A horror-adjacent wave of films still largely ignored in the U.S., the Krimi seemingly sprang out of nowhere at the end of the 1950s in West Germany with the inauguration of a string of macabre, stylish, and witty thrillers based on the novels of Edgar Wallace. Earlier Wallace films had been made for German audiences before World War II (and he was big business with numerous programmers made in England), but these ones from Danish-based company Rialto were something different. Splashed with startling moments of violence and outrageous bits of meta humor, they were packed with an appealing roster of repertory actors both new and seasoned who made the release of each new one a likely commercial hit. Other producers were quick to hop on the bandwagon, with a handful of non-Rialto Edgar Wallace fans getting rushed into production like The Avenger, while other writers like G.K. Chesteron, Victor Gunn, Louis Wienert-Wilton, and Heather Gardiner getting the Krimi treatment with delightfully eccentric results. One of the most obvious literary sources among these was Bryan Edgar Wallace, the famous writer's son, who was no slouch either when it came to writing thrillers and had been involved in the screenplays for several movie mysteries going back to the '30s. The younger Wallace adaptations were undertaken by CCC-Filmkunst, a company run by producer Artur Brauner and who had played a major role in getting the Krimi off the ground with 1958's It Happened in Broad Daylight. An avid fan of Fritz Lang, Brauner jumped on the Krimi train early in 1960 by reviving the Dr. Mabuse films with Lang himself and saw a great opportunity to make some Wallace productions of his own. That brings us to the 2025 Blu-ray release of the Eureka Entertainment set Terror In The Fog : The Wallace Krimi at CCC, the premiere authorized editions of five key films in the CCC cycle in the U.S. and the U.K. after many years of terrible gray market copies mostly pulled from dire TV prints. Despite the name you won't come across a massive amount of fog in these movies, but the entertainment value is through the roof.

The first Bryan Edgar Wallace CCC film, 1962's The Secret of the Black Trunk, is absent here and as of now remains available legitimately only on German DVD from Pidax. (English-dubbed bootlegs are easy to find, however.) That means the set begins with the only CCC Edgar Wallace adaptation, the wonderfully lurid The Curse of the Yellow Snake (Der Fluch der gelben Schlange) from 1963. A "yellow peril" yarn very much in the vein of the Fu Manchu novels and Hammer favorites like Terror of the Tongs, this one closely mimics the Rialto template right down to the flashy color credits (over an otherwise black-and-white film) and a "Hallo! Hier spricht Edgar Wallace" spoken intro. The action begins in Hong Kong with a nocturnal stabbing at a pagoda belonging to Clifford Lynn (Krimi star Fuchsberger) and his father (Tillmann) motivated by the theft of the yellow snake, a valuable and mystical Chinese artifact said to imbue its owner with immense power. The adopted Clifford fears that the crime is the handiwork of his nefarious brother, Fing-Su (well-established Krimi baddie Braun), and decides to cut off the head of this crime ring snake by heading to London. There he tangles with the shady Stephan Narth (Peters, another Rialto regular) whose family is arranged to have a marriage with Clifford through either of his daughters, the snippy Mabel (Kirchner) and the unassuming adopted Joan (Grothum, reunited with Fuchsberger again after The Strange Countess and The Inn on the River). There's no question which one will end up with our hero, who also seeks the aid of Eastern antiquarian expert Samuel (Krimi comic relief staple Arent) and dodges multiple murder attempts possibly attributable to his power-mad brother.

This one barely even tries to be a murder mystery, with the only possible question being why Fing-Su is running around London posing as a businessman named Graham St. Clay. Otherwise this is fun, traditional pulp material leading to a finale filled with sinister cultists in hoods, snake worship, and attempted sacrifices. It's all laced with a wild electronic score by Oskar Sala, who did audio design work on Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds the same year and would outdo himself a little later with another film in this set. Though he may be an acquired taste for some, Arent is great fun here as always while the bad guys get the best material with Kirchner in particular (who went Krimi again a little later the same year with The Secret of the Black Widow) running circles around the stock Joan character. Outside of West Germany, this was rarely seen on the big screen and was sent straight to TV in the U.S. with a reasonably competent English dub job that, as with all German-spoken Krimis, can't come close to capturing the flavor and nuances of the original voices. 16mm prints of that TV version were later used for a handful of gray market releases including a 2013 DVD from Retromedia paired up with the umpteenth dupey copy of The Phantom of Soho (more on that below).

