Watch The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle For Free

Sadly Over-hyped

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

"Der Würger von Schloß Blackmoor" or "The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle" is a West German German-language movie from 1963, so this one is already over 50 years old and as many of these early (Bryan) Edgar Wallace adaptations, it is a black-and-white film. And also like many of these, it runs for approximately 90 minutes, slightly shorter in fact. Also the names of the writers and cast are known to people who know a bit about these Wallace films. I am referring to the likes of Giller, Nielsen and Dor and others as well. The director is Harald Reinl, an Austrian Oscar nominee, who is most known for his Winnetou movies these days I guess. But he also made some of these Wallace films, even if most people don't know. The story here is also like in these other Wallace films. Nothing really stands out. Men of authority, stunning young women, a cop investigating, (not so) dangerous dogs, murder, some comedy etc. You really know what you can expect here if this is not the first Wallace adaptation. Kinski is not in here, which could have elevated the material at least a bit. I think with these Wallace films that if you have seen one you have seen almost all of them as they are just so very similar to each other. But the good thing is also that if you like one, then you will maybe like almost all of these. But it's really difficult to like them in my opinion. The cases are rarely as interesting as they want them to be. The acting is mediocre at best and the humor is a failure most of the time. And the title is a true give-away what this film is about, not just to which series it belongs. A strangler is killing people and the film is set in Great Britain as always. So yeah, now you see that it's all the same as in these other films as I already wrote in the title. Not worth checking out in my opinion. Thumbs down.

***SPOILERS*** German movie about a masked killer in and around the English castle of Blackmoor who's out to avenge his fathers murder by the future Lord Lucius Clark, Rudolf Fernan, who lives there. The killer who's father Charles Manning was Clark's assistant and good friend in the British colony of Kimberly in Africa, where Clark was the district governor, was murdered by Clark who stole over 6 million in pound sterling worth of uncut diamonds that his father had. What the killer doesn't seem to know is that Clark is really his father, which was brought out at the end of the movie. But there seems to be some disconnect here with the killer when it's revealed that he came upon a batch of love letters by Clark to his mother Bettie Manning that he found hidden in the castle! the guy couldn't put two and two together? Early in the movie we see that Clark is having the stolen diamonds cut by his creepy butler Anthony, Dieter Eppier, who used to be an expert diamond cutter until he was sent up the river for five years for stealing diamonds from his employer. Clark is secretly sending the diamonds hidden in cigar tubes to the owner of the "Old Scavenger Inn" in London Mr. Travish, Hands Nielson, who's fencing the hot diamonds by paying Clark in cash for them. What both Clark and Travish as well as Clark's lawyer Mr. Tromby, Richard Haussler, doesn't know is that the killer has someone working at the "Old Scavenger Inn", his wife, who's tipping him off about the transactions. At one point in the movie he ambushes Clark's delivery man with the diamonds who happens to be his gardener Sebastian, Albert Bessler, killing him and taking the stones. What the cagey Clark is doing is getting rid of the diamonds so that the killer can't get his hands on them and giving the money that he gets from Travish to his niece Claridge Dorsett, Karin Dor, as stated in his will on or after her 21th birthday. The masked killer is determined to get the diamonds or the money that Clark gets for fencing them before she does even if it kills her. Interesting German 1963 import that has you guessing to who the killer is until he's dredged out of the swamp outside Blackmoor Castle at the end of the movie and his identity reveled. "Strangler of Blackmoor Castle" is a bit too violent for movies released back then in those days in the early 1960's with a number of shocking and bloody decapitations that are really gruesome even watching the movie now. The film does have some comic relief in it with the lord of the castle Lord Blackmoor, Hans Reiser, spending all his time listening and recording on his portable tape recorder bird love calls in the woods.

The Germans turned out tons of films based on the work of Edgar and Bryan Wallace, father and son authors who wrote in similar styles. The books were old dark house-ish with mysterious villains running about killing people. One enterprising producer even linked unconnected books together by having the villain get away thereby creating his own series.This is not one of those films. However like those films it suffers from awful English dubbing that makes you wonder if its so bad because the film is genuinely dreadful or because the dub is.The plot has an Englishman informed that he is to be knighted. At the same time a masked bad guy shows up and begins killing people and demanding the return of stolen diamonds. There are some interesting twists, where the diamonds are hidden for example, but this is the same old same old from the German Wallace factories.I would say that this is the perfect film if you want to fall asleep, unfortunately its just interesting enough that it will keep you up for its 80 odd minutes.Not really recommended, but as these things go you could do worse, lord knows I have.4 out of 10

Despite the noticeable absence of series regulars Eddie Arent and Klaus Kinski, this is another solid entry in the long-running Edgar Wallace (or in this case, son Bryan) krimi series, and probably the most action-packed. Unlike the playfully gimmicky Alfred Vohrer, director Harald Reinl (an acknowledged Fritz Lang disciple) preferred to play his material straight, emphasising action and violence. The proceedings are highlighted by surprisingly gruesome assaults and murders (decapitation being a specialty here), but to his credit, Reinl filled in the edges with imaginative touches, eccentric behaviour by oddball characters, and quirky humour (the knock-out by moosehead would have pleased Vohrer immensely). The cheekiest Langian homage is the M inscribed on the victims' foreheads, but there are plenty of other visual and thematic tropes that smack of the master's influence (it was Reinl who took over Lang's Mabuse franchise at about the same time as this picture). For instance, one minor character, a henpecked clerk, insists that he could definitely tell that the suspect who phoned him was a blonde by her voice (wink-wink), prompting a withering look from his wife. The moody b&w cinematography is often striking, and the creepy modernist score is effective and memorable. The director's statuesque wife and regular leading lady, Karin Dor, is disappointingly mousy in her role, but Ingmar Zeisberg steals the show as a sultry, unnatural-blonde barmaid at a sleazy Soho cabaret who leads a double life. Only the final revelation of the murderer is a bit of letdown, but that was par for the course.