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A couple of hoodlums take Herta Rieger (Gaby Dohm) hostage to force her husband Manfred (Joachim Bissmeier), an attorney, to smuggle a gun into prison to hand over to his client Hausmann (Raimund Harmstorf), so he can make good an escape. Only after Hausmann has made good his escape is Herta released again - thing is, Hausmann has killed a guard during his escape, something that weighs so heavy on the attorney's conscience that he, after confessing everything to the police, commits suicide. Now it's up to inspector Derrick (Horst Tappert) and his assistant Klein (Fritz Wepper) to recapture Hausmann - and they have really little to go on, other than the fact that Hausmann was madly in love with his wife, Irina (Sybil Danning) and will probably try to figure a way to be with her - however, a search of her apartment does produce neither the culprit nor any evidence. For some reason, the apartment building's attic isn't searched, where Hausmann is hiding out. Instead, Derrick puts his focus on the strip club where Hausmann has once been manager and where Irina is still working as the establishment's star stripper - and where it seems everybody's dead afraid of Hausmann. However, it doesn't seem the police is making too good a job keeping the club under surveillance, either, as Hausmann seems to be able to easily slip in and out through the back door. Eventually, even Herta shows up at the club in hopes of finding her abductors, but her involvement is of little consequence, and it's ultimately rather by chance that Derrick and Klein find Hausmann in his attic hideout and arrest him after a shoot-out on the rooftops.

Somehow an episode that doesn't really come together, among other things due to the fact that the police work in this one is so poorly done (like not searching the whole apartment building or letting Hausmann slip in and out of the strip club) that Derrick doesn't even deserve his arrest. On top of that, Hausmann's motive for his escape while he isn't even convicted yet is rather poorly conceived, and of course Herbert Reinecker's trademark stilted dialogue does little to raise believability of the episode. On the plus side, Sybil Danning does do a nice striptease performance (including topless nudity), and the rooftop shoot-out, despite not being very well conceived, is a welcome change of pace for the series that's not exactly known for its action scenes. In all, this is some fun to watch - if for mostly the wrong reasons.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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