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DEAD EYES OF LONDON

The road to the giallo film was paved by the Kriminalfilm, a brand of German crime thrillers regularly referred to by the shorter, catchier name, the Krimi. Comprised of a series of thirty or so films produced by Horst Wendlandt for Rialto Film between the years of 1959 and 1972, the Krimi drew, almost exclusively, their inspiration from the mega-popular crime fiction of Edgar Wallace. Both kinds of films deal with the same seedy subject matter - blackmailing, drugs, murder, sexuality - but the Krimi definitely lack the same kind of perverse spark that drove the giallo to delirious heights, not surprising though as the bulk of gialli were made in the more decadent 1970s Italy while the Krimi were restrained by the more rigid German censorship standards of the 1960s. So if the giallo were the younger brother who enjoyed roughhousing, the Krimi were every inch the older brother who just wanted to kick back at the pool and have a good time.

That is not to say that the Krimi were in any way inferior films. They're not. Given the short list of titles to work with, there wasn't much time for the Krimi to really stretch out and grow, so all of the films have the same kind of methodical plotting and resolution with little variation between them. While a simple change of year (say 1974 to 1975) meant a world of difference to the giallo, the Krimi really remained a solid form of film, one that told a particular kind of story in a very particular kind of way, usually by the same group of directors and writers (Alfred Vohrer, the director of DEAD EYES OF LONDON, directed 14 Krimi himself). Of the early Krimi, this film, DEAD EYES OF LONDON, made in 1961, is the best. All of the elements that signified the sub-genre are in place: the foggy streets of London, the clever detective, the damsel in distress, the devious criminals. All of those things are combined with solid direction and a timeless, classic Noir feel to create a minor masterpiece of mystery filmmaking.

We begin on a dark, fog-shrouded street in London as an old man walks through the dark. He is attacked and kidnapped by a large, bald, brutish man with disturbingly hairy forearms and hands. The attacker, who we will learn is a thug called Blind Jack, hauls the old man into the back of a white delivery van which then disappears into the night. The next day, the old man's body is found floating in the Thames. The coroner sites the cause of death as drowning and the death is considered to be an accident. But Inspector Holt and his sidekick, Sergeant Harvey, know better. There have been a rash of deaths lately, all of them old men, all of them rich, and, as it turns out, all of them having large insurance policies from an insurance company called the Greenwich Company. Something curious is found on the body of the dead man, a piece of parchment that looks to contain a message in braille. A beautiful woman named Nora Ward, a braille expert, is called in to help piece together the message.

A little bit of investigation turns up two possible avenues. The first is the Greenwich Company, headed by Stephen Judd. Stephen has been having a bit of a rough patch lately. All these large insurance policies being paid out are driving his business into the ground, not to mention the blackmailing that has been going on. Stephen's brother, David, had gone out of the country a while back and had died after racking up a large monetary debt to some rather shady men. In an attempt to line his own pockets, a two-bit crook named Fleabite Fred has been blackmailing Judd, threatening to spill the beans about his brother (something that would hurt the good name of the company) unless Judd pays up.

The other avenue of investigation is a home for the blind run by a kindly old reverend. While Inspector Holt and Nora are visiting the home, someone slips a note into Holt's jacket pocket, a note which says that Blind Jack still comes around the home periodically, only at night, and that the reverend doesn't know that he is sometimes harboring a violent criminal. They quickly conclude that one of the residents of the home, a man named Norris, was the one who slipped them the note. When they go back to talk to him, they are told that Norris hasn't been seen for days.

Meanwhile, someone is trying to kill Fleabite Fred, Judd's secretary Edgar begins enacting a blackmail plot of his own against his boss, an old lover of Judd's brother turns up strangled in her apartment, and more bodies are being flushed out of the Thames. All of these storylines come together at the end in an extremely satisfying manner.

This isn't the first time Wallace's 1924 novel The Dark Eyes of London was adapted to the screen. Originally shot in 1939 by Walter Summers, it was re-titled THE HUMAN MONSTER and starred Bela Lugosi and Hugh Williams. A good bit of luxury had been taken in the adaptation (including changing the ending and the vocation of the criminal mastermind, both of which dramatically alter the whole overall tone of the piece) and the film largely fails to deliver anything close to what Wallace had intended. Vohrer does a much better job. The Krimi would soon move away from "adapted from" to "suggested by" in their attempts to milk the catalog of Wallace's works, but this comes fairly close to telling Wallace's tale well. It certainly contains quite a bit more bite than Summers' film even though it has some rather humorous moments (a skull which doubles as a cigarette dispenser, Harvey's knitting, a strange inside-the-mouth POV shot of someone cleaning their teeth) to liven up the proceedings.

It is most certainly one of the most influential of the Krimi. There would appear be to be two distinct references to DEAD EYES OF LONDON within Mario Bava's influential THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH from 1963, often referred to as the first giallo film ever made. Having seen most of the Krimis, this does seem to be the most visually inspiring of the early films. It has a classic look to it, a mix of Universal horror and Film Noir, with heavy shadowing and foggy ambience giving way to crystal clear and focused shots of leering faces, reflections in sunglasses and sudden eruptions of movement within the frame. For a rather light-hearted film from 1961, there are some rather tense and suspenseful moments and moments of genuinely great misdirection (one of its best scenes is one of the two lifted by Bava, involving a tape recorded voice in an otherwise quiet location).

All of the criticisms I could lay on the film feel would also apply to virtually any mystery thriller, Krimi, giallo or otherwise. Sure the story seems to get too convoluted and yes there are seemingly too many faces popping up on screen, but that would be beside the point. I never quite understood those criticisms anyway. Too few narrative strands and red herrings and you'd be left with a rather straight thriller with little information to sort through along the way. In other words, you'd have a mystery without the mystery. DEAD EYES OF LONDON, while it seems convoluted and filled with red herrings, turns out to be, in the end, one of the few films in which no bit of the story is extraneous and none of the red herrings are completely without consequence. I think that's really a testament to the source material and the care Egon Eis put into the construction of the screenplay. It all holds together remarkably well and plays itself out at a considerable clip. While I highly doubt it will take long for anyone to figure out who is really to blame for all those dead bodies floating around in the Thames, the conclusion of the film feels satisfying precisely because it's earned. I wish more films felt this satisfying.

DEAD EYES OF LONDON feels like a film lthat belongs in the oeuvre of Val Lewton, classy without sacrificing some of its brute strength. It contains fine performances (Joachim Fuchsberger, Dieter Borsche, Wolfgang Lukschy, the lovely Karin Baal and a young Klaus Kinski are all fantastic), a wild jazz score from Heinz Funk and beautiful photography by Karl Lob. It is perhaps the best place for those looking to explore the Krimi to start. All of the requisite elements are in place and the story is told in such a charming fashion that anyone wanting a good, solid mystery will have a great time.

Highly recommended.