Krimi Casebook: Monk with a Whip (Alfred Vohrer, 1967)

There are few things in life I enjoy more than a mid-week Krimi. Settling down with a glass of single malt to savour the delights of ‘Monk with a Whip’, aka ‘The College Girl Murders’, whilst my neighbours presumably content themselves with whatever Netflix or Mouse Plus have to offer, I can’t help but feel I’m “living my best life”, as the kids might put it.

By 1967, it’s safe to say, Rialto Films’ prolific series of German language Edgar Wallace adaptations had already lived their best lives many times over. But, even as the well-worn formula began to look a little ragged around the edges, both the introduction of colour and the gradual retreat of censorship through the second half of the ‘60s helped the ‘krimi’ experience something of a second wind, and happily, ‘Der Mönch mit der Peitsche’ (as it was known to West German audiences) stands out as one of the prime beneficiaries of these developments.

Although the film is allegedly adapted from Wallace’s 1929 novel ‘The Terror’, by this point Rialto’s scriptwriters were no longer even pretending to tell a coherent mystery story. Instead, ‘Monk..’ foregrounds a startling succession of outrageous, mildly titillating pulp / comic book set-pieces, loosely tied together into a distinctly half-hearted whodunit narrative, the resolution of which singularly fails to address the questions raised by the improbable events which have preceded it. Which is fine by me, needless to say - the crazier these movies get, the better, so far as I’m concerned.

As such, the film begins in a mouldering Frankensteinian laboratory located beneath a fog-shrouded gothic church (elaborate beakers and test tubes full of bubbling, fluorescent potions present and correct), wherein an elderly, white-haired scientist has perfected a colourless, odourless poison gas. As he merrily demonstrates, this can achieve the frankly less than earth-shattering result of killing a bunch of mice in a matter of seconds. (Is it just me, or does this feel like pretty uncomfortable subject matter for a post-war German film? Let’s not even go there, shall we.)

Keen to test his invention out on a human subject, the amoral egghead orders his reluctant assistant to enter the new formula in the book in which they apparently record such things. But, as the assistant opens the book’s cover - boom! - the crazy doc has only gone and installed a miniaturised poison gas spray it! Down goes the assistant, cackle-cackle goes the prof.

Cue the reverb-drenched voice of “Edgar Wallace”, the obligatory blood-dripping crimson titles, and the explosion of a main title theme, which, though it is not on this occasion composed by primo Krimi maestro Peter Thomas, nonetheless provides a pretty good imitation of the squawking, lurching tones of his deeply eccentric psyche/jazz/exotica stylings. (Martin Böttcher, who handled pretty much all the key krimis not scored by Thomas, was the man responsible.)

Clearly intent on wringing some immediate profit from his dastardly invention, we next see the scientist above ground amidst the tombstones, where he hands over a poison-loaded prayer book and a suitcase full of other nefarious, gas-related goodies to an unseen criminal, who arrives in a chauffeured Rolls Royce. The doc doesn’t have long to gloat however, as - ka-pow! - he suddenly finds himself garrotted by the lasso-like whip wielded by a hulking ‘monk’ clad in bright red robes and a conical KKK hood! Ye gods.

It would be difficult for any movie to top the EC Comics-via-Mario Bava ghoulishness of this opening, but ‘Monk with a Whip’ keeps the motor running for its next, loosely connected, segment, which concerns a prison inmate who is sprung from the joint, only to find himself transported (blindfolded of course) to the lair of a Dr Mabuse-like super-criminal, who sits with his back to the interviewee, his voice seemingly booming from the walls of a darkened, wood-panelled aquarium, from which giant turtles, manta rays and suchlike cast eerie, green-tinted shadows.

(The antechamber the villain’s lair, lest I forget to mention it elsewhere, comprises a rickety indoor rope bridge over an artificial swamp populated by alligators and pythons!)

Equipped with the deadly prayer book seen in the earlier sequence, the prisoner is promised riches in exchange for assassinating - for no reason which is ever satisfactorily explained - a suspiciously mature looking pupil at a Catholic girls’ school. (“FINALLY,” exclaim the audience who tuned in for ‘The College Girl Murders’.)

It is the demise of this unfortunate young lady which attracts the attentions of Scotland Yard, and in particular, the indefatigable Sir John, played as always by Siegfried Schürenberg. “What will they try next?”, he exclaims, throwing down a report on the killing, before calling in our old friend Joachim Fuchsberger (here playing one Inspektor Higgins), who, as a veteran of both The Black Abbott and ‘The Sinister Monk’ (1965), should surely be well-qualified to get to grips with this particular case.

A cameo player in the earlier films in series, Sir John was usually found choking on his tea in response to Fuchsberger’s mod-ish behaviour, but here he finds himself promoted to a central character - essentially subbing for mercifully absent comic relief overlord Eddi Arent, as he goes out ‘in the field’ to assist Higgins with the investigation.

Sir John’s shtick here concerns his attempts to prove the value of the new, “psychological” detection techniques in which he has apparently received some training - a one joke set up which, sad to say, soon becomes quite tiresome, as he bumbles around making a fuss about the psychoanalytical significance of witnesses’ testimony and so on, all whilst Fuchsberger smiles indulgently in the background.

This does lead to one genuinely amusing moment, when Sir John declares that he will rush home and consult his reference books to ascertain the potent Freudian implications of a dormitory full of school girls experiencing a collective hallucination of a red-clad monk, only for Fuchsberger - who, as noted, has form in this area - to gently reassure him that, “they say they saw a monk because there was a monk”.

That aside though, I confess that the Scotland Yard elements of ‘Monk with a Whip’ didn't quite hit the mark for me. Fuchsberger in particular seems a bit tired here, both as an actor and a character. Lacking much of the ‘silver fox’ charisma he brought to earlier adventures, he is more of a straight up, down-at-heel detective in this one. Despite some token attempts at flirtatious banter with Sir John’s Moneypenny-ish secretary (played on this occasion by Ilse Pagé), the unlikely depiction of Scotland Yard as a kind of louche bachelor’s paradise, as seen in films like 1964’s Der Hexer, seems to have diminished considerably by this point.

