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Derrick - Dem Mörder eine Kerze
episode 77
West Germany 1980
produced by Claus Legal, Gustl Gotzler (executive), Helmut Ringelmann (executive) for Telenova/ZDF
directed by Dietrich Haugk
starring Horst Tappert, Fritz Wepper, Horst Frank, Sascha Hehn, Käte Jaenicke, Eva Ingeborg Scholz, Rolf Castell, Sven-Eric Bechtolf, Katja Bienert, Heide Ackermann, Kai Dette, Saskia Drungowski, Nikki Franz, Josef Fröhlich, Angela Hillebrecht, Christina Jens, Stefan Miller, Sylvia Weiss
written by Herbert Reinecker, music by Frank Duval, title theme by Les Humphries
TV-series Derrick, Harry Klein
review by Mike Haberfelner
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At the dead of night, Father Scholz (Horst Frank) is woken up by a
tortured (yet unidentified) soul to make a confession. The next day, the
priest shows up at the scene of a murder, a photographer was shot in his
studio and all he could leave as a clue was a piece of paper with the word
"school" on it. Investigating Inspector Derrick (Horst Tappert)
and his assistant Harry (Fritz Wepper) immediately wonder about the priest
- but cannot get him to talk as he insists on the seal of confession.
However, the word "school" leads Derrick and Harry to a nearby
high school where a few of the photographer's young models came from, and
wouldn't you know it, the priest serves as substitute teacher at that
school. The two are somewhat reinforced in their assumption that the
school has something to do with it when Gronau (Sascha Hehn), a male model
who wants to take over the deceased's studio, gets nervous every time
Derrick mentions the school. Derrick soon identifies the students in the
photographer's pictures, and one Albert (Sven-Eric Bechtolf) seems to be
their ringleader - but he blocks off all of Derrick's attempts to
interrogate him. But Derrick and Harry track down Albert's girlfriend Vera
(Katja Bienert), a nervous, catatonic wreck of late, which strongly
suggests something has happened to her, and only recently, that might have
to do with the murder. Eventually, Albert confesses that the photographer
filmed some porn as a sideline, and would drug his female performers into
participating - and Vera was one of them. Albert even leads Derrick and
Harry to the porn cinema where Vera's movie's playing, but when he
recognizes who Vera has sex with in the movie, Albert slips the
policemen's clutches, tracks down Vera's scene partner - who happens to be
Gronau - and shoots him dead, just before Derrick and Harry can catch up
... Apart from the porn undercurrents - calculated to both
shock and titilate audiences and used as an excuse to include some topless
nudity - this is pretty much business as usual, your typical Derrick
mystery with the killer easily identifiable early on and even the motive
isn't that hard to guess. That's not to say this one isn't fun to watch,
with its stilted dialogue, forced situations and the like, it's just very
routine in both content and execution. What is of some interest
though (at least for exploitation aficionados) is the episode's cast,
including Horst Frank, a mainstay of genre entertainment since the 1950s
who has tackled about any genre imaginable, Sascha Hehn, who in the 1970s
had a career in erotic cinema but by the turn of the decade was already on
his transition to kitsch TV mainstay, and young Katja Bienert, who shot Schoolgirl
Report 13 the same year and was on the verge of becoming a star of
Euro erotica.
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