The gorgeous HD restoration of this film first appeared as a surprise bonus Blu-ray in the excellent Leonine boxed set of Wallace films released in 2021 in Germany (featuring a whopping 35 discs). It wasn't English friendly and had no extras, but it was still a treat for hardcore fans just to see it finally looking like a real movie. The Eureka release on disc one comes from the same restoration and looks identical, except here you get new optional translated English subtitles (which are very well done) and the optional English dub track, both DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono (as with the rest of the box). Obviously the German version is the way to go unless you really, really can't stand reading subtitles, but it's great to have both choices here for comparison. The film also comes with a new audio commentary by Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw, and it's best to start with this track out of the whole set as they do an efficient job of laying out the strange distribution situation that led to this being released by Constantin and adopting so many of the traits of the Rialto series without getting into trouble. They also touch on the source novel, the shooting locations, the release histories of these films, and the methods of bringing murder mysteries into the present day without sacrificing the thrust of the original story. You also get a general Tim Lucas intro called "What Is a Krimi?" (5m51s) comparing these to the giallo, a 12m26s Lucas video intro covering the origins of Rialto that played a role in the fortunes of the source novel's adaptation and the basics of CCC (though he calls this the first of Braun's Krimis for some reason), and the lo-res German trailer with English subtitles.

Also on disc one, we switch over for the rest of the set to Bryan Edgar Wallace productions (in one form or another) courtesy of The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle, which pushes far more into horror territory than any of the earlier CCC titles and enjoyed a fair amount of exposure on U.S. TV and gray market home video (including a terrible quality budget DVD from Alpha Video). Here we swap out Fuchsberger for the biggest Krimi female star, Karin Dor, acting as usual for her highly skilled director husband, Harald Reinl. Drenched in atmosphere and featuring an absolutely insane Sala electronic score (the pub music alone is startling, and yes, there is a soundtrack), this one begins with a strangulation murder on the grounds of soon-to-be-knighted Lucius Clark (Fernau) who is then threatened by the black-gloved, hooded killer to give up an illicit stash of diamonds. Also staying on the property are his reporter niece Claridge Dorsett (Dor), the highly eccentric aristocrat and bird enthusiast Lord Blackmoor (Giller) just returned from Scotland, and the obligatory sinister butler, Anthony (frequent Krimi scene stealer Eppler). The diamond smuggling is tied to the nearby Old Scavenger Inn and platinum blonde barmaid Judy (The Inn on Dartmoor's Zeisberg), while Claridge has to compete with the sudden appearance of rival reporter Mike Pierce (The Great Escape and The Strangler of the Tower's Reiser) to get to the bottom of what soon becomes a string of brutal murders with a large "M" carved into the victims' foreheads. On top of the case is Scotland Yard's Inspector Jeff Mitchell (Riebauer in the first of many Krimi leading roles), who has to get down and dirty to unmask the ruthless killer.

Embellished from a movie outline written by the younger Wallace, this is a solid primer on the Krimi style courtesy of Reinl's clever direction. Essentially the creative founder of the cycle due to his helming of the breakthrough first film The Fellowship of the Frog (a.k.a. The Face of the Frog), Reinl was in the middle of a temporary leave from Rialto including directing two of the Mabuse films, The Carpet of Horror, and Eppler's most audacious acting showcase, The White Spider. Here he pulls out all the stops with spooky night chases, plentiful oddball characters, a feisty finale with multiple bad guys colliding at once, and a couple of show-stopping decapitation gags you'll never forget. Always among the more proactive of Krimi heroines, Dor has fun her with some professional banter and barely even seems to acknowledge the obligatory romantic subplot here; likewise, the killer here is a great one who exudes a genuine sense of menace and sadism. The actual unmasking isn't a huge shock (and requires someone to exclaim his identity due to the odd angle of the reveal), but by the point the film gives you so much it hardly matters.