Likewise, as per The Hunchback of Soho, this one comes up disappointingly short on the kind of incongruous, not-quite-right English detail we UK-dwellers love to chuckle at in these films. Set largely in anonymous rural locations, there is perhaps a sense here of the Rialto films attempting to increase their international appeal (foreshadowing perhaps the reliance on questionable co-production deals which would just about keep the Krimi brand on life support into the early ‘70s).

Changes were also clearly afoot in terms of casting, with few holdovers here from the ‘krimi gang’ who helped fill Rialto’s black & white era films with such a memorable gallery of rogues and red herrings - but, despite all this, if we can cease comparing ‘Monk with a Whip’ to earlier krimis for a few minutes, there is so much else to love here.

Primarily, the film’s lighting and production design - though evidently executed on a tight budget - is really rather wonderful. Nocturnal scenes (of which there are many) fare particularly well in this respect, as DP Karl Löb (who appears to have handled photography on the vast majority of ‘60s German cult films) intersperses fields of dark shadow and deep, mossy greens with occasional outbursts of searing primary colour - not least the crimson-clad monk himself - whilst the smoke machines are meanwhile working overtime, lending a bit of a ‘Blood & Black Lace’ vibe to proceedings; ‘60s pop cinema in excelsis.

Throughout the film in fact, colours are cranked up to an admirably extreme level of saturation; all of the female characters wear eye-popping, monochromatic dresses and swimsuits, whilst many of the sets find a way to glow with some kind of eerie phosphorescence or another, like a wild, candy-coloured riposte to the cheaper, more naturalistic brown n’ beige mundanity which begins to predominate during the less imaginatively shot interior dialogue sequences.

Director Alfred Vohrer may not manage to include quite so many of the baroque props or forced perspective / model-based trick shots which became his trademark (“Vohrer-isms” as I recently heard them described in the Projection Booth podcast’s Krimi episode), but he nonetheless does everything in his power to keep the film visually exciting.

In particular, Vohrer gets much mileage out of the scenes set in and around around the school’s swimming pool, which, inexplicably, includes a kind of ‘viewing window’ in the service area beneath the pool, allowing for a number of unusual/distorted shot compositions. (How exactly this airy, modern building fits in with the ancient gothic exteriors we see representing the school’s estate is anyone’s guess, but no matter.)

It is here that the film’s perpetually sweaty pervert science teacher character (played by Konrad Georg) likes to crouch, watching the bathing beauties swim by - but, the teacher’s voyeurism goes both ways, as, in one of the films best moments, the young heroine Ann (Uschi Glas) dives into the pool, and, gazing out through the submerged viewing window, spies the hanging corpse of the sweaty teacher, ironically deposited in his favourite peeping spot by the monk.

As such incidents suggest, there is still a strong undercurrent of macabre sordidness running through ‘Monk with a Whip, however light-hearted and campy things may become at times. As well as sweaty Konrad, characters like the shifty-eyed headmistress (Tilly Lauenstein) and menacing chauffeur (Günter Meisner) bring some fresh blood (so to speak) to the movie’s unwholesome ID parade of suspects, whilst the idea of the school’s pupils leaving the safety of their dormitories to ‘party’ in the red-lit lodge occupied by a shady writer and sundry leery teachers is also fleetingly explored.

Momentarily reminding me of 1962’s somewhat krimi-influenced Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory, this notion of lonely girls leaving the safety of their collective lodgings to drift into the dark woods, in search of illicit thrills, remains a potent addition to the mystery, and, though it is never fully developed here, we do at least get a nice piece of ‘Twin Peaks’-ish noir jazz to set the mood.

Then of course, there’s the whip-wielding monk itself - such a wonderfully absurd, surrealistic creation! Seemingly pulled straight off the cover of some especially depraved fumetti, it’s enough to make you forget that this was somehow at least the third film Rialto managed to make about malevolent masked clerics knocking people off in the dead of night before being subjected to an inevitable, ‘Scooby-Doo’-esque unmasking.

(If the plot is not complicated by at least one instance of an innocent character dressing up as the monk, or an unconscious hero being left lying around in monk robes, or multiple monks, or something, I believe you’re allowed to ask for your money back.)

As to that whole business with the odourless/colourless poison gas meanwhile, well, given that by the second half of the film the villains have been reduced to loading it into guns and squirting it into their victims’ faces, leaving a thick layer of fake cobwebs, I’m not really sure what advantage it holds over just, say, shooting people, especially given that the same criminal cartel employs a crimson-clad maniac with a lasso, but…. there I go with that pesky ‘logic’ again. It all adds to the fun, and boosts the body count - which at the end of the day is very much the point here.

I mean, let’s face it, but the time we account for Not-Dr Mabuse in his study / aquarium, with his snakes and crocodiles, and eerie florescent lighting, we’re pretty far gone into the realm of euro-cult delirium and - in my case at least - enjoying it all immensely.

As noted, the eventual ‘resolution’ to this mystery proves a complete damp squib, doing very little to rationalise any of the preceding carnage and leaving us essentially non-plussed as to why any of this madness really needed to happen, but at the end of the day - so what.

So long as that bloody monk gets his comeuppance and Higgins and Sir John can head back to the Yard in one piece for a pot of tea and some banter with the girls in the typing pool, all will be right with the world. As the nation’s foremost experts in the field of crimes involving girls’ schools, poison gas, secret passages, crocodiles and/or evil monks (we get a lot of that sort of thing in the home counties, don't you know), I’d like to think they have a long and rewarding career ahead of them - in my dreams, if nowhere else.

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Golden Queen’s Commando (Chu Yen-Ping, 1982)

Although I can’t find a way to shoehorn it into any of my existing blog categories, today I’m going to go off-piste to tell you all about ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’, a lackadaisical action spectacular from the depths of Taiwan’s b-movie netherworld which charmed and mystified me in equal measure as it unfolded before my sleepy, post-midnight eyes last weekend.

