DER RÄCHER - Peter Sandloff - "The Avenger" (1961)

Post 2201, no wonder I can't think straight anymore, and movies like tonight's feature aren't going to make it any better any time soon!! Welcome back to The Dungeon, and the ball of confusion known as Kriminalfilm, Kriminalroman or just simply Krimi Films!

Tonight's Saturday Night Special is titled "Der Rächer," or depending on what language you choose, "The Avenger,"and is a classic Krimi Film! Most Krimi movies were either based on stories written by Edgar Wallace, or stories based on stories inspired by the writing of Edgar Wallace! With what I've seen happen to Marvel and DC comics in my lifetime, I'm predicting there's going to be a major resurgence of Edgar Wallace adaptations in the not too distant future! Some day the name of the all but forgotten Edgar Wallace is going to be a household word known to everybody as it well should be!
The title song written by Peter Sandloff is either really poorly reproduced or the greatest piece of drunken music ever written! The music actually slurs!!

"The Avenger" opens with these two ladies opening a  box they see get tossed out of a car!

This guy's face looking back at them wasn't exactly what they expected to find inside the box!

I truly love this short scene where Siegfried (Too many Krimi movies to list) Schürenberg as Major Staines is deciding what to do about all the recent beheadings in the area while his secretary nods off like the next victim of the executioner!

Time for Heinz (Der Zinker, The Indian Scarf, The Mysterious Magician, Psycho-Circus, The Brides Of Fu Manchu) Drache as Detective Michael Brixan to step in!

Together maybe they will figure this mess out!!

The Benefactor has run an ad in the local newspaper, so if your life is a mess, and you want to bail, he is there at your beck and call! There can be peace for every lost soul, unfortunately, while he is experienced, he is not licensed!

Time to cut to the requisite exotic dance number!

 The sweaty guy enjoying the show is a gentleman known as Sir Gregory, who besides being a slimeball, is a major suspect because he has a very large sword collection! Sir Gregory was played by Benno (Raumpatrouille) Sterzenbach!

  Sir Gregory's only real friend is his dedicated man servant Bhag who he saved from some jungle Hell hole!

Bhag was played by heavyweight boxer Al Hoosman, who had a professional boxing record of  32 wins, 13 losses, and 3 draws according to BoxRec.com. They claim he was born in 1920 and died in 1968, but IMDB says he was born in 1918, and died in 1968, so Al was either 48 or 50 when he passed on! Born in Waterloo, Iowa, sometime in the 50's he moved to Germany, and was in quite a few films as guys with names like Hassan, Bonga, Tarzan, Pyles, Duke, etc. Al, like a couple others in "The Avenger" was also in the classic film "Town Without Pity" made in the same year and shot in Germany!

Then there were also the two main female characters, the lovely blonde on the left Ingrid van Bergen as Stella Mendoza, and the equally charming Ina Duscha as Ruth Sanders! Ina called it quits after 9 movies, but Ingrid has over 100 acting credits and is still active today! Great contrast in the top photo, with the blonde in a dark dress, and the brunette in a light coloured trench coat!

Nice shot of Ingrid in what I think is a 1957 Corvette! I'm sure somebody will correct me if it's a 58 or 59! It would also be my guess that it was red!

No, not done yet, because perennial Dungeon weirdo fave Klaus Kinski is in there too!

Call it intuition, but I'd be willing to bet that consummate artiste Klaus really enjoyed playing this part!

 I forget what the total head count was, but it was pretty high!

Just for the record, this is what you get if you do a Google image search for Der Rächer poster!
When computers start making all the decisions in life, I do believe the world is going to be an even stranger place to live!

AT THE EARTH'S CORE / American International Pictures, Amicus Productions - 1976

Welcome to Dungeon post #2200, holy cow!.. Also, our main Google counter (not the one at the bottom of the page) has us at 2,477,230 hits as I write this review! Not too bad for two old monster dudes!!

Today's story's about a Victorian era scientist (Peter Cushing) and his assistant (Doug McClure) who take a test run in their Iron Mole drilling machine. They end up in a strange underground labyrinth ruled by a species of giant telepathic birds that's full of prehistoric monsters and cavemen.

I have a sound clip for your approval, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button located there by our atomic gopher holes, NOW, Rufus The Gnat!.. Here's... AT THE EARTH'S CORE!

Here are Dr. Perry and David Innes ready to board their Iron Mole drilling machine. They waste no time getting to the action...

The huge machine shakes and vibrates its way through the earth as the viewers watch in awe.

The damn thing goes out of control and digs them a deep hole almost into the super hot core!

Eventually, they break through into a huge underground cavern full of strange light, weird plants and hungry lumbering monsters!

These two giant sumo boars fight it out as the cave people are moved to their new underground home as slaves to the weird bird people.

Then, they have to defend themselves against these eyeless fanged killer plants! I liked these things so much that I started an art piece last night of similar creatures...

The sets are extra nice for this Amicus production. If you'd like to check out some really bad Amicus sets, watch THE TERRORNAUTS!

Then, David has to battle this monstrous lizard hulk to save his friend from being eaten alive!

Here's a nice shot of the giant telepathic birds watching the battle from a safe perch.

The place blows itself back to Hell as the doc and Dave come up with some new dance moves to celebrate the event!

David and the doctor start up the old Iron Mole and dig their way back to the land of the surface dwellers!

Here's a nice side boob parting shot from David's cave girl pal and very popular Hammer actress, Caroline Munro as Dia. We're back tomorrow with post #2201 from... The Dungeon!

CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD PROMO PHOTOS (1938-39)

 I was recently rummaging through some of my Father-In-Law's old papers the other day, and I stumbled on all these classic old Hollywood Photos. It looks to me like they were something they used to hand out at the theatre when you went to the movies! Anyway, I thought you'd like them!

The first one is of the beautifully stunning Linda Darnell! You can read a little bit more about Linda's tragic life in this post I did for the movie, "Hangover Square" starring Laird Cregar!

About half of them have biographies on the back!

  Surprisingly enough, even classy actors like Cary Grant show up on this site from time to time!

Gals like Alice Faye generally stayed away from movies that end up on sites like this!

Great photo just the same!

This would be the first time that Tyrone Power showed up on these pages too!

I love this sepia toned portrait of Carole Lombard with those red lips painted on!

The flyers without biographies on the back had advertisements for upcoming shows!

Adults 25 cents, Children 10 cents!

Amazing!

The only other time we had Clark Gable on this show was in this "Headless Horseman" cartoon!!

These ads are the best and include Boris Karloff in "Devil's Island," and "Son Of Frankenstein!"

Maybe some day, we'll get around to a movie that had Jeanette Macdonald in it!

In the meantime, you get this photo instead!

Twenty-Five bucks for free?? Wow, that would have got an adult into the movies 100 times or a kid 250 times!  That would be a little over $2000.00 today!

Pretty damn incredible!

On a completely unrelated subject:
Rest In Peace Merle!
We'll Miss Ya!!