You’re Never Safe from Being Surprised: A History of Krimi Films via Terror in the Fog from Eureka

While the films contained in Eureka’s Terror in the Fog collection are great introductions to the krimi film, they aren’t necessarily always representative ones. 

The Curse of the Yellow Snake is actually the only movie in the set to be based on a story by Edgar Wallace, rather than his son.

Unfortunately for modern viewers, The Curse of the Yellow Snake is also an example of the “yellow peril” genre that was regrettably popular during the early part of the 20th century.

As such, it is inescapably and unavoidably racist, filled with hateful stereotypes of lustful, duplicitous Asian villains bent on world domination.

The Curse of the Yellow Snake is no exception, though it employs several good sequences of peril and action and sets up a pretty good idea of several of the stylistic elements that will recur throughout the films in this set—if you can cut through all the racism to get to them.

Though adapted from the works of Bryan Edgar Wallace, rather than his father, The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle is a much better example of what fans associate with the krimi than The Curse of the Yellow Snake.

A hooded killer is knocking off various people in what we are supposed to believe is an English castle—often in rather absurd ways, despite the strangling implied by the title.

There are decapitations and even machine gun fire, before all is said and done, along with a cast of deeply eccentric characters, all of whom could be the “who” in the question of “whodunit?”

Of all the film’s in Eureka’s Terror in the Fog set, The Mad Executioners might be the one that is the best to show someone and tell them, “This is what a krimi is like.”

There is a tribunal of hooded super-criminals carrying out impossible secret trials and executions in catacombs, transporting their victims in coffins and an old-timey hearse.

There’s a mad scientist serial killer with a bizarre modern art collection. There are plenty of examples of Germany standing in for England. There’s a full song and dance number.

Honestly, what more could anyone ask for? To see both how stylish and how bizarre a krimi can be, you should really look no further.

If The Mad Executioners is krimi at its most brazen, then The Phantom of Soho may be the subgenre at its most stylish.

Frequent krimi director Franz Josef Gottlieb, who also helmed Curse of the Yellow Snake, brings in a wide array of trick photography, seedy locales meant to represent Soho, a masked killer with gold lame gloves, and even a theme song to this tale of a series of murders targeting the habitués of a London nightclub.

The eponymous Phantom boasts a very striking visage that, unfortunately, goes un-shown until near the end of the film, prefiguring the various slasher movies that would eventually grow out of the krimi and giallo subgenres.

Jack the Ripper is once more terrorizing London, even as a play about his exploits is making waves—and newspaper headlines.

Is the actor playing Jack on stage also re-enacting his crimes in the streets?

While there are many obvious early indications of the nascent slasher film throughout the krimi movies in this set, the line running directly from the krimi to the giallo to the slasher has never been more prominent than it is here. 

From the stalking and slaying sequences, to some dynamite stage play involving everything from the actual sets of the Jack the Ripper play to the mechanical workings beneath the stage—the early outline of the slasher trope is clearly traced.

The final film in Eureka’s Terror in the Fog set moves away from the more urban and slasher-esque elements of the last couple and returns us to form with a story adapted from the Bryan Edgar Wallace novel Murder is Enough.

The MacGuffin this time around is a racehorse by the name of Satan, who is the favorite to win at the big derby. Of course, some people would like to see to it that the horse doesn’t make the finish line, and they’re willing to kill to make that happen.

It’s a suitably convoluted whodunit filled with familiar faces from other krimis and the kinds of colorful characters that make movies and stories like this so appealing.