a motorbike.

THE STRANGLER OF BLACKMOOR CASTLE is one of the best of the German krimis I've watched, this one based on the works of Bryan Edgar Wallace. The story is relatively straightforward: a masked killer prowls the corridors of Blackmoor Castle, searching for a stash of hidden diamonds and ready to strangle anyone who gets in his way.

Veteran director Harald Reinl uses the opportunity to deliver a film that's loaded with atmosphere, murder and action. The killer, who has a penchant for beheading his victims, is truly a sinister creation and the scenes of him prowling through dimly-lit corridors are hugely atmosphere. Some of the set-pieces provide bizarre highlights, such as the motorcycle beheading, and there's even some fisticuffs to keep the story bubbling along.

The cast acquit themselves well enough that the viewer is able to distinguish some solid performances despite the atrocious English dubbing. Regular Scream Queen Karin Dor headlines but the statuesque Ingmar Zeisberg wins most of the attention as a scheming barmaid. There are red herrings galore, dogged detectives and intrepid reporters, everything you'd want from a good murder mystery. Add in some broad comedy involving a kilt-wearing "lord of the manor" who's got an obsession for birdsong and you have a great little movie overall.

Very fun, sinister film. This is the kind of movie I remember waking up and seeing at three o'clock in the morning on television when I was a child--good thing or bad? Anyhow, Karin Dor is terrific, and who wouldn't love the disjointed creepiness of a German version of Britain in which everyone speaks American English--at least in the version I own. Nice use of marking victims with the letter M--reference to Lang? Why oh why can't we find these movies on television anymore?--not even on cable! And, by the way, where the heck is HUNCHBACK OF SOHO?

Edgar Wallace was a master storyteller who is best remembered today for creating compelling stories in the murder mystery genre. While that is where he found some of his greatest successes, his writings encompassed far more than that. He began writing as a war correspondent during the Boer War. Eventually, he returned to England where he began writing thrillers (popular fiction) to raise his income. It seems Wallace's Achilles heel was his inability to handle money. For every nickel earned, he spent a dime. Many people mismanage their finances, but Wallace did so on a very large scale.

It's staggering to think how much money he squandered, even when, through sheer hard work and determination, he eventually became an internationally recognized author. He wrote journalism, screenplays, poetry, historical nonfiction, 18 plays, 957 short stories, and over 170 novels. More than 160 films have been made of his work.

He sold over 50 million copies of his combined works in various editions. Understandably, he was described as one of the most prolific thriller writers of the 20th-century, so prolific that in 1928, his publishers claimed a quarter of all books in the United Kingdom were written by him!

What has all this preamble to do with a film review? Well, somewhere along the path of international success, Wallace's work struck a particular chord in Germany, especially West Germany after the Second World War. Today, the majority of Wallace's works are out of print in the United Kingdom, but they are still readily available and eagerly read in Germany.

Therein lies the link. In the 1960s, a cycle of crime films, called krimis, became enormously popular with West German audiences. Entirely adapted from Edgar Wallace's works (and a few by his son, Bryan Edgar Wallace) they combined the traditional murder mystery with horror as they depicted enigmatic killers stalking their victims through foggy English landscapes, from the streets of London to isolated rural Agatha Christie-like mansions.

The second film in the series of six recently released as a box set on Blu-ray under the name TERROR IN THE FOG: THE WALLACE KRIMI AT CCC is arguably the best. THE STRANGLER OF BLACKMOOR CASTLE is beautifully shot, rich with ambience and atmosphere; stacked with gorgeous women (including Karin Dor, who enjoyed some success in Hollywood) and stocked with eccentric characters and performances. This is one wild ride right to the end, with some genuinely startling moments of suspense. The horror element is best depicted by the masked murderer carving the letter M on the foreheads of each of his victims.

One exceptional feature about THE STRANGLER OF BLACKMOOR CASTLE is the work of avant-garde composer Oskar Sawa, who saved the producers of the films he scored in this series a ton of money by requiring only one musician to play the score and not having to hire an entire orchestra. This was a big deal as the krimi films were low-budget affairs, costing about $3,000 each to make. Beginning in 1929, Sawa had developed and mastered an instrument he called the trautonium, considered the world's first electronic instrument. No less a visionary than Alfred Hitchcock employed this innovative composer and his computerized creation in lieu of a traditional musical score for his soundscape in THE BIRDS. Those of us who have seen THE BIRDS remember how disturbing and spine-tingling was the end result!

All in all, these elements cobbled together made for the perfect West German cinematic experience. A wealth of character actors, clever plot twists, a little romance (not Wallace's forte), and lots of mostly bloodless violence which, curiously, appealed to the preferred operatic, melodramatic tastes of their audience, culminate in a number of films from another time and place that still hold up reasonably well today, especially in the newly-restored versions now available.

THE STRANGLER OF BLACKMOOR CASTLE. Don't be a strangler. I mean, stranger...

The problems are. 1) the comedy relief, is the wacky mustache-bird- recording character and if that isn't enough the spunky little kid that sometimes acts as his sidekick. 2nd problem is the music score, all electronic though not much of it, but it is also used mostly for comic relief which is not early electronic music's strong point. Some other sounds are comically dated now--though music for these German films is frankly usually pretty bad--awful non stop squealing rock/jazz so this film's lack of music is mostly a good thing but the comic electronic burbs and beeps are hard to get over and distracting, but, like I say at least there isn't a lot of music. And the comic relief also doesn't overwhelm the plot but does pop up just when you least need it.

The last deficit is that just past the half way point in the movie briefly stops making sense, this is another problem with these films there are so many characters that you lose track at some point. This film has a series of car ride sequences with the cops talking about various suspects and it just becomes a blur, this one holds up longer than most though plot wise and it does get back on track before the ending.

The Alpha DVD is full frame and things are obviously cropped but the print is in decent shape, just turn down the brightness a little.

For a Strangler film the strangler does almost as much beheading as strangling, this is a good thing and it adds variety and strangling can be pretty dull on film, the spfx are pretty good especially one on screen decapitation. There is one awful mechanical bird but is part of the equally bad comic relief and only appears twice and very briefly.

The film moves well and "attacks" come pretty regularly and the ending is very well photographed in a foggy swamp and forest. The dubbing is actually not too bad which helps the movie too. There is a very clever hiding place for the diamonds too.

So prepare yourself for the bads and enjoy the goods and this film is well worth the time to watch it.