[Quick note: Where possible, I’ve tried to present both the Chinese and English names of cast members when crediting them, but given the extent of misinformation and general obscurity which surrounds the Taiwanese popular film industry, confusion is bound to ensue, so apologies in advance for any mistakes.]

On first glance, ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ seems like a pretty fool-proof proposition: an all-female riff on ‘The Dirty Dozen’, set in war-torn Manchuria circa 1944. Pretty straightforward stuff, you may think, but just try telling that to director Chu Yen-Ping, a man best known in the West for bringing the world the unforgettable, allegedly Triad-financed all-star headfuck Fantasy Mission Force a year later.

Suffice to say, anyone familiar with that film will anticipate trouble brewin’ with this one, and indeed, the same delirious mixture of full-spectrum sloppiness, misplaced ambition, relentless forward momentum and sheer, unadulterated craziness is already in full effect in ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’, as Yen-Ping leaves any semblance of real world logic way back in the rear view mirror right from the outset.

As seems fairly sensible, the film begins with a series of short vignettes introducing us to each of our ‘commandos’, illustrating the circumstances which led to them being incarcerated together in what we’re forced to assume must be some kind of hellish, pan-Asian prison camp.

And, boy howdy, what a fantastic line-up of ladies we have to root for here! Much in the spirit of Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s ‘House’ (1977), each of our heroines has a simple, one-personality-trait identity, a distinctive costume, and an easy name to help us remember them.

There’s a tattooed lady wrestler from Inner Mongolia (‘Amazon’, played by Chun-Chun Hsu/Theresa Tsui), a master safecracker and cat burglar (‘Quicksilver’, Hsueh-Fen (Silvia) Peng), and ‘Sugar Plum’ (Joyce H. Cheng), who appears to be some kind of man-eating femme fatale / call girl with a cupid’s bow tattooed on her cheek.

 Even more memorable though is ‘Brandy’ (Hao-Yi (Hilda) Liu), an alcoholic swordswoman who we we initially see debasing herself terribly as she tries to scrounge a drink in a filthy, crowded bar. Once she’s managed to glug down a flask of wine however, it’s ‘Drunken Master’ time, as she is transformed into a fearsome fighter, slicing up her goon-ish tormenters in classic chanbara fashion! Wow!

A somewhat more aesthetically complex creation, ‘Black Cat’ (Hui-Shan Yang / Elsa Yeung) meanwhile boasts a spectacular, period-defying teased hair-do, new wave make-up and ray-bans, as well as wearing an oversized black cross around her neck.

Apparently some kind of Old West-styled outlaw / gambler / preacher(?), Black Cat makes up for the fact she was born forty years too early to audition to play bass in The Gun Club by bringing her own brand of rough, frontier justice to the saloons of old… Asia?

In one of several tributes to ‘For a Few Dollars More’ scattering through ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’, we initially see her calling out some no good varmint who’s unsuccessfully tried to stack a card game against her, blowing him away with a hidden pistol concealed inside a bible.

Eventually emerging as the movie’s Charles Bronson / second-in-command figure, Black Cat is undoubtedly pretty awesome, but when it comes to picking my favourite Golden Queen Commando, she narrowly loses out to ‘Dynamite’, played by Sally Yeh (who went on to star in Tsui Hark’s ‘Peking Opera Blues’ and John Woo’s ‘The Killer’ (both 1986)).

Swaggering across the Tibetan Plateau in hot-pants and a red bandana, Dynamite keeps a lit cigarette permanently dangling from her lips and specialises in – you guessed it – blowing stuff up, sometimes even using an oversized, cartoon-style detonator. (At one point later in the film, Dynamite further cements her infinite coolness by literally bringing a knife to a gunfight, and winning. Too much, man.)

As you can imagine, the various episodes required to introduce us to this mob of ass-kicking oddballs eat up so much screen-time that I was wondering whether there would actually be any time left for them to be assembled into a crack team of commandos and sent on a dangerous mission. Not that I’m complaining you understand - I could happily have watched a few dozen more of these action-packed vengeance vignettes, hit the end credits and headed off to slumberland feeling pretty satisfied.

But, ‘Dirty Dozen’ movie’s gotta do what a ‘Dirty Dozen’ movie’s got to do, and so eventually the aforementioned bad-ass dames find themselves incarcerated together in the aforementioned prison camp, being bossed around by soldiers who, in view of the historical setting, must presumably be Japanese, even though their uniforms and equipment appear to be German. Seriously though, let’s not even go there. They’re just baddies, ok?

Incredibly for a film of this vintage and general type however, the rote ‘Women In Prison’ segment which follows is entirely lacking in the kind of exploitative sadistic / sexual content one would usually expect of such material. In fact, the evil Asian Nazis don’t even so much as leer at any of the attractive women under their command, insofar as I recall. (There is a food fight instead though, if that’s any consolation.)

It’s almost as if Yen-Ping was setting out to make a family friendly movie or something. Albeit, one of those family friendly movies which involve hundreds of people being slaughtered, dismembered body parts flying across the screen and so forth - but still.

Anyway, it is whilst hanging around in this strangely non-threatening prison hell-camp that our heroines first encounter the formidable Brigitte Lin, heading up the cast list as our eye patch-sporting Lee Marvin surrogate, ‘Black Fox’.

“The Black Fox was really hot before the war – her two guns were enough to panic any mobster from Hong Kong to Chicago,” Black Cat helpfully explains. (Yes, there’s both a Black Cat and a Black Fox in this film, get used to it.)

[Hopefully Brigitte Lin will require no introduction for many of this blog’s readers, but given that I rarely cover Chinese-language cinema to any great extent, let’s just say – deep breath – ‘Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain’ (1983), ‘Police Story’ (1985), ‘Peking Opera Blues’ (1986), ‘Dragon Inn’ (1992), ‘The Bride With White Hair’ (1993), ‘Chungking Express’ (1994). You get the idea.]

