Edgar Wallace Movies
- 1963
Another of the long-running Merton Park "Edgar Wallace" series, the plot of the British Accidental Death is motivated by revenge. Someone wants to kill the male "protector" of toothsome Jacqueline Ellis in retribution for crimes against society committed during the war. Director George Nethercott stages the film from the mysterious murderer's point of view, allowing us to follow each step of his (or her?) meticulously plotted scheme. The crime is staged to look like an accident, but the truth will come out, as it always does. Accidental Death was based on Edgar Wallace's story "Jack O' Judgement." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1968
The Ape Creature is one of a mid-1960s series of German suspense films, loosely based on the works of Edgar Wallace. As the title indicates, the principal character is a large gorilla. Terrorizing the London waterfront, the ape may be answerable to a higher, more sinister power. That's what we find out after several waterfront denizens have been pummeled and mangled, with appropriately gruesome sound effects. Horst Tapper and Uschi Glas head the "human" cast. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1963
Attempts to Kill is a sprightly 57-minute entry in Merton Park Productions' "Edgar Wallace Mysteries" series. Derek Farr stars as Scotland Yard inspector Minter, on the trail of a ruthless gang of confidence tricksters. The scam artists' latest target is a London businessman, whom they plan to kill if he doesn't fork over his dough. Halfway through, the film becomes a bit talk-heavy, but the action-packed finale makes up for this. Attempts to Kill is based on Edgar Wallace's The Lone House Mystery. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1932
The racetrack provides the setting for this melodrama that centers upon the owner of a racehorse who is jilted by a conniving, money-grubbing young woman after his money runs out. Soon after leaving him, she marries the brother of the owner's lovely horsetrainer. At the same time, the owner's shady butler gets his grieving employer drunk and talks him into fixing the next race in order to restore his fortune. Fortunately, for the horse owner, things don't go as planned and at long last he finds true happiness. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1961
A business partner, desperate to milk some kind of profit from his failing cosmetics business, turns to arson with deadly results when he inadvertently immolates his partner while trying to destroy the factory. Still he succeeds in getting the insurance money. He then gets greedy and decides to do the same thing to his late partner's lovely daughter. Fortunately, an intrepid insurance investigator is on the case. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1933
This suspenseful, exciting mystery is based upon an Edgar Wallace story and centers upon the search for $1 million in buried loot. Only the original thief, Joe Valerie knows its location. He tells the crazed Austrian Dr. Cornelius about it. The good doc secretly schemes to get it for himself, but first he must evade a determined detective and the bogus psychic he has hired to help him out. The search leads the gumshoe to a spooky, seemingly haunted mansion. Three people die during the hunt and as they go, the mystic and the detective find themselves falling in love. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stuart Erwin, Dorothy Wilson, (more)
- 1935
Born to Gamble was one of the more palatable efforts of M.H. Hoffman's poverty-row Liberty Films. The four protagonists are brothers who are "cursed" by their family's gambling bug. All four try to overcome the urge to speculate: only one, the youngest, is successful. Onslow Stevens plays both the lucky brother and his 19th-century riverboat-gambler ancestor. Born to Gamble was Americanized from British writer Edgar Wallace's novel The Greek Poropulos. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Onslow Stevens, H.B. Warner, (more)
- 1966
This suspenseful crime drama finds a jealous husband hiring a killer to murder his supposedly unfaithful wife. Donald Edwards (Michael Gough) imports the German hit man Kersten (Hans Borsody) to murder his wife Helen (Erika Remberg). He suspects her of having an affair with Robert (John Justin). The usually cold-blooded hit man first agrees to the assignment, but he soon becomes convinced that Helen is innocent of any wrongdoing. When he refuses to kill Helen, he is confronted by the irate husband, something which leads to an inevitable showdown. The feature was filmed in 1962. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Gough, Erika Remberg, (more)
A blood-and-thunder horror yarn from the pen of Edgar Wallace, The Door With Seven Locks stars Leslie Banks as a mass murderer with a penchant for puzzles. He lures several heirs to a fortune to their deaths in his mazelike mansion, which is festooned with cryptic clues leading to the location of a valuable treasure. Banks goes too far when he abducts the lovely Lilli Palmer, whose handsome boyfriend invades the mystery house, rescues the girl, and puts an end to Banks' perfidy. Door with Seven Locks was released in the US as Chamber of Horrors. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Leslie Banks, Lilli Palmer, (more)
Based on an Edgar Wallace murder mystery this chiller centers on a Scotland Yard investigation of a series of puzzling deaths plaguing a traveling circus and the hunt for loot stolen from an armored car robbery. Suspects include the mask-wearing and disfigured lion tamer, a vengeful ringmaster, an insanely jealous knife-thrower, and a blackmailing dwarf called "Mr. Big." The film is also known as Circus of Fear. A German version was shot simultaneously with Psycho-Circus but used a different director. Though available in color in Great Britain, most of the American copies of the film are in black-and-white. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Christopher Lee, Leo Genn, (more)
- 1968
