The secret of the black suitcase

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Movie
Original title The secret of the black suitcase
The secret of the black suitcase Logo 001.svg
Country of production Federal Republic of Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1962
length 85 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Werner Klingler
script Percy Allan based
on designs by Bryan Edgar Wallace
production CCC Filmproduktion GmbH ( Artur Brauner )
music Gert Wilden
camera Richard fear
cut Walter Wischniewsky
occupation

The Secret of the Black Suitcase is a German crime film that was shot in West Berlin at the end of 1961 under the direction of Werner Klingler . The film adaptation of the novel Death Packs his Suitcase (original title: Death Packs a Suitcase ) by Bryan Edgar Wallace was also the first of a total of ten Bryan Edgar Wallace films from Artur Brauner's CCC film , with which the film producer on the success of the 1959 started Edgar Wallace series wanted to participate in the competition. The black-and-white film was launched in German cinemas on February 23, 1962.

action

Main actor Joachim Hansen
Senta Berger played Susan Brown
Chris Howland played Arnold Wickerley

An extremely macabre series of murders startles the citizens of London . Shortly before they die, all victims find their suitcase packed and ready to go. Then a masked knife thrower is not long in coming. Scotland Yard's Inspector Finch enlists the help of forensic scientist Humphrey Curtis, who is from the United States and has a dubious identity. The odd noise collector Arnold Wickerley, a cousin of the inspector, is also interested in the case. Finch takes a missing travel bag to the doctor for the poor, Dr. Bransby and his attractive assistant Susan Brown. A short time later a certain Kudernacz, whom Bransby paid a house call beforehand, is murdered. When Finch and Susan meet in a restaurant that evening, Curtis lets the mysterious street vendor Ponko watch them. That same night, the obviously addicted Curtis visits the wicked Soho bar, the manager of which deals in meskadrin, a synthetic drug based on mescaline .

The next morning, on the Thames, Wickerley finds the soaked Curtis, who barely escaped an attempted murder by the manager of the Soho bar. Meanwhile, Dr. Bransby unsuccessfully proposes marriage to his assistant Susan, which she tells the inspector. During the conversation, Susan, who comes from the United States, talks about her brother Oliver, who was believed to be dead. Around the same time, Curtis kidnapped the manager of the Soho bar, whom he tied to a chair in the basement of his villa. Through an interrogation, Curtis wants to find out who the drug meskadrin came from. At the same time there is a company in the villa. Among the guests is a certain beach, the next victim of the knife thrower. None of the guests suspects what is going on in the basement of the house. Wickerley, always on the lookout for noises, happens to make a tape recording of the interrogation taking place there.

Finch now knows that the drug meskadrin was on the murdered Kudernacz's clothes. After listening to the tape in Curtis' voice, the inspector flies to New York , where he goes to the FBI to find out more about a previous Meskadrin affair. Susan, under surveillance by yard officials, meets with Curtis, who is her brother Oliver, who was believed dead the next day. He asks Susan to leave London and not tell anyone that he is still alive. Meanwhile, at the FBI, Finch discovers that Susan's brother was once a respected FBI agent until he himself dealt in the drug meskadrin and was fired. Then he is said to have had a fatal accident. In Phoenix, Arizona , Finch has the body of Oliver Brown exhumed. His suspicion that it was another dead person is confirmed.

After returning to London, the inspector confronts Susan for hiding important details about her brother from him. Susan still refuses to reveal Curtis' true identity to Finch. He tracks down the meskadrin supplier at the Soho bar, from whom he can be brought to the man behind the drug cartel. He finally arrives in the park of the gloomy Cronsdale Castle. Its wealthy lord of the castle leads a double life as Dr. Bransby and is determined to leave England soon and to marry Susan, whom he is imprisoned in an abandoned part of the castle, against her will.

Finch now knows that Curtis is Susan's missing brother. Because Finch loves Susan, he fears that she has something to do with the criminal machinations. During a search operation, police officers discover numerous meskadrine vials in the Curtis vault. Finch finds a reference to Cronsdale Castle in Bransby's office. With Wickerley he rushes to the castle, where the unscrupulous lord locks him, Susan and Curtis in a cleverly hidden drug laboratory. Denouement: Susan's brother says that he was once innocent by the FBI after they found a suitcase with meskadrin and a plane ticket to Mexico. He admits to being behind the revenge killings of the members of the drug cartel. Suddenly Cronsdale dumps the powder of the insidious death drug into the ventilation of the laboratory. By chance, Wickerley is able to open the reinforced door at the last moment. Finch stops Lord Cronsdale from escaping. During the arrest, Curtis is again hit by a fatal knife. It comes from the hand of the supposed beggar Ponko, who is also addicted to meskadrin and, also out of revenge, carried out the murders while Curtis was packing the suitcases.

History of origin

prehistory

Producer Artur Brauner

The Edgar Wallace films by Rialto Film , marketed by Constantin Film since 1959 , developed into one of the most successful cinema series in German film history . In 1960, the film producer Artur Brauner, who was already established in the 1950s, started his own film series with the Doktor Mabuse films , which were also distributed by Constantin Film and Prisma Filmverleih, but as thrillers in competition with the Wallace films of the Rialto stood. Due to the restriction to the title character and the fact that crime films continued to promise enormous success, Artur Brauner contacted Bryan Edgar Wallace in the early 1960s. The son of the well-known writer Edgar Wallace, born in 1904, had already written several novels himself, most of which dealt with science fiction and plans for world domination . Brauner acquired the filming rights for the novel and the right to use the name Bryan Edgar Wallace for fictitious film material.

