Krimi

A run of around forty German films adapted from the crime novels of Edgar Wallace, made mostly by Rialto Film between 1959 and 1972.

The formula

A foggy England that exists only in a German studio. A masked or hooded killer with a theatrical name and method. Scotland Yard. A country house, a hidden passage, a will. A comic-relief sidekick who is always the worst thing in the film.

They are shot in high-contrast black and white for most of the run, which is a large part of the appeal, and they are much stranger than the plots suggest.

The connection to Italy

This is the missing link nobody mentions. The krimi established the masked killer with a signature method, the elaborate set-piece murder and the convoluted inheritance plot years before the giallo did. German and Italian companies co-produced several of them. Klaus Kinski appears in about sixteen. Mario Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace arrive directly after this cycle was already a proven format, and the Italian films essentially take the krimi, add colour, remove the comedy and turn up the sadism.

Where to start

The Black Abbot (1963) for the standard version, The Sinister Monk (1965) for the one that most resembles what Italy would do next.