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No less than 12 prisoners have escaped from Dartmoor prison in the last 3 years, and each of them has disappeared without a trace. Scotland Yard are baffled, and only chief inspector Cromwell (Paul Klinger) at least claims to have a clue ... a clue that leads him to Dartmoor Inn, the one place that's impossible to reach for the escapees as the bog between the prison and the inn's a death trap. There he meets all sort of suspicious characters, like Australian photographer Nash (Heinz Drache), who's really not half as good at lying as he tries to be, Billy (Stanislav Ledinek), driver of Gray (Dieter Eppler), the lawyer who represented all escapees in court, or even barmaid Evelyn (Ingmar Zeisberg), who knows way too much about everything.

Especially Nash crosses Cromwell's path a little bit too often for it to be coincidence, even back in London, and it soon becomes apparent that his interest in the case is as serious as Cromwell's - but Cromwell can't really trust Nash, and eventually even has to arrest him for Nash to be sent to Dartmoor ... even if Nash hands Cromwell the clue to arrest Gray's office head Fletcher (Gerd Frickhöffer), a guy who thought himself above the law, on a silver platter. Nash is of course represented by Gray, and thus escapes from Dartmoor in a manner of days - and he uses a hidden hydraulic bridge to make his way over the bog to the inn ... where he's threatened at gunpoint by Simmons (Friedrich Joloff), owner of the inn, once a warden up injured in a prison revolt and since bearing a grudge against all escapees - thus he helps them out, shoots them and lets the bog take care of the remnants (thus they can vanish without a clue), and he has even taken care of Gray believing the escape had a happy ending. But ultimately, Cromwell catches up with both Nash and Simmons and saves the former's life by killing the latter ... and in the end, Nash gets the girl - Gray's secretary (Judith Dornys) that is - just because he needs to get a girl I presume.

Ralf Wolter plays a kleptomanic comic relief with little point to the actual story.

If you like German krimis in the wake of the Edgar Wallace movies, you'll probably find this one charming at least as there are many familiar faces among the actors, the pseudo-English sets are charming if not particularly authentic, the many eccentric characters express a German version of "Britishness" rather than serving any narrative purpose, and the film's cinematic language is enjoyably old-fashioned ... and that said, The Inn on Dartmoor is anything but a classic, its plot is just too confusing and relying on coincidence to be quite believable, the dialogue is too stilted at times to remain believable, the characters are too clichéed to really come across as real, and the acting's not necessarily up to task. All of this does make a great old-fashioned krimi evening, I give the movie that, but definitely with some giggles, and it hardly is a masterpiece.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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