As mentioned above, this one looked miserable on home video until it was given a lustrous restoration in 2021 for German Blu-ray and, like the other HD Bryan Edgar Wallace films here, came out from Pidax with no English-friendly options or bonus features apart from a gallery. The Eureka disc looks the same, which is great news, and is presented here in its vastly superior German-language version with fine optional English subtitles along with the serviceable English dub. For some reason a trailer for this one doesn't seem to have survived, and again it was mostly sent straight to television outside of a bit of theatrical play in Europe. A new audio commentary by Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby covers all the essentials including the backgrounds of the major actors, Reinl's genre contributions, the oddness of some of the characters and narrative turns, and in what turns into a running theme throughout all the commentary tracks, extended bemusement at the West German depictions of English locations, customs, and decor. In his video intro (10m5s), Tim Lucas rightly praises this as one of the best films in the set and delves into Reinl's highlights as a director, Dor's roles in his films and in You Only Live Twice, the antecedents for the killer's memorable appearance, and the tricky nature of figuring out what Wallace actually contributed.

We hop from one strength to another on disc two with the final CCC Krimi of 1963 (an incredible year whose other highlights included two of the finest Rialto entries, The Indian Scarf and The Squeaker): the equally horror-flavored The Mad Executioners (Der Henker von London). This was one of the rare Krimis to be picked up by a major U.S. studio, in this case Paramount who released it dubbed and with a couple of scenes removed (an undercover bar song performance by Chris Howland and a brief callback to it later during a suspense scene). It's not hard to see why this one got such a strong international push as this is a fine, fast-paced shocker that weaves together two compelling storylines with lots of widescreen panache under director Edwin Zbonek (who only helmed two Krimis, both in this set). Already a heartthrob star thanks to his leading role in the popular 1958 romantic epic Wir Wunderkinder, actor Hansjörg Felmy made the transition to Krimis here for the first time and proved so comfortable that he made four more (two in this set and also including the last truly German Rialto Wallace film, Angels of Terror). Here he plays Scotland Yard Inspector John Hillier, who's deeply frustrated by being assigned to a string of murders in which hanged men are found around London affixed with thorough documentation proving their criminal acts. As we see in the opening sequence, this vigilante behavior is the handiwork of a hood-wearing sect who meet in secret at night for impromptu court proceedings against their kidnapped victims. Even weirder, the executions are carried out with a notable hangman's rope they keep stealing from a crime museum, and Hillier would much rather go back to working on the case of a serial killer who's been decapitating young women around town including the detective's own sister. (The dialogue refers to the crimes as sex murders, though the insane final reveal indicates something else.) Hillier is more or less dating the beautiful Ann Barry (Spanish horror staple Perschy), but his excessive devotion to work is creating a sort of love triangle with his friend, pathologist Philip (Riebauer). Also on hand are Hillier's increasingly agitated superior, Inspector Morel Smith (Mabuse himself, Wolfgang Preiss), Ann's weird former judge father Sir Francis (Forster) who holds House of Whipcord-style court reenactments at home, and goofy private eye Gabby Pennypacker (Howland) whose sleuthing and disguises have their own rewards.

Though it plays around with the template in daring ways at times, this is a great gateway film if you're a Krimi newcomer thanks to its very swift pacing and abundant spooky imagery, including the nightmarish kangaroo court scenes (complete with a Black Sunday-worthy dark carriage) and a chilling, surreal detour in the third act that goes into mad scientist territory. The cast is packed with welcome faces with Felmy and Preiss getting some of the best moments, while the plot twists and turns in delightful ways -- none moreso than a hilariously twisted bit around the 20-minute mark involving a bizarre method of covering up fratricide. Very tenuously connected to a barely published Bryan Edgar Wallace book called The White Carpet, it's a unique and exciting yarn with only a few negligible flaws-- namely a goofy demise for the main mastermind and an okay but unremarkable score by Raimund Rosenberger that strongly recalls Gert Wilden's work on Black Trunk. Another title erroneously presumed to be in the public domain, this circulated in unimpressive transfers for years with its edited dubbed version released on DVD by Retromedia in 2013 (paired up with Fellowship of the Frog).