Ramon (Francis DeWolff) is the Armenian merchant who lives in his mansion outside of London. He has augmented his income over the years by blackmailing his clients. Fearful of retribution, he installs a room in his mansion that is supposedly impenetrable, complete with a hotline to Scotland Yard in the event of a break-in. One by one, Ramon's friends and associates are murdered, as the trail of blood oozes closer to his door. Scotland Yard sends out special agent Meredith (Bernard Lee) at the request of the local police commissioner (A.J. Brown) after the local lawmen are baffled. Meredith must apprehend the killer before he can strike again in this suspenseful crime mystery taken from the novel by Edgar Wallace. This feature first appeared in 1960. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- David Knight, Francis de Wolff, (more)
- 1965
In the mid-1960s, Richard Todd starred in two British films based on Edgar Wallace's Sanders of the River. Coast of Skeletons was the sequel to Todd's earlier Death Drums Along the River. Playing insurance investigator Harry Sanders, Todd comes upon an insidious scheme to steal the valuables from the sunken ships insured by Sanders' firm. The mastermind behind the plan is one A. J. Magnus, played by the usually heroic Dale Robertson. Since we know from the get-go that Sanders will be triumphant, suspense is minimal in Coast of Skeletons. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Heinz Drache, Marianne Koch, (more)
In this murder mystery, Scotland Yard investigate the deaths of two coeds at an exclusive girls' school. Clues involve a man wearing a hood, and a mysterious poison gas. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joachim Fuchsberger, Ursula Glas, (more)
- 1932
The Criminal at Large in this quota quickie murders his victims in the dark of night. There seems to be a pattern to the killer's activities, but darned if Chief Inspector Tanner (Norman McKinnel) can figure it out. It looks as though dilettante sleuth Lord Lebanon (Emlyn Williams) will have to come to Scotland Yard's rescue, as the killer stalks his prey in a musty old castle. Criminal at Large was based on Edgar Wallace's stage play The Frightened Lady (which was also the film's alternate title). Wallace also worked on the screenplay -- one of his final assignments before his untimely death in 1933. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Emlyn Williams, Cathleen Nesbitt, (more)
- 1938
In this drama, a gangster finds the woman of his dreams, but before he can have her he must frame her fiance. Meanwhile the Asian lover he dumped plots her revenge. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1961
In this detective film, a Chinese detective breaks up a drug smuggling ring and tries to find the "Daffodil Killer." The drug smugglers had devised the ingenious method of smuggling heroin from Hong Kong in the stems of daffodils. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Christopher Lee, Marius Goring, (more)
- 1961
Even while a series of British second features based on the works of Edgar Wallace was flourishing in the 1960s, Germany was grinding out its own Wallace series. Secret of the Red Orchid top-bills British actor Christopher Lee in a story of a joint effort between the FBI and Scotland Yard. The target of these combined forces is a far-reaching crime syndicate. The stellar international cast includes Klaus Kinski (a semi-regular in the Wallace series), Marissa Mell, and silent film veteran Fritz Rasp. Secret of the Red Orchid was originally titled Puzzle of the Red Orchid. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1967
The fine line between drama and real life is crossed with tragic results in this German horror mystery film that is set in modern London and centers on a stage production of Jack the Ripper's life. During the run of the play, a series of murders, eerily similar to Jack's, occur. This doesn't bother the lead actor too much until he discovers that his fake knife has been replaced by a real one during a performance. Horrified, he flees the theater. Pursued by Scotland Yard, he must somehow prove his innocence lest he be sent to the gallows. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hansjörg Felmy, Marianne Koch, (more)
- 1962
In this British crime drama, the sister of a suicide victim begins to question the real reason for her sibling's death after she learns that 7,000 pounds were removed from her bank account just prior to her death. She asks her sister's banker, but he claims to know nothing. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- 1966
Although The Hunchback Of Soho is primarily a mystery, there are moments of levity, suspense, and horror that added to the tempo of the film. An American girl in London is kidnapped when she arrives to claim a sizeable inheritance, and a home for wayward girls is the scene of several unsolved murders, prompting Scotland Yard to send Inspector Hopkins Guernther Stoll to investigate. Stoll plays the part with comic flair as he tries to unravel the mystery. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Günther Stoll, Eddie Arent, (more)
- 1961
In this mystery, based on a story by Edgar Wallace, Scotland Yard looks into a ring of counterfeiters. He soon discovers that an amnesiac playboy is linked to the gang of forgers. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1972
In this German detective thriller, swindlers using a false charity as a front send a hit man around London to murder wealthy people whose deaths can benefit the organization. This film is one of a very large number of German Scotland-Yard thrillers based on the novels of Edgar Wallace. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1963
This quirky crime thriller stars Hansjörg Felmy as an intrepid Scotland Yard inspector tackling two seemingly disparate cases. He is officially assigned to investigate an underground society of vigilantes who take the law into their own hands, trying criminals in their own "Star Chamber"-style kangaroo court. On his own initiative, he is also pursuing a serial sex-killer who decapitates his victims. Felmy's dogged devotion to this case turns out to be personal, since his sister was among the killer's victims. The vendetta eclipses all other concerns, as the inspector even uses his own fiancee (Maria Perschy) as bait to trap the madman -- who suddenly falls into the clutches of the hooded vigilantes and is whisked away for a speedy trial. No prizes will be issued to viewers who guess the identity of the judge. This German production was also released as The Mad Executioners. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
