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Der Teppich des Grauens
The Carpet of Horror
Terror en la Noche / Il Terrore di Notte
West Germany / Spain / Italy 1962
produced by Alfons Carcasona (executive) for International Germania Film, Época Films, Domiziana Internazionale Cinematografica
directed by Harald Reinl
starring Joachim Fuchsberger, Karin Dor, Eleonora Rossi Drago, Antonio Casas, Fernando Sancho, Roberto Rey, Julio Infiesta, Lorenzo Robledo, Carl Lange, José María Caffarel, Gabriel Llopart, Werner Peters, Marco Guglielmi, Paola Pitagora, Pierre Besari, Lorenz Rohleder, Raffael Wacker
screenplay by Felix Lützkendorf, Helmut Harun, based on the novel by Louis Weinert-Wilton, music by Francesco De Masi
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Somebody's killing rich people using balls filled with poisoned gas,
and even though the gas can be traced back to India, police inspectors
Burns (Julio Infiesta) and Webster (Marco Guglielmi) are baffled. In the
meantime, Harry Raffold (Joachim Fuchsberger) desparately tries to hit it
off with Ann (Karin Dor), even though she's not in the least bit
interested. But then her uncle (Roberto Rey) at whose mansion she lives is
murdered, and she spots Raffold at the scene of the crime - but doesn't
turn him over to the police. Meanwhile, Raffold receives a call from a
person unknown to put up camp at Mabel Hughes' (Eleanora Rossi Drago)
pension, which he does, to meet Colonel Gregory (Carl Lange), whom he
almost immediately suspects of being the baddie of the piece. Eventually,
it's revealed that Ann is the sole heiress of her uncle's vast fortune,
and she's immediately arrested as a suspect in his murder, and so is
Raffold - until it turns out he's a Secret Service agent of course, on the
trail of whoever it is who poisons others with gas-filled balls. What
only slowly is revealed is that all those murdered are members of a
criminal organisation that once operated in India but has since relocated
to London, and it's led by a person unknown. Crayton (Werner Peters), one
of the higher up members of the organisation, wants to take over from that
unknown boss, and this causes quite a bit of a stir-up, and eventually
even Ann is drawn into this and gets kidnapped, but then Crayton is
gassed, Raffold gets a tip-off as to where to find Ann, Colonel Gregory
turns out to be another Secret Service man, and in the finale none other
than Mabel Hughes is revealed as the big boss - and of course, ultimately
she has to go out by means of one of her own gas-filled balls ... With
the success of Rialto's
Edgar Wallace cycle, which turned the krimi genre into box
office gold, it was only natural that other production companies would
field the bookshelves for popular crime fiction authors - and one of them
was Louis Weinert-Wilton, who like Edgar Wallace didn't live to see the
resurgence of his novels in post war Germany (he died 1945) but his books
were still in print back when. This first adaptation of one of his novels
is really made to look and feel like just another Edgar Wallace movie
though, to the point that Harald Reinl, then resident director of the
series, and known Wallace-faces Joachim Fuchsberger and Karin Dor were
hired to give the film a feeling of familiarity. All that of course says
little about the actual quality of the film - and really while it's a
lively mystery movie, it's a very routine effort from Reinl, not helped by
a screenplay that has only little new to offer. Not a trainwreck mind you,
and entertaining enough for roughly an hour and a half, but nothing to
write home about.
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