Masquerading as a fellow inmate, Black Fox undertakes assorted chicanery in order to get our six heroines committed to the prison’s ‘black hole’ punishment room (basically it’s just an empty room with no lights where they hang around together, smoking cigarettes), from whence she orchestrates their escape.

Unfortunately however, the lengthy ‘prison break’ sequence that follows takes place at night, rendering the action largely incomprehensible on the badly degraded print of the film included on Golden Ninja Video’s recent Ninja Vortex compendium of IFD/Joseph Lai related films.

Presumably sourced from a Japanese VHS release if the burned in subs are anything to go by, this sadly seems to represent the only version of this film currently available in any format. Looking on the bright side though, at least it’s widescreen. Given that about 90% of the soundtrack consists of stolen Ennio Morricone music, I’m not really expecting a legit, remastered blu-ray edition to pop up any time soon either, so let’s just be thankful for what we’ve got.

A typically moody nocturnal action shot from the extant print of ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’.

So, as you’ll appreciate, I don’t really know how the ladies get out of prison. There seem to be a lot of soldiers being massacred, some jeeps zooming around and some buildings catching fire, but the whys and wherefores are all lost in the tape-sourced murk. Eventually though, they regroup in some kind of hideout which Black Fox has set out for them, where they are – finally! - briefed on the details of the mission they are supposed to carry out.

A spectacularly half-hearted attempt at exposition, this briefing lasts around thirty seconds, accompanied by a single chalkboard map, and basically consists of: “so there’s this underground enemy chemical lab, and some revolutionaries are threatening to unleash a chemical attack, so we get there first and blow it all up before them, any questions?”

Well, ok, how about - whose enemies? What revolutionaries? What the hell is going on here? I seem to recall there was also some reference made to a ‘queen’ at this point, which I suppose goes some way toward addressing this film’s grammatically awkward English title, but… which queen would that be then? I confess, the complex politics of war-time Taiwan and mainland China aren’t exactly my area of expertise, but… on reflection I should stop tormenting myself with these questions and just roll with it really, shouldn’t I?

I mean, I suspect I’ve already put more effort into trying to set the scene for this thing than Yen-Ping ever did, and even if he did deign to address his story’s historical background to some extent, you can be damn sure none of his efforts would have survived IFD’s typically horrendous English dubbing process (and make no mistake, this one is an absolute shocker in that regard).

Anyway, next thing we know, we’re in some dusty rural locale, and our heroines are all riding horses! They all seem to have reclaimed their preferred costumes and weapons from the pre-prison section of the movie, and Brigitte Lin has acquired a big, furry hat which she proceeds to wear through the remainder of the picture, even though the weather looks quite warm.

Meanwhile, someone in the editing room is absolutely caning their old copy of the ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ soundtrack LP, and ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ seems determined to transform itself into a western. There are many bad men on the Commandos’ tail, which we know because we see atmospheric, low angle shots of the black-hatted riders thundering over the camera, wielding flaming torches. Cripes! 

From hereon in, the narrative more or less degenerates into a series of unrelated set pieces with zero connective tissue linking them together. So, at one point, the Commandos enter a forested area, where they all ensnared by a variety of elaborate booby traps, one of which involves Black Fox getting clobbered by a bunch of human skeletons which swing down from the sky (or something).

Unfeasibly, the instigators of these traps turns up to just be a bunch of slobbish militia type dudes. Could they those ‘revolutionaries’ we were just hearing about? I’m not sure, but whoever they are, they’re a fairly good natured bunch, which leads us to our next set piece, wherein they promise our heroines their freedom, provided they can prove their mastery of various disciplines by defeating their captors in a series of challenges involving noodle-eating, beer-drinking, archery etc.

Sadly, whilst all of these hi-jinks are going on, there’s very little time for us to spend getting to know the individual Commandos, which is a shame, because they’re all such outstanding characters I could easily have watched a spin-off solo movie featuring any of them.

There is some rather minimal back-biting / in-fighting along the way, but the chief takeaway from this is simply the realisation that Quicksilver is by far the most annoying member of the group, prefiguring Winona Ryder’s angsty android character from ‘Alien Resurrection’ by several decades as she brings the action grinding to a halt on several occasions in order to start whining about the fact that she’s an orphan and had to make her own way in the world, and so on and so forth.

I mean, I’m sure each of these women has just as much of a hard luck story to tell, but do you see them tearing up and complaining about it every five minutes? Just look at poor Amazon – she’s been snatched away from her prize-fighting career in darkest Mongolia with nothing but an animal skin bikini to her name, and she barely even gets any screen-time. She’s just quietly takin’ care of business, trying to get this action movie / western / whatever thing done, as should you Quicksilver, you ungrateful cow. Just because you’re slightly less cool than the other characters, you think you’ve got a right to monopolise our attention. Go and crack a safe or something, why don’t you!

Sorry, where were we? Oh yes, the next big set piece finds the Commandos holing up in some sand dunes for a showdown with the army of baddies who have been following them – apparently led by the heretofore unmentioned “Flash Harry, the best tracker around”. (“But it can’t be him, he’s in Brazil,” Quicksilver exclaims, inexplicably.)

This sequence soon develops into a seemingly endless series of stylish, low angle shots of silhouetted stuntmen being thrown from their horses in slow mo, as multiple explosive charges set in advance by Dynamite explode around them.

Grabbing these extremely effective pyro / horse stunt shots was presumably a big deal for director Chu, and he seems determined to milk them for as much production value as he possibly can, throwing together what I imagine must have been every single piece of footage shot for these sequences and looping ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ endlessly behind them, creating a slo-mo, cowboy blasting montage which goes on for so long it eventually blurs into complete abstraction, resembling some avant garde / psychedelic re-appropriation of violent western imagery – an impression only intensified by cutaways to close-ups of the warrior women, rocking their assorted early ‘80s fashion statements as they blast away at their attackers with rifles.

