Hoopers last hunt

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Movie
Original title Hoopers last hunt
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1972
length 165 minutes
Rod
Director Claus Peter Witt
script Claus Peter Witt
Rüdiger Humpert
music Eugene Thomass
camera Werner Kurz
cut Karin Baumhöfner
occupation

Hooper's Last Hunt is a two-part crime film that was first broadcast on New Year's Day 1972 and on January 2 in the ARD program. The production was in the hands of Dieter Meichsner .

content

Part 1

Chief Superintendent James Hooper's tenure is coming to an end. However, he is still obsessed with putting Michael Richardson, the head of the legendary gang of mail robbers, behind bars. But all his efforts so far have fizzled out, one more reason for his manager to refuse Hooper's request for an extension of the service period. A new lead now leads him to Mexico City , where Richardson is said to have stayed in a hotel. But not only Hooper, also the gallery owner Williams, a former accomplice of Richardson, has meanwhile stuck on his heels, as this Williams owed a larger sum of money. In Mexico, Higgins, a Hooper employee, is incapacitated by Richardson and robbed of his papers, so that he is briefly arrested and later deported across the border into Texas.

Richardson's wife Jenny has now gone to London with their son Tommy to see their sister Judy White and her husband Alex, whose house is monitored by the police. A conversation with Jenny doesn't help Hooper, but he suspects that Richardson is planning to bring his family to Mexico. Jenny and Tommy are followed by Hooper's people on a night drive to London, but it turns out that the occupants of the vehicle are Judy and her son Ted. Jenny has meanwhile managed to get to Ireland with Tommy, from where both of them fly on to Mexico unmolested.

Meanwhile, Williams has found Richardson and is demanding his money. Richardson initially apparently accepts the request, but leaves the hotel unnoticed with an unknown destination. Jenny, who has meanwhile arrived in Mexico, learns of his new whereabouts in a phone call with her husband. Williams, who was able to overhear this conversation, goes immediately to the hotel mentioned, where he tracks down Richardson, but can be rendered harmless by him. Nevertheless, Williams can find out that Richardson has contacted a cosmetic surgeon in Hamburg. Williams also travels to the Elbe city and contacts the clinic as an alleged patient. Hooper also stumbled upon this lead and sent his colleague Robbins to Hamburg.

Part 2

As a result of Williams' observation, Robbins also arrives at the beauty clinic, but cannot prevent Richardson from escaping again. The arrest of Williams' is only an insignificant partial success. Equipped with an Australian passport, the mail robber can escape to Ireland, where his wife and son are already waiting for him. Here he is now planning to settle down and buy a house. For this reason, he arranges financial transactions with his Mexican bank. Through the observations of a postal worker, Hooper comes back on Richardson's trail, but upon his arrival in Ireland he finds that the family has fled to Mexico City again and taken up accommodation in a hotel under the name "Ferguson". Coincidentally, there is a real Ferguson among the guests there, so Hooper succeeds in picking up Richardson's trail again. But this time too, his trip to Mexico was not crowned with success. So he finally has to give way to his successor in office, Chief-Superintendent Craig, but he insists on continuing his research on his own in retirement.

As "John Morris", Richardson has now settled with his wife and children in Brighton, England. When he wants to turn three diamonds into money, he comes into contact with the small crook Chico, who then senses the big business and begins to research Richardson's residence. Hooper, in turn, learned of Chico's activities from an informant and was able to find Richardson's address through a newspaper article that reported about Tommy as a dog's lifesaver. But Hooper's joy at unexpectedly facing the surprised gangster in his own house is short-lived. Richardson is able to overpower the ex-police officer and dragged him unconscious into the basement, not realizing that Chico has now brought little Tommy into his power. But the police are already on site, because Robbins had also read the said newspaper article and drew the right conclusions from it. Richardson and Chico are arrested and Hooper can finally enjoy his retirement while the cocky Craig claims the success of Richardson's arrest.

background

After the great success of the three-part film Die Gentlemen bitten zum Cashier , ARD produced a two-part offshoot of the street sweeper at that time with Hooper's Last Hunt . However, production had to struggle with considerable problems in advance. Henry Kolarz had again written the script, but had to experience that the NDR was forced to change its version for legal reasons over long stretches beyond recognition. The main reason for this was Bruce Reynolds ' announcement after his arrest on November 8, 1968 that legal action would be taken against the station if further films were to be made based on the mail train robbery of 1963. Not only did all the names in the script have to be changed, the plot now also came entirely from the imagination of the new authors Claus Peter Witt and Rüdiger Humpert, whereupon Kolarz withdrew his name. In the two-part series, only the flight of Richardson and Reynolds to Mexico corresponds to the true events.

Others

The ARD opened its evening program of 1972 with the first part, and the second part was broadcast the following day. Both episodes were of different lengths. While the first part only took 70 minutes, part 2 was 95 minutes long.

Originally Siegfried Lowitz was supposed to be hired again for the role of inspector McLeod , but this failed because of his excessive fee claims. So this role name also had to be changed. Horst Tappert, on the other hand, took on the role of Michael Richardson without having read the script beforehand, but was unable to assert himself with various suggestions for changes to director Witt during the course of the shooting.

The film was set in Blackpool, Brighton, London and Oxford. With an audience rate of 56%, the audience response was not as high as that of the gentlemen , but it was still satisfactory for those responsible for the program. Nevertheless, the crime website literally criticizes :

A completely superfluous, yes stupid continuation of the ingenious gentleman three-part series from 1966. Only the actors are sympathetic, but Max Mairich is a bad cast. In addition, many figures are superfluous. There are always chases of some kind, the main features of Henry Kolarz's story still exist, but the broader context is missing. The excellent performers are wasting their talent! "

Together with Die Gentlemen bitten zum Cashier , Hooper's last hunt was released on DVD as part of the street sweeper edition of ARD.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e steffi-line.de , accessed on October 25, 2017
  2. a b krimiserien.de , accessed on October 25, 2017