NO HORROR FILMS, WE'RE GERMAN

NO HORROR FILMS, WE'RE GERMAN!

By Harald Gruenberger and Henrik Larsen
With an introduction by Henrik Larsen

The German movie industry of the 1960s has received precious little coverage in Danish movie magazines and I've been meaning to do something about that for months. To learn more details I asked Harald Gruenberger, an Austrian now living in Germany, who's running a website dedicated to unusual movies, www.metamovie.de, for advice. His first reply was not too encouraging, essentially telling me that he didn't know a damn thing about the subject. However he quickly proved himself wrong! At some point I suggested we'd compile the entire conversation and edit it into an article and this is the result. It was a mildly surreal experience to be engaged in a friendly chat on harmless topics like the German western, while dark clouds gathered over Denmark. On General Election Day November 20 the Social Democrats were swept from power by a rightwing coalition, putting an end to 9 years of goverment. Just how the new situation is going to influence our lives is too early to tell though - and anyway this is not the place to discuss politics. I hope the reader will learn a thing or two about the Winnetou and Edgar Wallace movies from this essay. If occasionally falling slightly off the track we had a lot of fun with our late night ping-pong sessions, Harald and I.

Henrik Larsen: The Winnetou/Karl May movies of the early '60s... Staggeringly naive as most are, they did pave the way for the Italian western later that decade. And some actually aren't that bad, eg "Der Schatz im Silbersee/The Treasure of Silver Lake". There is also the interesting side-story of a washed-up American actor who travelled to Germany and (for reasons unfathomable to me, since I'm not a German) became a superstar over night, looked up to as a demigod: Lex Barker!

Harald Gruenberger: Hm... I confess that I hate those movies - my father forced me into them when I was a helpless child, and I've avoided them ever since. However, if you cannot get a real fan, there are surely lots of websites (even some books, actually) to go into details on the subject.

What I can offer are some general remarks:

Those movies have been hugely popular in Germany ever since they were released, even having been restored for DVD. Karl May himself was still popular when I was a boy. What is remarkable is the fact that the fad didn't start earlier - after all there had been earlier Karl May movies (a 1936 version of "Durch die Wüste", a big-budget 1958 color effort, "Die Sklavenkarawane" etc.), yet it wasn't before Harald Reinl sprang into action in 1962 that the madness began.

The earlier Karl May movies had been desert-set and thus just couldn't compete with Westerns. After WWII, everything American was perceived as being inherently superior to homemade products. It would have seemed quite absurd to attempt to do a "Western" in Germany, even though even the cheapest US B-Westerns were hugely popular at the time... if not for Karl May: "we're not aping Hollywood, we're filming the works of a German writer"! Hurray!

The first movie in the ‘series’, "Der Schatz im Silbersee", cost 3,5 Mio DM (quite a sum: the early Edgar Wallace movies cost ca. 600.000 DM), some risk, as producer Horst Wendlandt admitted. But no less than 6 mio tickets were sold - which means that, statistically, every 10th German went to see the movie.

Rialto-Film (as well as CCC) followed the AIP mode: a movie is successful? Okay, here comes another one! Thus, the '60s are flooded with Karl May movies, Edgar Wallace movies, Dr. Mabuse movies, Jerry Cotton movies... and their offsprings. (As early as 1965, the hugely popular Austrian singer and comedian Peter Alexander starred in "Graf Bobby, der Schrecken des Wilden Westens", an unassuming comedy which included all the familiar Yugoslavian settings and even Vladimir Medar as the head villain.)

Today's critics often note the charming naivite of those movies - a fairy tale world, as opposed to, say, the bizarrities of Edgar Wallace movies. It's no wonder that Alfred Vohrer, IMO the best director of the bunch, didn't do any remarkable Karl May. For some reasons apparently he had more sophistication than, say, Harald Reinl. (When Reinl filmed the Nibelungen, it STILL looked like Karl May, after some heavy blows on the head.) But the fact remains that the films were well made - what they lacked in charming Italian-style shoddiness, they made up with craft. You won't expect intellectual or esthetical highlights from a Karl May movie, but you can be quite sure that you'll get clean, competent craftsmanship.

As for the American actors --- the explanation is simple. Our two main witnesses are Lex Barker and George Nader (who starred in some cheap, but popular "Jerry Cotton" movies later in the '60s, Cotton being the hero of a long-running series of pulp novels, not a James Bond, but a trustworthy FPI inspector). It seems fairly well established that Nader was forced to move out of Hollywood because he didn't keep his homosexuality in the closet; apparently, Barker was a bit ambigous as well - homosexuality is mentioned, as well as a rumor of him abusing his little stepdaughter. (In my opinion, 50 % of Barkers "acting" was actually the talent of his dubbing voice, Gert Günter Hoffmann, anyway.)