The 2021 Pidax Blu-ray was a startling upgrade, revealing layers of impressive production design detail and careful lighting that make this a real visual treat. Of course that wasn't English-friendly, but the Eureka one is and comes from the same uncut source but now subtitled for the first time (plus the English dub, which briefly reverts to German where necessary). Here the commentary honors are handled by Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby, who have a good time covering the quasi-British locations, the crime fantasy nature of the material, the backgrounds of the actors, and connections to other genre films. Here the Tim Lucas intro (11m12s) parses through the peculiar nature of the literary source (or lack thereof), the advances in storytelling, similarities to Edgar Wallace's The Four Just Men, and salient points about the main cast members. Also included are the German and U.S. trailers and "Bryan Edgar Wallace - An Era" (9m58s) with Alice Brauner, current Managing Director of CCC, talking about her father's creative approach to getting in on the Krimi wave, his love of suspense films, and the contract he signed with Bryan to secure his name for multiple projects that may have had nothing else to do with him.

Also on the same disc but included as more of a footnote in this set is 1964's The Phantom of Soho, one of the most widely bootleg Krimi titles out there (almost always letterboxed) and one which, for some inexplicable reason, has never been remastered since its rather solid German DVD release from Pidax. That uncut SD source looked fine at the time, again not English friendly, and was presented uncut complete with the great opening color sequence that was turned into monochrome everywhere else. It's another prime era Krimi with a number of key faces from the period doing fine work, particularly the always delightful Elisabeth Flickenschildt and Barbara Rütting having a ball as a wheelchair-bound club owner and a clever mystery writer respectively.

Draped with a wonderfully smoky music score by the legendary Martin Böttcher, our tale of revenge and murder revolves around a series of men being stabbed late at night in Soho by a murderer wearing sparkling gloves. Chief Inspector Patton (Borsche) and Sergeant Hallam (Vogel) follow the clues to nearby nightclub Zanzibar, its haughty owner Joanna Filiati (Flickenschildt), her respected but odd physician Dr. Dalmer (Peters), and the anxiety-inducing head of Scotland Yard, Sir Philip (Söhnker). Also on the case is novelist and amateur sleuth Clarinda Smith (Rütting), who helps figure out that the murders are all connected to an ill-fated yacht expedition aboard the Yolanda and a traumatic incident in its final voyage.

After the invigorating narrative experimentation of Mad Executioners, this one is a far more traditional Krimi with its corrupt members of the upper class, colorful crime-riddled nightclub, and multiple detectives going after a killer in a flamboyant outfit complete with an underused but creepy skull mask. Purportedly based on a Bryan screen treatment that evidently had nothing to do with the final result, this one marked the return of Franz Josef Gottlieb, the most prolific of the subgenre's directors behind Reinl and Alfred Vohrer. It's full of flashy visual gimmicks including a variation on The Indian Scarf's innovative POV shots of the killer's hands at work coming from behind the camera, achieved by having different people on opposite sides doing the honors in sync with each other. Borsche is nicely cast against type here as a good guy for once, and the twist ending is both satisfying and effectively tragic. Given a robust U.S. theatrical release by Producers Releasing Organization, this has been out in gray market versions for years on VHS and DVD from the usual suspects including Retromedia, Alpha Video, Something Weird, Mill Creek, and Sinister Cinema, but the German transfer, while still stuck in SD (a la Secret of the Black Trunk and The Devil Came from Akasava), the best of the bunch by a long shot. The Eureka disc looks identical to that German DVD and features the superior German track with English subtitles, plus the English dub (with brief subtitles for slight extra footage where applicable). A new commentary by Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw obviously makes much of the Soho location here compared to the real thing, with other topics including the confusing possible connection to The Man with the Glass Eye (a later Rialto film), the in-joke reference to Daliah Lavi, ties to gialli, Brauner's approach to making thrillers, the joys of "spangly gloves," and the odd use of that skull mask. The Tim Lucas intro here (8m45s) is an appreciative survey of the film's murky genesis, the joys of seeing some actors tweak their familiar personas, and a possible influence on Dario Argento. Also included are the film's German, international, and U.S. trailers.

