The Hunchback Of Soho (1966) We know the first question some of you must be asking......
"What the **** is a Krimi?"
Of all the strange sub-genres we've stumbled upon in our never ending search for weird, obscure cinema, the West German produced 'Krimi' thrillers of the 1960's and 70's were a genuine find......'Krimi' being short for Kriminalfilm, a series of creepy thriller-murder mysteries based on the piles of fogbound London whodunits pumped out by the prolific Edgar Wallace. (Yes, the same writer who collaborated on the orignial "King Kong" script.)
Somehow (don't ask us), these books and films became huge favorites in Germany, where audiences couldn't get enough of them......pulpy,semi-bizarre, borderline horror tales in which dogged British police detectives hunted down evil murderous conspiracies, usually in stately manors and/or castles where either a hooded, costumed figure or a hulking minion racked up a sizable body count.
The 'Krimi's threw together a wild 'n crazy mixture of Agatha Christie, grotesque villains, Germanic noir and perverse violence that would later find its full flowering in the Italian "Giallo" genre of sex-oriented slashers.
And if you watch enough of them, you could have no end of fun spotting future international stars like "Goldfinger"s Gert Frobe, the stunning Karin Dor (of "You Only Live Twice" and Hitchcock's "Topaz)......and cinema's all-time legendary madman, Klaus Kinski.
We did encounter a batch of them when some English-dubbed versions wandered over to American TV stations in the mid-'60's (along with with loads of Spaghetti westerns and James Bond knock-offs).
And here's our fave of the bunch, the first Krimi shot in ripe, bright color after all the black-and-white ones.
Everything's in place here, starting with the always loud, insistent jazzy music that precedes the first of many gristly murders in a Sherlock Holmes-ian never-neverland Britain. Given the title, of course it's a shambling, loony hunchback who's knockin' 'em dead.
A sweet, adorable heiress to a relative's fortune finds herself kidnapped and enslaved in a basement laundry along with other nubile girl delinquents. Holding the babes captive are an oddball crew indeed - a supposedly pious reverend, a whip-wielding matron and a vicious hitman .. They've replaced the heiress with a phony double to scoop up the inheritance, and anyone who thwarts their plans gets a strangulation appointment with that hulk with the posture problem........
That's all you need to know as the film careens from one lurid sequence to another, with special attention given to the pretty laundress chain gang and Hunch-Guy's neck-wringing.
We dearly love uncovering Euro-Junk like this, but we realize it's not for everyone. Even as they leave murder victims generously strewn everywhere, there's a quaint, innocent charm to the 'Krimi's......probably from their steadfast adherence to Edgar Wallace's Jolly-Olde-England atmosphere.
With all the elements in play here......horror, mystery, surprise twists and hints of sadism and sexual perversity, the 'Krimi' offers a sneak preview of the heartless, blood-soaked carnage that would dominate the European genre films throughout the 1970's.
So if we intrigued you enough to sample one, hunker down with "The Hunchback Of Soho", a 3 star (***) best-of-the-bunch......
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