After all this, we’re left feeling thoroughly discombobulated as the surviving Commandos (yes, some of them have sadly copped it, but no spoilers here) finally reach their destination, which appears to be a system of caves. Here, after more close-quarters soldier slaughter and more weepy shit from Quicksilver as she finally serves her purpose by cracking the lock on the big, metal door, they infiltrate the “chemical plant”, where…. well… good grief. I think this is where I finally lost it.

Imagine if you will, a cornucopia of bubbling, mad scientist beakers and chemistry equipment, full of wildly coloured liquid, all lorded over by cackling, Nazi-uniformed Asian soldiers. Meanwhile, the room’s big, raised central panel spins around (a common motif in crazy, early’80s Taiwanese films, in my experience), revealing - for some goddamned reason - the guy who was in charge of the prison way back at the start of the movie!

He is enthroned, Blofeld-style, upon a red upholstered armchair, stroking a cat, and is attended by a hefty, Eunuch-like servant wearing a one-piece yellow bodysuit. (Those still determined to wring some real world context out of this nonsense may wish to note that there is kind of white-on-red crescent/bull horns motif going on here, whatever that might imply.)

“I beg of you please, you mustn’t destroy any of this, this is not evil, it is art and science, all those wonderful theories,” the Eunuch guy pleads with the Commandos. “With this, we can take man to a higher level of civilisation, where there is peace, no pain, a paradise beyond dreams,” adds the prison boss/warlord.

“That’s a load of horseshit if ever I heard any,” Black Cat immediately responds, before opening fire and machine-gunning everything to smithereens – which I for one couldn’t help thinking seemed at least a bit premature.

I mean, admittedly, the cackling Nazis and cat-stroking Bond villain are assuredly not good signs, but this man in the yellow seems fairly sincere, at least. And after all, we haven’t actually seen any proof that this outfit are up to no good, have we? Wouldn’t it make sense to wait around and ascertain whether or not they have actually made any discoveries vital to humanity’s future, before going for full-on obliteration?

Well, apparently not. Still determined to turn itself into a western by any means necessary, ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ takes one last deep breath and goes for a kind of Bond movie-ish variation on the ‘Wild Bunch’ ending. Chaos! Blood! Screaming! Slaughter! Will anyone get out alive…?

To find out, you will simply have to commit ninety minutes to watching whatever ragged copy of ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ the internet and/or grey market can provide you with. I’m confident you won’t regret it.

Resorting to a tired cooking metaphor (last refuge of the speechless movie reviewer), this film feels as if someone cleared out everything sweet or salty from the kitchen cupboard, mixed it all up in a bowl, and served it up raw for dinner. Crazy, indigestible and quite possibly dangerous to one’s continued well-being it may be… but it’s kind of irresistible too.

Filleting through errant genre tropes like an ADHD-afflicted kid trapped in a comic book archive, it finds Chu Yen-Ping dishing out happy, context free pulp adventure mayhem like the unhinged b-movie savant which for the moment I’m going to assume he is.

Justin Decloux, who compiled and annotated the aforementioned ‘Ninja Vortex’ set from which I sourced my copy of this film, informs us that ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ is “…shockingly coherent for a Yen-Ping production”. Goddamn.

‘Pink Force Commandos’, with most of the same cast and crew, followed in ’83. Wish me luck, I’m going in.

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At the time of writing, a version of ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ comparable to the one I watched (actually, I think it might be a bit more cropped around the edges, if yr feeling picky) can be enjoyed on Youtube here.

October Horrors 2019 # 8: Santo Attacks The Witches (José Díaz Morales, 1964)

 (Or, ‘Atacan Las Brujas’, if you prefer.)

It’s about time for our annual October visit to the weird & wonderful world of vintage Mexican horror cinema, and boy, this relatively early Santo flick certainly throws us in at the deep end.

Voiceover narration from a woman we see tied to a sacrificial slab immediately informs us that she has been KIDNAPPED by the forces of evil!

Thunder crashes and theremins shriek (as they will continue to do throughout this film), as a variety of grisly taxidermied animals fill the screen, but our heroine (for such I suppose she must be) has two rays of hope in her darkest hour – firstly, her fiancée Arturo (hi Arturo), and secondly, El Enmascarado De Plata himself, the one and only El Santo!

We cut directly to Santo, who is busy infiltrating the Witches’ hacienda (yes, we’re in Mexico here, so the witches have a hacienda – get used to it), reaching an upper balcony where he instigates an epic (and, it must be said, extremely underlit) brawl with three anonymous, black-clad guards.

The Witches, it transpires, are led by Mayra, an ancient sorceress executed 300 years ago, who has recently returned from the grave as a result of the coven’s activities, co-ordinated by her second in command, the arch-seductress Medusa. They plan to use a curvy ceremonial knife to sacrifice both our narrator AND Santo to ‘The Lord of Shadows and Abysses’, as represented by a man wearing a fantastically gnarly ‘Devil Ride’s Out’ style Big Satan Head (although in truth, whenever he appears, I can’t help staring at his creased, baggy shorts, which stand out brightly against his otherwise all-black outfit – a catastrophic costuming decision and no mistake).

Whilst all this was going on, I found myself wondering whether this movie was actually the second half of an on-going serial, or whether my sub-titled bootleg of the film had mysteriously begun playback halfway through or something, such was the jarring effect of this immediate descent into credits-free, context-free action. But no – turns out this is actually all a dream sequence, albeit one that basically establishes the imagery and sequence of events which the remaining ‘waking’ part of the film will spend its time endlessly reiterating.

And so, we join Ofelia (María Eugenia San Martín) as she awakens from one of her regular, witches-vs-Santo related nightmares, perhaps inspired by the crumbling old mansion in which – so she has been told – her late parents will requires her to live for one full year, in order to claim her inheritance.

