Gert Fröbe Movies

With Goldfinger, the James Bond series took a turn away from relatively straightforward spy thrillers and toward campy gadgetry, extravagant sets, and kitschy jokes. Bond (Sean Connery) has to prevent a notorious gold smuggler, appropriately named Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe), from robbing Fort Knox. Goldfinger is surrounded by evil henchmen such as the sexy female pilot Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) and Oddjob (Harold Sakata), who kills with his steel-rimmed bowler hats. In order to stop Goldfinger, Bond has to survive several perilous situations, including a huge, deadly laser. Goldfinger is one of the most popular films in the James Bond series, and it set the tone not only for the rest of the series but also for most of the action/adventure films of the late '60s and early '70s. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

In this drama, two total strangers suspect each other of murdering their own wives. The trouble begins when an unhappily married architect becomes obsessed with a murder trial in which a husband allegedly murdered his wife. The architect begins collecting newspaper clippings. Although the charges against the accused are dropped, the architect is convinced that the man is guilty. He even visits the husband. After talking to him, the architect is more sure than he was before. The architect gets into trouble after his own wife's body is discovered in a ravine. The other husband, believing the architect did it, begins blackmailing him. Later the cops find the architect's collection of clippings. The husband, now convinced that the architect is out to destroy him, murders the architect. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this lightweight French comedy a pair of sharpers, Cathy (Jeanne Moreau) and her ex-husband Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) attempt to bilk a miserly millionaire out of his fortune during his visit to the French Riviera. Unfortunately for them, he is just as crafty as they are. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Three fugitives find shelter in a small French village while they wait for their getaway ship. ~ All Movie Guide

The Longest Day is a mammoth, all-star re-creation of the D-Day invasion, personally orchestrated by Darryl F. Zanuck. Whenever possible, the original locations were utilized, and an all-star international cast impersonates the people involved, from high-ranking officials to ordinary GIs. Each actor speaks in his or her native language with subtitles translating for the benefit of the audience (alternate "takes" were made of each scene with the foreign actors speaking English, but these were seen only during the first network telecast of the film in 1972). The stars are listed alphabetically, with the exception of John Wayne, who as Lt. Colonel Vandervoort gets separate billing. Others in the huge cast include Eddie Albert, Jean-Louis Barrault, Richard Burton, Red Buttons, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Gert Frobe, Curt Jurgens, Peter Lawford, Robert Mitchum, Kenneth More, Edmond O'Brien, Robert Ryan, Jean Servais, Rod Steiger and Robert Wagner. Paul Anka, who wrote the film's title song, shows up as an Army private. Scenes include the Allies parachuting into Ste. Mere Englise, where the paratroopers were mowed down by German bullets; a real-life sequence wherein the German and Allied troops unwittingly march side by side in the dark of night; and a spectacular three-minute overhead shot of the troops fighting and dying in the streets of Quistreham. The last major black-and-white road-show attraction, The Longest Day made millions, enough to recoup some of the cost of 20th Century Fox's concurrently produced Cleopatra. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hampered by over-orchestrated music, smeary color photography and (in the English version at least) poor dubbing, this 1963 French/German adaptation of the Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht piece The Three Penny Opera nonetheless has its attractions. Not least of these is the central performance of Curt Jurgens as robber captain MacHeath, whose romance with Polly Peachum (June Ritchie), daughter of beggar king J. J. Peachum (Gert Frobe), puts his life in jeopardy. Hildegarde Neff has an effective cameo as whore-ish Pirate Jenny. For the film's American release, distributor Joseph E. Levine hired Sammy Davis Jr. to play the Ballad Singer, who narrates the story, introduces the scenes, and sings the opera's most famous song "Moritat (The Ballad of Mack the Knife)." Unlike the music in the rest of the film, Davis' rendition of "Mack the Knife" is rearranged in Bobby Darin "pop" fashion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The first of the "Dr. Mabuse" films not directed by Fritz Lang, the French/German/Italian Return of Dr. Mabuse stars Wolfgang Preiss in the title role. Supposedly dead and buried, Mabuse returns to his criminal activities, once more using hypnotized flunkeys to carry out his dirty work. While the doc's longtime foe Inspector Lohmann (Gert Froebe) probes and prods in his usual methodical fashion, hotshot American detective Lex Barker and dauntless girl reporter Daliah Lavi take the more direct approach to weed out Mabuse. This time around, the diabolical doctor wants to sabotage a nuclear reactor, then take over the world (he never does anything by halves). Return of Dr. Mabuse was released in Europe as Im Stahlnetz des Dr. Mabuse, Le Retour Du Docteur Mabuse and FBI Contro Dr. Mabuse; in some American cities, it was shipped out as Phantom Fiend. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the early 1960s, two separate series of second features based on the novels of prolific (and long-dead) suspense author Edgar Wallace were inaugurated. One series was subsidized by London's Jack Greenwood productions and filmed principally for television. The other series, assembled in West Germany, was closer in spirit to the blood-and-thunder Wallace originals. The Green Archer is the tale of a masked avenger who kills his victims with bow and arrow. Gert Frobe is the detective assigned to identify the elusive Green Archer and stem his activities. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Murky and rather uninspired, this wartime drama by director Claude Autant-Lara is set in France during World War II. At the crux of the story is a German woman, Herta (Erika Remberg) who longs to be with her husband for awhile. He is in the German occupying forces in France and in order to even get to that country, Herta forges a border pass. She manages to succeed in reaching a remote lodging in France, but when she tries to make contact with her husband the realities of war take over. He and the military are busy looking for a resistance fighter smuggled into the country by the British -- a task which does not augur well for a few stolen, romantic moments. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Back in Germany for the first time since 1933, director Fritz Lang returned to the screen character that brought him enormous success in his pre-Hollywood years. The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse is not so much a sequel as an extension of Lang's early Dr. Mabuse (1922) and Testament of Dr. Mabuse. Set in 1960, the film begins with a series of unsolved murders in a Berlin hotel. The modus operandi of the murderer is the same as that of long-dead megalomaniac Dr. Mabuse. Police detective Gert Frobe and amateur sleuths Peter Van Eyck and Dawn Addams suspect that the killer is a man who believes that he is the reincarnation of Mabuse. Could the culprit be secretive insurance salesman Werner Peters, or blind seer Wolfgang Preiss? The title refers to the hotel's sophisticated TV surveillance system--dozens of roving cameras and TV monitors, inspired (claimed Lang) by a sophisticated bugging method used by the Nazis during World War II. The renewed popularity of the Dr. Mabuse character spawned five movie sequels, none of which were directed by Lang, who had washed his hands of the project. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide