This early German Edgar Wallace Krimi film is an improbable but still enjoyable mystery in which Detective Mike Brixan (Heinz Drache) of Special Branch is called in to try and catch The Executioner, a killer who decapitates his victims, packaging their heads and leaving them in the English countryside for the public to discover. Brixan's investigation leads him to a film shoot, the detective convinced that the killer is among the cast or crew of the movie.
What makes The Avenger fun is not the plot, which is fairly unremarkable nonsense, but trying to guess which of the colourful characters will die and which of them is The Executioner: Ruth Sanders (Ina Duscha), aspiring actress, who gets the opportunity to become a star when lead actress Stella Mendoza (Ingrid van Bergen) storms off the set; movie director Jack Jackson (Friedrich Schoenfelder), who doesn't stand for stroppy performers; lecherous aristocrat Sir Gregory Penn (Benno Sterzenbach), who collects women and swords; Penn's hairy hunchback servant Bhag (Al Hoosman); Penn's doddery neighbour Henry Longvale (Ludwig Linkmann); and creepy script-reader Lorenz Voss (an early role for Klaus Kinski). I'm not ashamed to say that I didn't correctly guess the identity of the killer, but as I have already said, the film is rather improbable.
5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for the fact that Brixan's car chirps like a cricket (an issue with the fan belt apparently) - a superfluous detail that has absolutely no bearing on the plot.
What makes The Avenger fun is not the plot, which is fairly unremarkable nonsense, but trying to guess which of the colourful characters will die and which of them is The Executioner: Ruth Sanders (Ina Duscha), aspiring actress, who gets the opportunity to become a star when lead actress Stella Mendoza (Ingrid van Bergen) storms off the set; movie director Jack Jackson (Friedrich Schoenfelder), who doesn't stand for stroppy performers; lecherous aristocrat Sir Gregory Penn (Benno Sterzenbach), who collects women and swords; Penn's hairy hunchback servant Bhag (Al Hoosman); Penn's doddery neighbour Henry Longvale (Ludwig Linkmann); and creepy script-reader Lorenz Voss (an early role for Klaus Kinski). I'm not ashamed to say that I didn't correctly guess the identity of the killer, but as I have already said, the film is rather improbable.
5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for the fact that Brixan's car chirps like a cricket (an issue with the fan belt apparently) - a superfluous detail that has absolutely no bearing on the plot.