
Hot Picks 
|
|
|
Der Kommissar - Die Waggonspringer
episode 12
West Germany 1969
produced by Helmut Ringelmann for Neue Münchner Fernsehproduktion/ZDF
directed by Theodor Grädler
starring Erik Ode, Reinhard Glemnitz, Fritz Wepper, Emily Reuer, Helma Seitz, Rosemarie Fendel, Erik Schumann, Peter Neusser, Ralf Schermuly, Ulli Kinalzik, Andreas Seyferth, Rüdiger Bahr, Jürgen Clausen, Gert Franke, Thomas Astan, Leo Bardischewski, Lisa Helwig, Kurt Bülau, Axel Bauer, Karl-Otto Alberty, Thomas Braut, Gernot Duda
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!!!
|
|
|
 |
|
A dead body (Gert Franke) is found in a waggon of a freight train,
while most of the waggon's cargo is gone. However, when homicide inspector
Keller (Erik Ode) and his assistangs Heines (Reinhard Glemnitz), Harry
(Fritz Wepper) and Helga (Emily Reuer) arrive on the scene, the body's
gone. Heines and Harry manage to follow the trail of the body to a nearby
apartment building, but the body snatchers manage to take off by car, all
but Rauke (Ralf Schermuly), who actually has to knock out Harry to make
good his escape - which though means that the police have at least his
description if nothing else. Now Rauke, like the dead man, Werner, is
part of a gang of young waggon jumpers that their boss Graffe (Erik
Schumann) has hand-picked from an orphanage. Their m.o. is to jump onto
certain waggons of freight trains on the trains' slow passages, throw out
what's easily fenceable then jump off again. However at their last heist,
Werner got badly injured, had to at first be left behind until his
accomplices could fetch him back at the terminal station - that he died
from his injuries was only just bad luck. Graffe has Werner's body dropped
at a trash heap where nobody is to find it, but that pretty much breaks
the youngest of the bunch, Pasche. Meanwhile, Keller and company find a
lead to one of Graffe's fences, von Pöhler (Thomas Astan), and Harry and
Helga manage to track him down in a night club where Helga acts as bait
and lets him take her back to his apartment, where some of the stolen
goods are found. Judging from them alone, our heroes get a pretty good
idea when and where Graffe and gang will strike next. Graffe meanwhile
gets increasingly worried as after Harry's run-in with Rauke, the police
have Rauke's description, so he decides to make the next waggon jump
himself together with Rauke, with the express idea of killing Rauke while
on the job. But fortunately for Rauke, the police are already on the
gang's trail, and Harry manages to jump onto the waggon Graffe intended
for the heist from the other side to save Rauke's life. Of
course, the stilted dialogue and the often overdrawn characters that
permeate the whole series are also prevalent here, but this is actually
one of the better episodes of Der Kommissar, especially
since it leaves the traditional murder mystery structure behind for a
change and tells its story on two planes, one of the police investigating,
the other of the gang of trainjumpers trying to stay ahead of the police,
with none of the sides really knowing all that much about the other. And a
directorial effort that manages to maintain the story's tension pretty
much throughout really helps making this one work as a pretty cool
thriller.
|
|

|