One of the unique aspects of the Krimi is that, unlike gialli, slashers, and so on, the victims by a very huge margin tend to be male. Exceptions only arise when it's a specific demand of the plot, which can be found on disc three with 1964's The Monster of London City which prominently ran in U.S. theaters paired up with Phantom of Soho. Edwin Zbonek returns as director for his second and final time, here taking a visual approach that makes this the most stylized and unusual entry in the entire CCC cycle. It's also a very meta study in violence as entertainment since the story revolves around a popular but controversial London play about Jack the Ripper whose star, Richard Sand (Felmy), is causing some attendees to faint in the audience each night. Though he hasn't seen the play, stuffy Parliament member Sir George Edwards (Tillmann) is pushing to have new indecency laws passed to outlaw violent spectacles like this. Both Richard and his best friend, Dr. Morely Greely (Schönherr), are invited for dinner with Sir George by his daughter, Ann (Koch), who but that goes very badly-- especially considering Ann and Richard are dating in secret. Meanwhile a Ripper-style maniac is killing off prostitutes in the area, which drums up even more public interest in the play but takes a major psychological toll on its star. Scotland Yard comes in represented by Inspector Dorne (Nielsen) who wonders whether the thespian is going method or if something more sinister is at work.

By this point the Rialto series was sprinkling flashes of nudity into its series along with heavily slasher violence as seen in the same year's Room 13, and this film reflects that by going a little harder in its content in a similar fashion. As much as our hero insists that his play is scrupulously based on the real facts, the production itself doesn't really bear any resemblance to the real Jack the Ripper at all -- nor do the real-life simultaneous murders that are far faster and less grotesque than the genuine article. That said, this gets in some fairly intense Mario Bava-style attack scenes, and Felmy is very good as always in a role that has him even doubted whether he's the one responsible. What really sets this one apart is the production design which features interiors done in an intentionally artificial, stage-like aesthetic with bricks, wallpaper, and so on painted on in a way that would delight Lars von Trier. Exactly what Bryan Edgar Wallace contributed here remains fuzzy, with initial publicity indicating he essentially came in and did a script polish. Whatever the case may be, it's another striking and memorable entry with some solid moments of tension and an effective killer reveal at the end. In keeping with the formula, there has to be some Eddi Arent-style comic relief here-- and you get it with the silly team of amateur detective opportunists Teddy (Schmidt) and Betty (Baxenavos), who contribute little to the story but serve as a kind of Greek chorus for all the knife-wielding proceedings.

Like its theatrical companion feature, this one got duped a lot over the years (again, almost always letterboxed) in its English-dubbed version including a 2015 DVD from Retromedia paired up with The Secret of the Red Orchid. Again this one underwent a startling restoration for the 2021 German Blu-ray release (not English-friendly), revealing a visual cleverness and slickness that was obliterated on video before. The Eureka disc looks equally superb and will be quite the revelation for anyone who suffered through bad scans in the past, not to mention the advantage of seeing the excellent original German-language version (with color credits intact) with optional English subtitles, or with the usual dub. A new commentary by Kim Newman and Stephen Jones spends a great deal of time covering the odd career of Bryan Edgar Wallace and the difficulty of ascertaining his real bibliography, as well as some odd similarities to the same year's Blood and Black Lace, the usual peculiarities of the London "locations," and the later odd German-British co-productions that mixed up actors' nationalities. A Tim Lucas intro (7m44s) addresses the nebulous Bryan connection, the shared universe connections here with Soho, the production schedule, and the interplay between performance and reality here. Also included are the subtitled German trailer (the U.S. combo one with Phantom is easy to see but not included here), while the video essay "Passing the Knife" (18m24s) by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas notes that Krimis, gialli, and slashers all sometimes feature killers wearing masks and wielding knives. It's packed with spoilers for several of the films here, so don't watch it till you're done with all the films.

