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One evening, while getting cigarettes from a vending machine, Karin (Simone Rethel) is shot and fatally wounded by a person unknown. She drags herself into a nearby pub to call her mother Anna (Ida Krottendorf), but dies before she can say much. Inspector Keller (Erik Ode) and his men (Reinhard Glemnitz, Günther Schramm, Fritz Wepper) investigate, and it's not long before they notice the rather weird relationship between Anna and her upstairs neighbours, siblings Margit (Maria Schell) and Otto (Harald Leipnitz): Margit hates her with a passion while Otto seems to have been in a relationship with her, even though initially everybody denies this. But Keller and company dig into the past of Karin and soon find out her mother had once sent her to youth welfare because she wanted their place to herself to pick up and bring home men. This however only went on for a month, And Anna didn't give up being a cougar when Karin came back home, forcing the girl to hide in her own room. But then one day, one of her conquests tried to rape Anna, and Karin fetched Otto to save her mother - and Anna fell in love with him almost immediately. So eventually, and despite his sister's protests, Otto moved in with Anna. For a time then, she was on cloud nine ... until she had to realize Otto's not so much after her but her daughter Karin. And eventually, he confessed this to Anna, too, and told her he'd only stay if she can make Karin have sex with him. So Anna persuades her daughter to do just that, out of daughterly love. And now, with Karin dead Anna thinks she has a lever to make Otto move in with her again. But of course, the truth comes out - and eventually Karin's killer turns out to be ... Otto's sister Karin, who has killed to ... save her brother I suppose.

Now I have to admit it's very easy to finger the culprit in this one - but more because who's actually a supporting character heaps more suspicion upon herself along the way than through any giveaways in the plot. Because in fact, as an actual murder mystery, this episode of Der Kommissar has little to offer as its psychological undercurrents are all incredibly far-fetched and don't seem the least bit "real", there's also screenwriter Herbert Reinecker's trademark stilted dialogue and the inability of his character to act or react naturally, and the story's unnecessarily seedy untertones. And frankly, when it comes to these undertones, this episode actually becomes a bit disturbing, that the whole thing revolves solely about a murder, while the maybe even bigger crime, the sexual abuse of a minor, with the mother's consent, is treated rather nonchalantly, as nothing but an interchangeable motive. So no, good crime TV this is not, but a quite puzzling time capsule all the same.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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