She has been informed of this by her icy sister Elisa (Santo regular Lorena Velázquez), who has recently appeared out of nowhere following a long period of estrangement to inform her that she is an orphan. Needless to say, Big Sis is the same woman who turned up as Mayra, the Queen of the Witches, in Ofelia’s dream, and, given the amount of time and expense which was clearly invested in the dream sequence, we already know that it was basically all true (and presumably cobbled together from footage we’ll be seeing again later), so – UH-OH.

Understandably frustrated by his inability to persuade Ofelia to marry him until all this eerie business is sorted out meanwhile, Arturo (Ramón Bugarini, whose other credits include ‘The Hellish Spiders’, ‘The Curse of Nostradamus’, ‘Bring Me The Vampire’, ‘The Incredible Face of Dr B’, ‘Sex Monster’ and ‘Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy’ – Mexican cinema, I swear) has the good sense to consult his good buddy El Santo – a meeting which takes place in the latter’s surprisingly drab-looking office/apartment, located on the upper floors of a Mexico City tower block - and The Man in the Silver Mask agrees, something here is clearly amiss.

Always up for a bit of breaking and entering based on flimsy, dream-based pretexts, Santo jumps into his nifty little convertible (as ever, I love the way he spreads his cape over the backseat as he drives) and roars over to La Casa de las Brujas to see what’s up.

Before long, Ofelia’s dream comes true, as our hero finds himself laboriously duking it out with those three beefy, black muscle-shirted coven enforcers, and, probably on about the third occasion on which two of them hold his arms behind his back whilst the third one pummels his exposed belly, I began to realise just what a bad idea this film’s decision to mix a ‘Satanic witches’ plot-line with the demands of an action-packed lucha libre movie actually was.

The problem here you see, is that the villains in this movie are women, and, whereas they achieve their evil ends through sorcery and deception, genre convention demands that our hero must fight back with, well, if not his fists precisely, then the physical impact of his muscular torso, at the very least.

With the best will in the world, the social mores of the 1960s ensured that we were never going to see The Champion of the People inflicting headlocks and body slams on a bunch of defenceless dames, so… basically, we’d better get used to the idea of seeing him grapple with these three anonymous dudes in what essentially look like filmed training sessions, because it’s going to be happening a lot.

It could at least have been fun to see him dusting it up with The Lord of Darkness (let’s see how those horns play out in the ring!), but sadly, this was not to be – which brings us neatly to this production’s other major drawback; namely the scriptwriters’ utter failure to come up with any ideas whatsoever to expand upon the basic premise.

Basically, we just keep seeing Santo arriving at the witches’ place, fighting with the anonymous blokes, getting captured and chained down on the sacrificial slab whilst the witches do their thing, then breaking free and escaping. Then Ofelia and/or Arturo get captured and chained down on the slabs, so Santo goes back to rescue them, and one or both of them escape, then they go back to Santo’s place to recuperate, then head back to the witches’ place again, and fight the dudes, and get captured…. it just goes on and on. The sheer repetition is mind-numbing, especially given that the film made a point of beginning with a long sequence in which we were already shown all of this stuff.

(I did however enjoy the moment when, after Arturo is captured at one point, Santo and Ofelia return to Santo’s office, where he reaches for his rotary telephone, and declares that he will call Arturo’s parents to inform them of the situation. Sadly, the scene cuts at this point, but I would have loved to have heard that call – “Hi, it’s El Santo here, yes that’s right, the famous luchador and folk hero. I’m just calling to let you know that your son has been kidnapped by a coven of evil witches, but don’t worry, I’m on the case..”, etc.)

On the plus side, as is usually the case with Mexican horror, the general sense of spook-show excess here is great, with the opening dream sequence alone mixing eerie close ups of toothy, moth-eaten stuffed animals with flashing strobes, super-impositions and so on, whilst later on we get lots of great, shadowy lighting, some wildly expressionistic compositions, flappy bat silhouettes, dust-choked sets, voluminous Satanic ranting and an atmosphere thick as congealed treacle.

Another unexpected highlight is the film’s obligatory wrestling sequence, which, unusually, is slotted in more or less at random at the one hour mark. The filmmaking here is far more accomplished and exciting than any of the actual in-story fights in ‘Atacan Las Brujas’, and it’s difficult not to get caught up in proceedings, as Santo takes on a furious, maskless bad-guy wrestler known as Lobo Negro, who pushes our hero to point of defeat again and again (he even punches the referee at one point), until Santo finally ploughs back into the contest at the last minute and flattens the blaggard, to the wild delight of the crowd. Phew!

I mean, I’m no connoisseur of wrestling, Mexican or otherwise, but even I can tell that this was one great bout. It certainly did a good job of waking me up from the stupor brought on by the endless cycle of capturing and escaping and so forth, anyway.

[Since watching the film, I’ve discovered that this wrestling footage was actually stolen in its entirety from an earlier Santo movie, ‘Santo Contra El Rey Del Crimen’ (1961), so the makers of ‘Aracan Las Brujas’ can take no credit – oh well.]

Back to the fight against the witches meanwhile, and the film’s final twenty minutes does at least up its game a bit with the appearance of that old stand-by, the Pit of Spikes (not as cool as the one in El Mundo De Los Vampiros admittedly, but still), and a defiantly Catholic conclusion oddly reminiscent of the 1960 gothic horror classic ‘City of the Dead’, in which Santo takes care of business with a *big fuckin’ wooden cross*, which roasts all evil in its path with purifying fire. Take that, sinners!

Whilst it has its charms, ‘Aracan Los Brujas’ is definitely not top tier Santo, and would indeed make an extremely poor introduction to Lucha cinema, or to the richly rewarding field Mexican horror movies as a whole. Frankly, the whole thing feels as if it has been slapped together from a few days’ worth of shooting with very little care or attention, leaving it feeling almost surrealistically repetitive and incoherent.

