Kinski Watch III: The Avenger (Karl Anton, 1960)

Fast cars, hot chicks, booze, mansions, guns, and a maniac who beheads career criminals? Sounds like the perfect mix for a fun 60's krimi, and fun it is. Though surely not a prime example of the German staple genre, The Avenger, based on a story by Edgar Wallace, has aged surprisingly well, partly because it was already old-fashioned when it was released. The critics shot the picture down in flames, calling it "boring", "ridiculous" and with "bumpy direction". But director Karl Anton, a veteran who retired after this movie, refused to try to make the film hip and modern and instead gave us a sort of timeless style, slightly dull on the edges, but reliable.

The story is of little interest, and by the time it is revealed who the murderer is, Anton had telegraphed it for quite some time. It is however interesting to see how politically incorrect the film is. Some of the exchanges are surprisingly crude and aggressive, even when relatively little is at stake. There is also an outrageous instance of oblivious racism. One of the millionaires in the film has a black servant called Bagh who is referred to as a "demented creature", an "animal from the jungle", and "the best servant in the world: he doesn't think, he doesn't speak, he doesn't answer". Instead, he sniffs at people's hands to remember them and is afraid of gun fire.

Kinski plays a dead-pan script editor, and the people I watched the film with said he was a "creep", so I guess he did his job. It is certainly a toned-down performance that stands out in an otherwise hectic film. It was his first appearance in the very popular German Edgar Wallace series, and he appeared in three more, always as a villain/creep/weirdo and it certainly cemented the type of role he would go on to play in movies for years to come. When Kinski would later talk about himself as a "whore" who wasted his talent in "worthless" pictures, one must invariably think that he meant movies like The Avenger. They are, however, greatly entertaining and the perfect thing to watch on a Sunday afternoon with a beer to take off the edge.