MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*
As of this writing I've not seen the first sound film adaptation of Edgar Wallace's FELLOWSHIP OF THE FROG, but I did review the sequel. And now, thanks be to streamng, I've seen this 1959 adaptation, which was successful enough to launch a long series of German crime films, called krimis, and also not infrequently adapted from other Wallace works.
As I've said in similar reviews, I've no familiarity with the source novel. However, one online review of the Wallace work-- the second in a brief series of novels about a clever Scotland Yard cop, Inspector Elk-- indicates that the novel is mostly a straight mystery, in which Elk seeks to learn the identity of the frog-masked mastermind whose cutthroat gang has been committing London robberies and eluding capture for at least a couple of years. However, since German crime films had not been successful in the fifties for some time, it seems director Harold Reinl and his crew upped the violence content, making this FROG into a high-jumping adventure. The strategy was a success with German moviegoers and possibly other Europeans as well, so that FROG gave birth to a plethora of krimi films. I note that one of those thrillers that I reviewed previously, DEAD EYES OF LONDON, shows a much more kinetic attitude to the Wallace material than had the previous sound adaptation, THE HUMAN MONSTER.
Further, though clever Inspector Elk was probably the sole star of the book, in FROG he's obliged to share the position of central hero with an amateur detective-- an ironic development, since in his time Wallace was noted for making his detectives police officers rather than amateur sleuths. In the book a character named Richard Gordon, a British prosecuting attorney, is the boyfriend of the story's heroine Ella. But in the movie Gordon (Joachim Fuchsberger, also the doughty hero of DEAD EYES) is the wealthy nephew of another Scotland Yard official, whose romancing of Ella may be more important to the story as a whole, and this Gordon is so serious about amateur crimefighting that he and his stoical butler practice judo holds on one another. In fact, the two of them have a spirited fight with a bunch of Frog henchmen that carries a slight Batman-and-Robin vibe. True, both of the heroes get taken down by superior numbers. But after being held in durance vile for what must be several days (because both uncaped crusaders grow substantial beards), this dynamic duo breaks out in spectacular fashion. Other scenes that were a trifle hyperviolent for 1959 include a scene with a knife-wielding thug slicing open a bobby's throat, and a big raid by the cops on the Frog's HQ, which includes London cops unleashing machine-gun fire on the ruthless criminals.
But though the Frog is opposed by both the superior brainpower of Inspector Elk and the brawn of his ally Gordon, it's really the princess that slays the frog, to misquote KING KONG. For no explicit reason, the Frog-- whose precise identity was never important to me, so I barely remember his ID-- falls in love with Ella, and he demands that she willingly agree to be his bride. When Ella refuses, the Frog has his henchmen launch a complicated plot in which a sexy chanteuse seduces Ella's irresponsible brother and then frames him for murder-- all so pretty Ella will willingly go to the altar with the batrachian criminal's civilian identity. It's the weakest aspect of a generally tight police thriller with some strong violence, a few cool gimmicks, and an encore for the first "mystery villains" of the 20th century.
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