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Sieben Tage Frist
School of Fear
Seven Days Grace
West Germany 1969
produced by Luggi Waldleitner, Erwin Gitt (executive) for Roxy Film
directed by Alfred Vohrer
starring Joachim Fuchsberger, Konrad Georg, Horst Tappert, Karin Hübner, Petra Schürmann, Hilde Brand, Bruno Dallansky, Paul Albert Krumm, Robert Meyn, Joachim Rake, Otto Stern, Wolfgang Stumpf, Frithjof Vierock, Arthur Richelmann, Gunther Beth, Peter Guntermann, Dagobert Walter, Till C. Hagen, Arno Jürging, Peter Frank, Horst Warning, Egon Schäfer, Paul Friedrichsen
screenplay by Manfred Purzer (as Ernst Flügel), based on the novel Sieben Tage Frist für Schramm by Paul Hendriks, music by Hans-Martin Majewski, cinematography by Ernst W. Kalinke
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Young Kurrat (Arthur Richelmann) is pretty much untouchable at the
private boarding school he's attending, so much so that he runs a
prostitution racket, providing Lonny's (Hilde Brand) secret brothel with a
steady stream of students from his school. This though means he's not
exactly liked by the staff of his school, and when one day he teases a
dog, one of his teachers, Fromm (Konrad Georg), loses his school and slaps
him round the face - and that gets Kurrat's father (Otto Stern) onto the
scene, a rich businessman and one of he school's patrons, who gives the
whole staff a sound scolding, then asks to talk to Fromm alone, as there
seems to have been some kind of recognition between the two. A few days
later, the young Kurrat goes missing, and he has last been seen with
Fromm. After it's decided not to call the police let alone Kurrat's
father, Fromm and his colleague Hendriks (Joachim Fuchsberger) start an
investigation of their own, and find all sorts of clues to Kurrat, but not
Kurrat himself. But they learn that he was in a homosexual relationship
with another teacher, Stallmann (Paul Albert Krumm) ... and then Stallmann
dies. A police inspector, Klevenow (Horst Tappert) arrives on the scene to
drop a bomb, Kurrat's father has gone missing as well - and he gives the
entire school staff a sound scolding for not reporting the disappearance
of Kurrat the younger to the police. At Stallmann's funeral, Hendriks and
Klevenow spot Kurrat from afar and manage to capture him and bring him
back to the school - where he's soon murdered. Likewise, his father's
found murdered before long. But clues soon accumulate and they lead back
to Fromm, who it turns out isn't Fromm at all but a former concentration
camp "doctor" excelling in human experiments who has only
assumed the identity of one of his "subjects" at the end of the
war to escape capture - but Kurrat the older has recognized him and has
given him 7 days to give himself up to the police ... seven days in which
Fromm tried to kill all those who might know about his true identity. On
the plus side, this film looks rather amazing as it makes perfect use of
its wintery seaside locations, and at times has an arthouse feel to it,
even. On the downside though, despite its sensationalistic ending (having
an ex-Nazi war criminal as baddie was not unheard of but not the norm in
German movies yet in the late 1960s), the
film's pretty much just a routine krimi, convoluted and full of
clues and red herrings, with many of its narrative threads either
under-developed or just thrown in as a diversion, and as sensationalistic
as the solution might be, it's not worked towards but just tagged on and
presented in a wordy explanation that's only remotely related to the
action that came before. But of course, if you're into German whodunnits
from back when, you've probably come to expect this already, and might
actually get a kick out of seeing Joachim Fuchsberger and Horst Tappert,
two of Alfred Vohrer's favourite investigators in his Edgar
Wallace films, playing off one another for a change. So in
all, nothing special, but krimi fans (like myself) will still get a kick
out of this one.
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