Pre-production and script

For the first Bryan Edgar Wallace film, Brauner chose the novel Death Packs a Suitcase, which was first published in 1961 (English title: Death packs his suitcase ). The name Percy Allan, who is given as the scriptwriter, is Gustav Kampendonk , according to several sources . It was also common at the time that a pseudonym was chosen when the script was revised by several authors, the producer or the director. The 1972 remake The Death Avenger of Soho was named screenwriters for the director Jess Franco and Art Bernd, a pseudonym of Artur Brauner.

Because the film was distributed by Gloria Filmverleih , Artur Brauner had no directors or actors available who were contractually bound to Rialto Film or Constantin Filmverleih. However, the list of actors still included numerous well-known actors. Some of them, including Senta Berger , were contractually bound to Brauner's CCC film at the time.

The director Werner Klingler , who has been successful since the 1930s, has already directed several successful crime films in his career, including The Defender Has the Word (1944), Razzia (1947) and Spion for Germany (1956). The renowned cameraman Richard Angst worked for the Edgar Wallace crime thriller The Strange Countess in 1961 .

Filming

The now rebuilt Palais Mendelssohn in Berlin-Grunewald can be seen in the film as Cronsdale Castle.
Some scenes of the film were shot at Berlin's Westhafen ...
... as well as on the banks of the Berlin-Spandau shipping canal

The shooting took place from November 17 to December 20, 1961 in West Berlin and in the CCC Studios in Berlin-Haselhorst . Paul Markwitz and Wilhelm Vorwerg were hired as film architects . Vera Mügge was responsible for the costume advice . Production manager was Erwin Gitt .

The following locations can be seen in the film:

In addition, about 10 to 12 minutes of film were shot on original locations in London, but without the participation of actors. The film also features a shot of the New York City skyline, which is believed to be from another film.

Film music

The film composer Gert Wilden chose an extraordinary orchestra consisting of four guitars , three drums , a harpsichord and a bass for the film music . Four songs from the soundtrack appeared on CD Kriminalfilmmusik No. 4 :

  1. Theme music 1:39
  2. Persecution Topic 0:47
  3. Susan in the castle 1:39
  4. Escape through the park 2:28

The title Cool Blues, which is on several CD releases, cannot be heard in the film.

reception

During the production period, the film had several working titles such as A Dead Packs His Suitcase , The Castle of Horror and The Castle of Terror . The FSK gave the film after an examination on February 8, 1962 from 16 years free. As usual, most of the critics perceived the film as a typical series product in the Edgar Wallace style, without, however, going into artistic or film-technical details. As with the real Edgar Wallace films, this did little to harm the box office success. The Wallace film The Riddle of the Red Orchid , which was released just a week later and was produced by Horst Wendlandt's Rialto Film, had significantly fewer viewers than its predecessors. This was due in part to new competition from Brauner's Bryan Edgar Wallace film. In the polls carried out by the trade journal Filmecho / Filmwoche at the time , in which cinema visitors rated current films on a scale from 1 (excellent) to 7 (very bad), the film received a grade of 3.3. For comparison: the films published in the same year The Riddle of the Red Orchid (3.1), The Door with the Seven Locks (2.5) and The Carpet of Horror (3.0).

The secret of the black suitcase was also marketed abroad and ran under the following titles, among others:

In 1972 Artur Brauner brought the film The Death Avenger from Soho, a less successful remake of the material, to the cinemas, staged by trash director Jess Franco . The secret of the black suitcase has already been shown several times on television and published on VHS and in the original version on DVD .

Reviews

“This crime film based on motifs by old master Wallace is light and freshly shot. Instructions for use for the exciting scary meal: Don't take anything seriously and have a good laugh, because Chris Howland is part of the party. "

- Hamburger Abendblatt , March 1962

"A not badly conceived story, which is difficult to overlook only in its final solution, and which conveys some tension in a well-placed London milieu [...]."

- Paimann's film lists , May 1962

"Drug smuggling and knife murders based on the Edgar Wallace template in an average crime film with involuntarily comical interludes."

- Lexicon of international film

literature

Audio book

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 85 minutes for cinema projection (24 images / second), 81 minutes for television playback (25 images / second), film length: 2330 meters
  2. ↑ The secret of the black suitcase. In: filmportal.de . German Film Institute , accessed on September 1, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Application from CCC-Film for filming permits, 1961  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 103 kB)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.filmportal.de  
  4. ↑ List of CCC film of the London recordings, 1961  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 141 kB)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.filmportal.de  
  5. ↑ Gert Wilden : Do you recognize the melody? A composer's life between pop and classical music. Recorded by Thomas Voigt . Allitera Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-86520-246-8 , p. 65-66 .
  6. ↑ CD crime film music No. 4 . BSC Music. 2000. Order no. 398.6560.2
  7. ↑ The secret of the black suitcase . In: Hamburger Abendblatt . March 16, 1962, p. 19 ( abendblatt.de [PDF; 2.0 MB ]).
  8. ↑ The secret of the black suitcase . In: Paimann's film lists . No. 2704-6 , May 3, 1962 ( Reizfeld.net ). Reizfeld.net ( Memento of the original from January 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / nano.reizfeld.net
  9. ↑ The secret of the black suitcase. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed April 25, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used