The Body of movies that make up the German adaptations of the crime thrillers written by Edgar Wallace, once an immensely popular and prolific novelist (there are some 180 books to his credit), is one of the most under-explored areas of the horror genre, and quite possibly the ultimate in the realm of “international horror cinema”. – Ken Hanke: Fear Without Frontiers

With a handful of exceptions – most notably, Dead Eyes of London – English-speaking viewers have had little opportunity to explore the wild and wooly world of the German Krimis. The majority of these films were made in the years just prior to the ascendancy of the Italian Giallo and British Spy-flick, and anticipated the conventions of both later idioms. These films featured grotesque crimes, colorful perps, unlikely crime-stoppers and ran the gamut from being truly suspenseful to a giddy mix of shocks and camp.

As with both the Giallo and the Spy-flick, German Krimis featured driving, jazzy, Easy/Sleazy listening soundtracks by the masters of the genre, Martin Böttcher, Peter Thomas and others – imagine Umiliani or Bruno Nicolai with that distinctive Teutonic flavor and you’ll be getting close. If you like the stuff on the Diggler label, you’ll be grooving to this CDs over and over again!

GOOD NEWS for Krimi fans! The folks at UfaDVD have released FOUR, (count ‘em…) box sets of Edgar Wallace-inspired films. Don’t know if they come with subtitles yet, but a long-standing wrong has begun to be righted.