Whilst watching, I had assumed that these deficiencies were perhaps a result of Santo’s regular crew simply succumbing to exhaustion, having (by my count) knocked out around twelve vehicles for the big man in the space of six years. Subsequently however, Todd Stadtman’s estimable Lucha Diaries site has helped clue me in on the fact that ‘Aracan Los Brujas’ was actually one of a quartet of films produced during a brief period in 1964-65 which saw Santo desert his usual collaborators, instead signing a contract with one Luis Enrique Vergara, a notorious low budget operator who placed him a number of projects which were, well, somewhat below the level of our hero’s usual fare, shall we say.

Given that four films of the quality showcased in ‘Aracan Los Brujas’ could conceivably have been knocked out in a couple of weeks tops, I’m assuming that The Man in the Silver Mask saw the light and placed his film career back in safer hands pretty damn quick, but in retrospect I suppose, his dalliance with the bottom of the metaphorical barrel at least allows us a sneak preview of what was to follow in the early ‘70s, when the lucha genre as a whole fell down a rabbit-hole of lunatic, cheap-jack craziness, never to return.

Krimi Casebook: Der Hexer (Alfred Vohrer, 1964)

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a chance to settle down with a ‘Krimi’, but earlier this month I was suddenly struck with an urge to check in on Rialto Films long-running series of ‘60s West German Edgar Wallace adaptations, and 1964’s ‘Der Hexer’ (offered up to English-speaking audiences at some point under the far less enticing title of ‘The Mysterious Magician’) fit the bill nicely.

As might well be expected from a Wallace film, our Hexer / magician here is not an actual magician (of either genuine or stage variety) but instead a wily, Fantomas-type super-criminal. In keeping with this, ‘Der Hexer’ leans strongly toward the part of the ‘60s pop cinema venn diagram that sees the aesthetic of the krimi cross over with the more whimsical end of the era’s Eurospy / ‘moving comic book’ sub-genres, as exemplified by the ‘OSS 117’ and ‘Fantomas’ movies being overseen by André Hunebelle in France at around this time. Nonetheless though, director Alfred Vohrer still manages to cram in a few gothic flourishes along the way.

This melange of styles can be clearly seen in the film’s super-pulpy shock opening, which sees a solicitor’s foxy secretary shrieking as she is overpowered by a pointy-shoed assailant, before we cut directly to a view of her lifeless body, apparently enclosed within what looks to be a groovy little two-man submarine! This sub, it transpires, is being pushed beneath the water of what seems to be some kind of vaulted, subterranean drainage chamber, by an imposing, barge-pole wielding man who bears a passing resemblance to a young Boris Karloff.

Cue the credits, which in true krimi style crash suddenly into full colour (lurid, blood-dripping red lettering against a swirling, blue-and-green-tinted proto-psychedelic backdrop), accompanied by a frankly demented, reverb-drenched spookshow garage-rock theme tune from the reliably weird Peter Thomas. (Seriously, it’s got whips, chains, gun shots, orgasmic moans and cries of terror thrown into the mix – absolutely bonkers!)

I don’t know about you, but three minutes in and I’m confident that this movie is going be pretty great.

Once the movie-proper beings, a prototype swinging London / mod type vibe seems to be in play as we follow a beautifully turned out, mod-ish young blonde lady (Elise, played by Sophie Hardy) as she trades barbs with a revealingly attired, curvy young secretary (Finnish starlet Anneli Sauli, returning from Vohrer’s The Dead Eyes of London) in what, rather unexpectedly, turns out to be the office of a senior police officer.

Who could it be of course but that rakish silver fox himself, Joachim Fuchsberger, appearing here in the role of the dapper Inspector Higgins, a man clearly intent on shakin’ the dust off those other squares in Scotland Yard!

Chief target in the dust-shakin’ department is Higgins’ blustering superior Sir John (recurring krimi authority figure Siegfried Schürenberg), and through the antagonistic banter between the two, we soon learn that the girl whose body has been found washed up on the bank of the Thames was one Gwenda Milton of 17 Barkley St, London, and that her brother, currently based in Australia, is none other than Henry Milton, better known as that most notorious of villains… Der Hexer!

Time for a quick cut, and we find mention of that name putting the very fear of god into Jochen Brockmann, that seedy fat guy who appears in all krimis, working his usual magic here as Herr Messer, the unsavoury solicitor for whom the dead girl worked as secretary.

Messer, it turns out, is actually running a white slavery ring in cahoots with that Karloff-looking guy (Carl Lange) and a couple of other, similarly salty characters. (Hilariously, Messer keeps the door control for the secret passage in his office inside a bear skin hanging on his wall –the bear’s eyes flash when someone in the secret passage wants to be let in.)

In a direct call-back to the aforementioned ‘Dead Eyes of London’, this crew are orchestrating their devious operation using a rather scary, Victorian girls finishing school as a front. There’s even a Suspiria-esque monster-matron, and Lange is the headmaster. Having realised that they’ve just gone and accidentally killed Der Hexer’s sister for getting too close to their dark secrets though, the gang are one petrified bunch of nogoodniks, as they await his inevitable retribution.

So far, this film is clearly turning out to be far too much fun, and so, with a perfectly timed “guten tag gentlemen”, enter Eddi Arent, all-purpose dispenser of krimi comic relief, this time around playing a kleptomaniac-turned-butler named Archibald Finch.

Fear not though - as irritating as Arent’s initial “oh dear, poor old me, I can’t help but swipe things as soon as people turn their back” routine may be, ‘Der Hexer’ benefits from a relatively thin spread of his comic stylings. For some reason, his character entirely disappears for long stretch in the film’s central half hour, and when he does reappear, he is on his best behaviour, having become a lot more interesting following the revelation that his character has actually been planted in Messer’s hideout as a spy for Der Hexer.

Meanwhile, the film’s count of attractive, self-confident women with mod haircuts is further increased when Der Hexer’s wife (Margot Trooger) arrives in town for her sister-in-law’s funeral (taking place in “London’s central cemetery”, wherever that is). Certain that her husband must be lurking nearby, Fuchsberger is soon in hot pursuit, accompanied by his new partner in the investigation, Inspektor Warren (Siegfried Lowitz), a mercurial retired detective who has returned to Scotland Yard to take advantage of the opportunity to finally apprehend his arch-nemesis.

