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Muriel Irvine's (Karin Dor) husband has died and has left her nothing because he was a no-good gambler. But much to her surprise, his life was insured for a heap of money - only the insurance company refuses to pay, instead accusing her to be accomplice to a ring of insurance fraudsters. In fact, said insurance company has lost so much money on "accidents" of well-insured customers of late that they ask Scotland Yard to investigate. Scotland Yard inspector Dawson (Paul Klinger) soon finds a trail to the Club 55, a "bridge club" that's actually a front for a gambling den, but is strangled by the caretaker when he turns out to be too nosey. To pick up where Dawson has left off, Scotland Yard chief Sir James (Friedrich Schoenfelder) hires an international criminologist who insists that his face is never seen let alone known even by his colleagues.

At the same time, Muriel, to pay her bills, has accepted a job at a company that helps ex-cons back to their feet, and soon takes on the case of small fry crook Hubbard (Joachim Fuchsberger), who's just a bit too curious about her own affairs. Soon enough, too, Hubbard finds employ at the Club 55 and ... well, to the audience it's obvious by then that Hubbard is actually the mysterious criminologist conducting his investigations undercover. And for some reason he knows that the big boss of the Club 55 is also the head of the insurance fraudsters, just that boss is never seen, just his second-in-command (Dieter Eppler) - who is eventually found out not only to be the big boss but also a master of disguise, who was also the caretaker who has killed Dawson, Muriel's well-meaning lawyer, a priest running the organisation Muriel works at, and who knows who else. Of course, in the end the baddies get their just desserts and Hubbard gets the girl ...

Horst Frank plays a crook who has found out about the big boss's identity and tries to bribe him, Chris Howland plays a clueless employee of the Club 55, a role that seems to have been written for Eddie Arent.

Thanks to Rialto's Edgar Wallace cycle, krimis were the thing in the German language world in the early 1960s, and this film here does everything to look and feel just like an Edgar Wallace adaptation, as it's not only directed by Wallace mainstay Harald Reinl and has two of the series mainstays in the leads (with many familiar Wallace faces filling out the cast), but the over-convoluted plot with all its gimmickry and far-fetched ideas and preference of sensationalism over narrative finesse feels like pure Wallace.

But what does that say about the film itself? Well, if you're into early 1960s German krimis with all their narrative quirks (and I know I am), you'll find at least something to like about this one, it's very competently crafted and moves at a pace steady enough to keep one entertained. At the same time it has to be admitted, this is not one of Harald Reinl's better krimis, it just seems a tad too routine, and the fact that several plottwists (first and foremost Joachim Fuchsberger actually being the secret investigator) announce themselves way too soon really takes some of the tension away from the story. At the same time though, the film doesn't at least bore you, and that's something not all German krimis of the era tended to master ...

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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