The College Girl Murders

Good acting, but Fuchsberger could have swallowed the gum. Contentwise and the titel is similar to The Sinister Monk, but it's more excitin and better written.

This is probably the fastest-paced and most action-packed of the German Edgar Wallace "krimi" series, a cross between the Dr. Mabuse films of yore and 60's pop thrillers like Batman and the Man from UNCLE. It reintroduces the outrageous villain from an earlier film who dons a stylish monk's habit and breaks the necks of victims with the curl of a deadly whip. Set at a posh girls' school filled with lecherous middle-aged professors, and with the cops fondling their hot-to-trot secretaries at every opportunity, it certainly is a throwback to those wonderfully politically-incorrect times. There's a definite link to a later Wallace-based film, the excellent giallo "Whatever Happened to Solange?", which also concerns female students being corrupted by (and corrupting?) their elders. Quite appropriate to the monk theme, the master-mind villain uses booby-trapped bibles here to deal some of the death blows, and also maintains a reptile-replete dungeon to amuse his captive audiences.

Alfred Vohrer was always the most playful and visually flamboyant of the series directors, and here the lurid colour cinematography is the real star of the show. The Monk appears in a raving scarlet cowl and robe, tastefully setting off the lustrous white whip, while appearing against purplish-night backgrounds. There's also a voyeur-friendly turquoise swimming pool which looks great both as a glowing milieu for the nubile students and as a shadowy backdrop for one of the murder scenes. The trademark "kicker" of hiding the "Ende" card somewhere in the set of the last scene is also quite memorable here. And there's a fine brassy and twangy score for retro-music fans.

Fans of the series will definitely miss the flippant Eddie Arent character in these later films. Instead, the chief inspector Sir John takes on the role of buffoon, convinced that he has mastered criminal psychology after taking a few night courses. Unfortunately, Klaus Kinski had also gone on to bigger and better things. The krimis had lost some of their offbeat subversive charm by this point, and now worked on a much more blatant pop-culture level, which will make this one quite accessible to uninitiated viewers.

This is one funky crime-thriller, or Krimi, since it's a German movie after all.

This movie and it's story are both being quite silly. It's really a product of the '60's and it does nothing to conceal this. It's a type of movie Austin Powers used to make fun of. It has silly weapons (a gun that sprays gas, a bible that kills), a stupid evil criminal plot, people who do silly and unlikely things in general, silly James Bond like villains, that live in a lair with crocodiles and other sea animals surrounding the villain, who sits with his back to the camera in a chair and who we can only hear speak. This really seems like the German answer to James Bond's growing popularity. But luckily the movie also doesn't take itself very serious. It has fun, almost quirky like characters and some good comic relief as well, from time to time.

The movie is being based on a Edgar Wallace novel, that were quite popular, not in the very least because Edgar Wallace was also the author of King Kong. A whole series of movies got made of his books. The books were actually a lot older than the movies, so it's hard to say how much of the silliness actually comes from the books themselves. Probably very little and the books in essence were mostly being serious crime-thrillers, with always a mysterious villain, that inspector Higgins had to unmask.

The movie is just basically a whole lot of fun. The villains, the silly plot, all of the other characters, it's funky '60's style and atmosphere, all make this a very likable movie. This really is the movie its strongest point, since if you have to look at this movie deeper and more serious you really can't call this movie a good one at all. The story and storytelling is far from likely or well done, so overall you can really call this movie a bad one, if you look at it very strictly. But luckily nobody will be able to, due to the funky silliness of this movie. Everybody will probably get taken by it and will enjoy this movie because of that.

A great guilty pleasure movie.

7/10

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Students at a woman's college in England are turning up dead by poisonous gas or acid, which draws the attention of two Scotland Yard detectives. Witnesses tell of a mysterious person with a red monk robe and conical-shaped hood lurking around. What's going on?

A West German production, "The College Girl Murders" (1967) is a colorful Krimi, a crime mystery/thriller based on Edgar Wallace's novel "The Black Abbot." The original name is "The Monk with the Whip" (translated). It's similar to a Giallo, but with stabs of humor revolving around the bald inspector who plays opposite the smooth, handsome one (Joachim Fuchsberger).

I thought this was going to be a precursor to the slashers of the 70s-80s, but it's more multi-dimensional with the likes of mad scientists, a James Bond-ish mastermind & weapons, a quirky 60's score, poisonous Bibles, a red "clansman" brandishing a whip, and so on. To be expected in light of the milieu, there are several fetching females on hand, such as blonde Grit Boettcher as Betty.

While I suppose it's overall meh, it's oddball and entertaining enough for those interested.

The movie runs 1 hour, 27 minutes, and was shot at Spandau Studios and on location in West Berlin.

GRADE: B-

The best way I can think to describe this movie is: suppose a group of German film makers snuck onto the deserted set of a Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode and made a movie there.

The only thing this movie has going for it is the sets. A fireplace where the mantle in front rises up to reveal a hidden doorway, a villain's lair with giant water tank holding large turtles, alligators (or maybe crocodiles) snapping at and eating anything tossed to them and a swimming pool with below surface level viewing windows.

Maybe this thing made sense in it's original language.