The Monk With the Whip (1967)

I caught the end of this on one of the streaming channels today, (an English dub, obviously) - the usual series of baffling revelations, unmaskings (at least two characters were revealed to be someone else in disguise), shoot outs and caged girls being menaced by crocodiles that inevitably climax this sort of film.  Another in the long-running series of Edgar Wallace inspired krimis that were turned out by Rialto during the fifties and sixties, The Monk With the Whip boiled down, (as far as I could make out), to another of those plots by someone's uncle is trying to claim an inheritance by bumping off a younger claimant, obfuscating his plans by murdering several other girls to divert attention.  Just as US made films set in England always seemed to take place a weird 'Hollywood England', unrecognisable to actual UK residents, so the German Edgar Wallace films took place in a distinctly German interpretation of England, which owed as much to Conan Doyle and Jack the ripper as it did to Wallace.  

The film was loosely based on Wallace's 'The Black Abbot', which Rialto had previously filmed in 1963, (with the same lead actor, but in a different role), and his subsequent play based on the novel, 'The Terror', which Rialto had also filmed as The Sinister Monk in 1965.  The Monk With the Whip was an altogether more flamboyant version of the story, with its title hinting at a sexual angle that simply isn't present in the film itself.  I'd take issue, though, with the the description of the whip cracking title character as a 'monk' - they actually appear to be dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes, but in red rather than white.  It's fascinating that an author who, by the sixties, had pretty much fallen from favour in his native country, having been superseded in the thriller genre by the likes of Victor Canning, Eric Ambler and Ian Fleming, was still reliable box-office in West Germany.  His writings were very influential on the German krimi genre, with adaptations of his books being supplemented by adaptations of those by his son and other films made in the style of the Wallace adaptations.  Even Sherlock Homes fell under his influence, with the German made Sherlock Homes and the Deadly Necklace (1963) being made very much in the Wallace style.  I have admit that these adaptations are something I really should get into, but showings of English language versions seem to be rare.