THE SINISTER MONK (1965)

It's night, it's raining, and in Darkwood Hall, an old man on his deathbed calls in a notary and changes his will. He still leaves the house and grounds as a girls' boarding school, run by his daughter Patricia, but he otherwise cuts his other children off and leaves all his money to his granddaughter Gwendoline, whose father is in prison for murder. As the notary drives away, someone throws a rock at it, causing it to veer off the road and catch fire. That someone, we learn later, is brother Richard, a lawyer, who then steals the will. He tells Patricia and brother William that he's willing to destroy the will so they can all share the money, except leaving them each only 10% with Richard getting the rest. There's also Patricia’s odd son Ronny who wants to marry Gwendoline even though she can barely stand the sight of him. During a school holiday, with only a few students remaining, Patricia invites Gwendoline to the house, ostensibly to protect her from the family's scheming. But Darkwood Hall may not be so safe. An eccentric artist who keeps pigeons and specializes in death masks is renting a room in the attic, and he has a yen to make a mask of Gwendoline. The new French teacher seems off-putting and tends to skulk. The caretaker Eddie seems likable enough, but could he have secrets of his own?  Finally, as the title implies, there is the ghost of a monk that supposedly haunts the grounds, and the girls start seeing him around. But as dead bodies start to pile up (a couple of the girls, a Scotland yard inspector), we discover the monk is no ghost—we see the hooded figure use a bullwhip to strangle his victims from a distance. But who is he and what is his goal?

This is my first 'krimi' film, which I have learned from Diabolique magazine "is a genre of West German crime thrillers typically based on the works of British mystery and crime novelist Edgar Wallace." They tend to involve murder, masked criminals, revenge plots, and often blur genre lines to mix fantasy or horror in with crime movie elements. They also influenced the later giallo genre. Actually, this isn't quite my first krimi, as Diabolique says that movies based on works by Wallace’s son are considered krimi, which means THE STRANGLER OF BLACKMOOR CASTLE counts. Another film blogger recommended this, and I found it to be a lot of fun. The first thing you should know, however, is the blaring, jazzy score is wildly inappropriate for almost every scene in which it appears. It's catchy, but I found that it often took me out of the atmosphere of the scene. In the last half, when the film takes on the feel of a spy thriller, the music feels more organic. The movie is certainly overplotted—exposition keeps building up right through to the last half-hour—but it's fairly easy to follow. With all the plotpoints and atmosphere (Darkwood Hall is a great setting—it seems to have been shot in an actual mansion), the acting is mostly beside the point. Karin Dor, who did many krimi films, is quite good as Gwendoline, Hartmut Reck overacts shamelessly as Ronny (as does his English dialogue dubber), and everyone else is satisfactory. The whip murders are very effective, with good staging and editing. I’ll be looking for some more krimi soon. [Amazon Prime]