
Hot Picks 
|
|
|
Der Kommissar - Die Schrecklichen
episode 11
West Germany 1969
produced by Helmut Ringelmann for Neue Münchner Fernsehproduktion/ZDF
directed by Zbynek Brynych
starring Erik Ode, Reinhard Glemnitz, Günther Schramm, Fritz Wepper, Emily Reuer, Helga Anders, Anita Höfer, Hans Schweikart, Albert Hörrmann, Karl Hellmer, Karl Walter Diess, Dirk Dautzenberg, Erik Dorner, Kurt Grundmann, Michael Eder, Traudl Schenk, Thomas Ohrner, Mogens von Gadow
written by Herbert Reinecker, series created by Helmut Ringelmann, Herbert Reinecker, music by Peter Thomas, title theme by Herbert Jarczyk
TV-series Der Kommissar, Harry Klein
review by Mike Haberfelner
|
 |
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
In a lake in a Munich park, a man is found dead, drowned and robbed
blind, and apparently before his death he got drunk to the hilt. Inspector
Keller (Erik Ode) and his assistants Heines (Reinhard Glemnitz), Grabert
(Günther Schramm) and Harry (Fritz Wepper) investigate, and while the
assistants try to find out where the deceased got drunk, Keller
concentrates his attention on a quintet of bum-like pensioners (Hans
Schweikart, Albert Hörrmann, Karl Hellmer, Erik Dorner, Kurt Grundmann),
who terrrorize the park, often accompanied by a four year old boy (Thomas
Ohrner, still a decade away from becoming a teen superstar with series
like Timm Thaler and Manni der Libero), and
who Keller's soon sure have killed the man. Meanwhile, his assistants find
out that the dead man has gotten drunk at the pub run by Panse (Dirk
Dautzenberg), but Panse is weirdly reluctant to help the police and also
tries to shut up his girlfriend Hilde (Anita Höfer) and his daughter
Herta (Helga Anders). It's interesting though that the boy who's usually
with the pensioners is actually Hilde's son, but not with Panse but with
derelict Wegsteiner (Karl Walter Diess), who comes to Panse's pub every
day but is usually denied service. To crack the case, Harry is instructed
to pick up and charm 17 year old Herta (a scene creepy not only from
today's point of view), and it works so well that she
wants to move in with him in no time. But it's really what she tells Harry
that's interesting, that Hilde had a little side business welcoming men
into a backroom now and again, and she actually wanted to run away with
the deceased. So Keller reconstructs the case, that Wegsteiner was so
overcome by jealousy that he lured the deceased, who was dead drunk, over
to the bullying pensioners, who ... and to prove they did it, Keller sends
one of his men (Mogens von Gadow) to the park pretending to be dead drunk,
and the pensioners fall for it hook, line and sinker and try to kill him
as well ... To say this episode is a bit far-fetched is a bit
of an understatement even if it does its best to hide this fact under a
multi-layered plot. Now the gang of the bullying pensioners is really a
re-hash from an earlier episode, Ratten
der Grossstadt (even if the bullies were day labourers in that
one), but that their dialogue has hints of Waiting for Godot is a
nice touch. In all, it's an episode that has everything one would expect
from the series, a convoluted story, stilted dialogue, eccentric
characters, and certain stabs at realism undermined by a not exactly
believable plot. So it's fun, especially from a nostalgic point of view,
if not exactly great cop TV.
|
|

|