Yes, I read about Lex Barker raping Cheryl Crane, his stepdaughter with Lana Turner...

As to his success, well, he WAS bland, but he was also tall and blond, so it wasn't really a bigger mystery than the stardom of, say, John Agar.

Lex Barker is tolerable enough as 'Old Shatterhand'. Unlike Steward Granger whom I find positively annoying with his constant joviality. At least Barker, whatever his sexual orientation, plays it straight. Oh, and there's a funny thing about the guy: His ever-perfect hairstyle. No doubt thanks to pounds of brilliantine every single hair is seemingly GLUED to his skull. However rough he's is treated in his movies, beaten up, thrown into dungeons etc, Lex Barker comes through with a perfect hairstyle.

I haven't seen his Tarzan movies (if I have, it must have been as a child), but I would guess this is the German influence. Women's coiffeures of the '60s were popularly referred to as "helmets". And talking about helmets - have you ever seen the Reinl "Nibelungen"?

Have I missed anything?

Definitely! If you enjoyed Reinls efforts at horror in "Schlangengrube und das Pendel", you should be pleased to see him trying to create respectable mythology. (Originally, it was shot in two parts; later it was cut down to one.) Many reviewers were reminded of his Karl May movies, and the truth is that even though the memories are indeed bound to show up, it isn't Reinl's fault - after all, the Nibelungen were basically lots of action and melodrama in ancient language. No problem with that. If they hadn't treated it as a Bible story, with picturesque locations (Iceland, if I remember correctly), sweeping camerawork etc. But amidst this Cecil B. deMille/Fritz Lang stuff, there is Western-style horse riding, an evil dwarf, dialogue exchanges to bang your head on the wall, as well as the general feeling that Vladimir Medar would show up the next minute.

Sounds interesting, I must admit. Vladimir Medar by the way is my favorite supporting actor in these movies. Almost nothing is written about him, which I find very sad. Apart from his finest hour which will always be Father Fabian in "Schlangengrube" he was prominently cast in the early Sergio Corbucci western "Massacre at Grand Canyon", had good supporting parts in the Ferdinando Baldi pepla "Massacre in the Black Forest" and "In the Shadow of the Eagles", pops up here and there in the Winnetou movies (mostly cameos) and even in the terrible Adrian Hoven horror movie "Im Schloss der blutigen Begierde" (you know, the one containing footage of open heart surgery!).

If it turns up on TV again, remind me...

What do you think was the main reason for the German Western to hit that big, not only within Germany, but also in Europe, even America?

Again, you are asking the wrong person...

I think you're doing fine so far!

...But my guess is that American westerns at the time had lost most of their originality - the small B westerns were dying out, their audicence moving to TV, while the big productions ... well, again I must emphasize that I am not a Western type... but all those voluminous John Wayne/Dean Martin/whatever '60s Westerns - whatever I caught of them - struck me as being horribly overblown. Also, remember the incredible hunger of the US market. Just yesterday, I read that some late '50s Toho monster film (no Godzilla movie) was actually commissioned by US TV. I mean, if they import "Anders als du und ich/The Third Sex" from Germany, if Joseph Levine can make a smash hit out of the 1957 Hercules... well, why not?

I've never as far as I recall read any of the Karl May novels, but judging from the movie adaptions he seems like the German equivalent of Fenimore Cooper, perhaps even less subtle in style.

I haven't read them for 25 years (I am 34 now), but it's definitely pulp; even Karl May himself was sort of a pulp character, posing as his fictional hero and pretending his novels to be real-life stories. There's really no reason to read him. However, to be fair - for a boy he works. He would have pleased to see the movies, I guess.

I was rewatching "Schlangengrube" recently and it's very entertaining, yet all too obvious a Germanic variant of "The Mask of Satan" and "Pit and the Pendulum". Some of the scenery is decidedly baroque, like Lex Barker nonchalantly stopping the Holy Father carrying a giant wooden cross, asking for direction to Castle Andemeier (sp?).

I thought it was "Andemir", sounding like nothing existent, neither German nor any other language, but somehow "medieval".

Reinl doesn't always manage to hit the right tone. In "The Mask of Satan", Barbara Steele having the iron mask RAMMED into her face was a genuinly gruesome scene; in "Schlangengrube", Christopher Lee having a much smaller and lighter mask little more than gently attached to his face fails to make any shocking impression.