Whilst hassling Mrs Derr Hexer in a hotel lobby however, Inspektor Higgins also makes the acquaintance of a curious chap named James Wesby (Heinz Drache), an affable Australian crime writer who is also on the trail of Der Hexer, meaning that he often makes a habit of turning up in close proximity to the villain’s nefarious acts. Hmmm, I wonder….

Whilst this rather hum-drum “who’s the baddie?” plotline works itself through however, the film is at pains to ensure we remain sufficiently entertained, throwing in some delightful bits of comic book hijinks on a fairly regular basis.

After an evening spent horsing around in Elise’s flat for instance, Inspektors Higgins and Wilson set off on a frantic rooftop chase, in pursuit of some sinister, black-clad intruder. As smoke billows from dozens of huge, stone chimneys, I almost expected Dick Van Dyke to pop in for a cameo, but more than anything else the imagery harks back to those founding texts of the Euro-pulp aesthetic, Louis Feuillade’s silent-era ‘Fantomas’ and ‘Les Vampires’ serials – a comparison which also springs to mind when we visit the hideout of Messer’s smuggling operation, located beneath a trap door in the dusty, wine-barrel filled storeroom of an old manor house.

Meanwhile, it almost goes without saying by this point that the mysterious black-gloved killer who spends much of this movie creeping around the place throttling people feels like a direct precursor to the conventions of the giallo which would soon take root in Italy’s popular cinema.

(Lest we forget, Mario Bava’s epochal ‘Blood & Black Lace’ came out in the same year as ‘Der Hexer’, and was produced under the assumption that it would be presented to West German audiences as a Wallace film. The murder sequences here certainly bear a passing similarity to the kind of lurid set-pieces Bava would oversee in full colour in his film… although sadly he nixed the submarine.)

In another sign of things to come, ‘Der Hexer’ also dares to get just a little bit more kinky than we might have expected, given it’s year of production. This is largely due to the presence of Sophie Hardy, who appears here in full-on, raging sex kitten mode, even indulging in a salacious shower scene has her revealing some luscious bare back before asking Fuchsberger to dry her off. Lengthy scenes in which the pair fool around (fully clothed) on her bed, drinks in hand, meanwhile are suggestive of a dissolute lifestyle unbecoming of yr average early ‘60s movie hero… especially in view of an earlier, rather edgy, visual gag that revolves around Fuchsberger using the darkroom in his office to develop dirty pictures of his secretary.

Elsewhere, ‘SNAKE KILLS MAN’ reads the billboard behind a super-imposed Trafalgar Square newspaper vendor, foreshadowing another great bit of business which sees a nefarious villain hiding poisonous snakes in the pockets of our heroes’ overcoats whilst they dine at a restaurant.

Other highlights meanwhile include a moody and violent scene in which the policeman guarding the submarine tank after it has been secured by the cops is dragged into the water and knifed by a sinister frogman (shades of both 1965’s krimi-ish gothic horror The Embalmer and actual frogman-related krimi ‘The Inn On The River’ (1962))… and then, there’s the genuinely rather astonishing shot in which we see a grand country house being dynamited (it doesn’t look like a model shot).

A restlessly imaginative director with a distinctly whimsical sense of style, Alfred Vohrer certainly does his utmost to keep things lively here. At certian points, I suspect Vohrer is deliberately having fun with the kind of artificial studio backdrops necessitated by low budget productions; the view from Fuchsberger’s office window for example, rather than stock photo of London, displays some boldly sketched, cartoon-like rooftops, whilst some of the doors and windows in Messer’s office set are clearly painted directly onto the walls. A nice use of budgetary limitations to create an amusing, somewhat post-modern effect, this can also perhaps be observed in shots which see exterior ‘brick’ walls clearly chalked onto flat black set dividers.

Vohrer also employs some amusing business with moving figures being followed through holes in newspapers (in shots taken from the POV of snoopers observing them), and with extreme close ups of said holes being burned in the papers by cigarettes. (If nothing else, this stylistic quirk at least proves that the production went to the trouble of acquiring genuine British newspapers – ‘RESCUE BY SHRIMP BOAT’ is the unlikely headline in the Daily Mail.)

At one point, the director even attempts to top his audacious “POV from interior of mouth as man cleans his teeth” shot from ‘The Dead Eyes of London’, with a shot purportedly taken from inside a rotary telephone as a character dials a number.

(Although the sheer eccentricity of these “impossible POV” experiments remains unique to my knowledge within European pop cinema, you could, at a stretch, perhaps draw a line to Dario Argento’s later fondness for employing “impossible” camera placements – of an admittedly far less ridiculous variety - within his work.)

In spite of all this fun and games however, ‘Der Hexer’ finally flags somewhat in its final act. The story’s Big Plot Twist can be seen coming a mile off, and the decision to go with one of those dreary ‘whodunnit’-style finales in which the cast stand around en masse explaining the finer details of the plot to each other in lieu of any action, is regrettable.

Although it eventually comes up short on the kind of sadistic, baroque and surreal elements which have increasingly endeared krimis to horror fans in recent years though, ‘Der Hexer’ is still a ton of pulpy 60s fun – a richly atmospheric romp which mixes swinging spy movie tropes with exquisitely moody black & white photography, some startling moments of violence and weirdness, a top-line cast of krimi regulars (Klaus Kinski’s absence notwithstanding) and characteristically idiosyncratic and stylish direction from Vohrer.

It’s probably not the film I’d select as an initial introduction to the krimi oeuvre, but if you’ve already “got the bug” with regard these movies and find yourself in the mood for a kooky caper in the vein of Franco’s Attack of the Robots or one of those ‘60s Dr Mabuse movies, ‘Der Hexer’ should do the job nicely.