Finally on disc four we get the one film very specifically based on a Bryan Edgar Wallace novel, albeit quite loosely: The Racetrack Murders (originally Das 7. Opfer, or The Seventh Victim), which cites the novel Murder Is Not Enough as its source. By far the least seen title here in the U.S., it was sent straight to television and barely made the rounds on PD video; that's likely because CCC eschewed any horror or sexy elements here in favor of a more traditional murder mystery akin to the Edgar Wallace one-hour quickies being churned out in England. It's still a fun one though, with Felmy doing the leading man honors again here and actor Peter Vogel, previously seen as a cop sidekick in Soho, giving an unusually sardonic and strong-willed comic performance here as a butler. The intrigue begins right away as two shifty guys toss a snake in front of a racehorse named Satan(!) and fatally dismount his rider. Something homicidal is afoot at the estate of Lord Mant (Villa) and his various relatives and staff including his niece Avril (Smyrner), son Gerald (Lohner), veterinarian Dr. Trent (Riebauer), the strangely mercenary Reverend Turner (Nielsen), dietitian Molly (Herr), and recently arrived eccentric painter Peter Brooks (Felmy) who is much more than he appears. More murders occur and might have something to do with ruthless gangster Ed Ranova (Lukschy) who bases his operations out of the popular jockey club The Silver Whip, but only on the day of Satan's big race will the truth be revealed.

Unlike the past few scope films, The Racetrack Murders was shot flat and has a much more restrained visual approach under director Gottlieb again. There's a lot of witty banter here with Felmy getting looser and goofier than usual, but the violence can be strong when it hits including a pretty rough killing in a restroom. You also get some interesting killer POV shots, the usual sleazy club atmosphere, and a quite shocking, mean-spirited gag ending that explains the German title (and makes zero sense in the rewritten English dub). Strangely, Felmy actually doesn't have much to do with the story resolution which falls instead on Smyrner and especially the obligatory Scotland Yard sleuth (Engelmann) to set up the big villain reveal in a stable. The horse racing background is an unusual one for a Krimi and makes this feel an awful lot like a Dick Francis novel at times, albeit with the usual lush interiors and dramatic camerawork. The only preceding film that could really be compared to it is the Rialto Wallace film The Forger of London, which also opens up at the races and has a similarly classical tone to it.

Again this one was pretty unimpressive if you caught one of the dupes made from an American TV print, while the original German version (complete with a very cool color main title sequence) got another pristine restoration for a Pidax Blu-ray in 2021 (once again, no English options). The Eureka disc comes from that source and looks the same, completely uncut and also featuring the original exit music. Of all the films here this one is the most essential to watch in German with English subtitles, but the English dub is fine for a revisit if you want to see how muddled the story became in the process. The last commentary honors here are done by Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby who are still in good spirits as they study the fuzzy nature of the source novel (with which it shares some character names and not much else), the possible path from page to screen using a prewritten script, more about Bryan Edgar Wallace and the quirky depictions of English life, the genre connections to the killer's identity, and the backgrounds of the actors and director. In the last of the Tim Lucas intros (7m42s), he tackles the source novel, a few differences compared to the immediately preceding films, the switch in distributors, the minimal TV play, and high points among the cast and the score. Lucas also appears for an entire fourth audio option on the film itself hanging out with Stephen Bissette to chat about all the CCC films here including the history of the various directors, their favorite characters and performances, the little touches that jumped out at them in each one, and the way they first came across them as American TV consumers. The set also comes with a 60-page book featuring an intro by film writer Howard Hughes, a new essay on the two Wallaces by Barry Forshaw, and notes on each film by Krimi!'s Holger Haase.

Reviewed on April 25, 2025