Reinl was not a person of style. Watch his Edgar Wallace or Mabuse movies, and you get the feeling that once in a while the producer tipped on his shoulder and whispered "Remember, Harald - this is supposed to be a SPOOKY scene." So Reinl grudgingly orders the cameraman to light the actors from below. And that's about it - one doesn't feel that he has FUN. Most of his movie’s stylistic traits are probably due to set designers and directors of photography - as opposed to, say, Alfred Vohrer.

There's a funny mistranslation or 'improving' of the dialogue in the US video print. In the opening sequence, standing with the judge, awaiting the execution of Christopher Lee, Karin Dor says: "I'm afraid this is only the beginning." Well, the original, German line goes: "Ich bin froh, dass alles vorbei ist!"

HA!

Trying to elaborate on the most popular German serials... The Karl May movies were "respectable" family fair, which became increasingly rare in the '60s, as opposed to the Wallace movies which where considered lewd and tasteless (on German TV, they are still shown with cuts). They soon became notorious for not giving a shit about their alleged sources, like logic, human behaviour and about anything else; they were lewd, gleefully silly and did everything to surprise the audience. Several B/W Wallace movies had color main titles, several irritated Wallace fans by presenting a completely different villain than Wallace had originally written, Alfred Vohrer placed the camera everywhere, frequent composer Peter Thomas was told "Do whatever you like, as long as you stay under budget."

Sounds like my kind of movies. I wonder if they inspired the wonderful Italian '70s police/crime movies.

Hm… the latter seemed always dull to me in comparison.

The police movies of, say, Umberto Lenzi - dull?

I confess never having seen anything of Lenzi but two cannibal movies. Which were…dull. But surely you have seen some of the German Wallace stuff?

I think so... I used to be very fond of the German crime TV-serials, but it's many years since I've watched any.

My God! Get some! I wish I had them on tape, I'd send you some. "Die toten Augen von London" and "Der Hexer" should be the best. Both are available on German tape for DM 19 each at amazon.de, "Der Hexer" is also out on DVD (which still misses some footage but does restore the original color main titles). "Die toten Augen von London" (based on the same story that was used for a 1939 Bela Lugosi flick, and better than that version) comes closest to being a classic, full of expressionistic lighting, weird camera angles and suspense. It even includes Vienna's very own Tor Johnson, the catcher Adi Berber. "The Hexer" is less horrific, but still very well made, and it features the weirdest camera angle ever: a complicated (and breathtakingly pointless) shot of an inspector gnawing on a carrott - seen from the point of the inspector's tongue, using huge fake dentures and a very big carrott.

This situation of Karl May and Edgar Wallace movies representing opposed approaches on filmmaking came to a point when old Robert Siodmak didn't shoot a film noir Wallace but a Karl May adventure, "Die Pyramide des Sonnengottes". It was done well enough and certainly more atmospheric than the Reinl oeuvre, but Siodmak was still felt to be slumming.

There has always been a feeling of "We can't do this" in Germany. We can't do Westerns, only Karl May. No horror movies, just Edgar Wallace. This self-diminishing way of thinking continues to this day - '50s and '60s musicals with some lovely choreography and an almost touching refusal to keep in touch with "what one should do" were commercially successful - of course, else they wouldn't have been shot en masse - but to this day, few critics admit to actually liking them.

Danish movie industry has suffered from the same tendency to rely on folksy comedies, sex comedies (I wonder to what degree the Danish and German sex comedies influenced each other).

Well, the Danish had a good reputation in Germany, probably stemming from the '60s when they were seen to be more "liberated"... dont ask me... as for the Germans, the haircuts alone would turn me off.

Or when it gets highbrow and 'serious', we are treated to dreary 'socialrealism' - in b&w, of course. It took Lars von Trier (whatever we might think of the man) and to a lesser degree Lars Bornedal (Bille August is vastly overrated) to change that.

I confess that I never even heard of the latter two - but should you be tempted to tell me about them, be informed that I just got my uncut DVD of "Beyond the Door III/Amok Train".... just for contrast!

The most amazing critical ignorance is displayed when it comes to the physical aspects of production - as opposed to, say, Italian movies of the time, corner cutting is rarely on display. This gives an almost glossy feeling to the most trivial plots, and it doesn't force directors to display the nonchalant genius of a Bava or Freda. "Planet of the Vampires" would have been impossible in Germany, even though it was co-financed by a German company.

Interesting point. A German director would find it a betrayal of his craftmanship to rely on 'cheap tricks'.

I wouldn't exactly term it "betrayal", though. One thing is the simple pride of being able to do things "straight", meaning that the image is in focus and the backgrounds aren't painted: "es ist nicht so wie bei armen Leuten", as the phrase goes.

Another thing is the screwed thing Germans have with "art". Premise 1: exploitation is bad. Premise 2: if you spend money on it, it isn't exploitation. And yes, this is NOT very logical, but that's the way it was and is. How many German horror movies have there been produced since the '50s? There are oddities like "Ein Toter hing im Netz/Horror of Spider Island" (more sexploitation than horror), the Wallace hybrids and occasional outcast flicks like "Schlangengrube und das Pendel" (yes, it IS a cute movie, but horrific?) or "The Head". Amongst the fans, the most popular German horror movies of today ("Anatomie" notwithstanding) are the amateur works of Buttgereit & Co. (The best German horror of the last years is the no-budget political satire/idiocy "Das deutsche Kettensägenmassaker" which, despite its childish efforts to shock the bourgeosie, manages to be funny and even nightmarish at times.)

Yet another reason for the series’ respective success: familiar faces kept showing up from film to film - only while the Wallace movies basically created their comic reliefs themselves, the May movies could take dialogue passages and characters directly from their sources. They weren't character-driven (of course, the Wallace movies weren't, either), but mechanically plot-driven. This is not a complaint: you need good, solid stereotypes to make this kind of film working. In essence, it means that you have to make the audience feel safe: the bad will be punished, the good will be victorious in a convincing way - the heroes of Karl May were heart-felt cliches, with just the kind of wishful thinking to touch juvenile readers (and viewers). When Winnetou died, a public outcry forced the producers to bring him back. If Joachim Fuchsbergers perennial Edgar Wallace sleuth had fallen victim to a colorful murder weapon just before the finale, by 1964 nobody would have been much surprised.

"Winnetou III" - I have a Danish video release of that movie; it contains a tearjerking farewell scene of the dying Winnetou recalling his past adventures with Old Shatterhand. The 1968 movie "Winnetou und Shatterhand im Tal der Toten" (revamping the plot of "Der Schatz im Silbersee") wisely ended the series on an optimistic note, leaving room for a possible sequel: Having killed all the bad guys and married Karin Dor off to some handsome looking soldier our friends ride into the sunset. But this time it really was the end.

Actually, in the late 1990s, an aging Pierre Brice appeared in a made-for-TV Karl May movie. People were pleased and greeted the news as they would greet an old friend - until it turned out that Brice insisted to keep his own voice (and, thus, his French accent): this was like a betrayal. The movie did not start a new vogue.

They never forgave him?

I guess he resigned. Some TV station dug out a horrible French '70s sci-fi series he starred in… I forgot the title and, mercifully, most of the series, which I had seen as a child, but Pierre and some other guy were on a planet ruled by women (with telepathic abilities or something like it). The show's level could probably be read from the fact that planet was called "Medusa".

But wait, that's not all! I forgot to mention the 2001 (!) comedy "Der Schuh des Manituo" - a Winnetou spoof by Michael Herbig ("Bully"), a TV comedian. He got 9 million people into the cinemas, being one of the most popular German movies ever. (I haven't seen it myself.) The fad lives on...

And as you told me earlier, the original Winnetou movies remain popular as well, with recent deluxe DVD releases etc. Do people sincerely regard them as bona fide classics?

Short answer: no. Though it's getting weaker, the inferiority complex is still prevalent. The biggest praise you're going to get is in phrases like "good old-fashioned fun" or, perhaps, "well-made" and "bringing back childhood memories". These are not really movies - they form a phenomenon.

I see. Well, thanks for enlightening us on this fascinating subject, Harald. It seems the Danish and German movie consumers have something in common when it comes to broad entertainment: a stubborn yearning for "the good old days". Or put more bluntly: a poor taste!

Being a nostalgia freak myself, I would argue about "poor taste". Taking '50s sci fi movies... people may be yearning for the Jack Arnold or George Pal films - but few people really lament the fact that Ed Wood isn't shooting movies today. In W.K.Eversons "More Classics of the Horror Films", he comments on '40s schlock horror (PRC, Monogram...): "They were poor relations then, now they are old friends." This nostalgia may not have to do much with "art", but it's human....

"Poor taste" admitedly is a bit harsh; after all I'm a nostalgia freak too. Oh well, we can blame those old comedies and picturesque adventures for being predictable, clicheed, naive, moralistic et cetera...

So are most movies of today, in case you forgot...

And yet, and this is where most movies of today fail, they're products of solid workmanship. The colorful sets have a fairytale quality, the music is vulgar, but tastefully so, the women are always beautiful... and we know however bad things may turn Lex Barker will be around to save the day.

Including his hairstyle!