User Reviews

And they're back! Joachim Fuchsberger and Karin Dor pair up for the 1,000th time. However, unlike the previous year's Zimmer 13, which I thought was the best of the 60s krimis, I found this one to be a real dud.

There are few changes to the usual formula. Rather than Fuchsberger playing a detective of some sort who meets Dor when he investigates a case, this time both of them are journalists who already know each other and are at the San Remo music festival. He's there to try and find out why a man was killed in his office back in London. Her, I'm not quite sure since she never does any type of investigating or reporting. In fact, if Wikipedia didn't say so, I wouldn't even have known what her job was. A record label boss is murdered in the hotel - the Atlanta - they're staying at and the killer must be found. The action is set exclusively in the hotel, so no car chases, fancy villas, mood-setting scenery etc.

However, these changes are purely superficial. Underneath, Hotel der toten Gäste is pretty much exactly like most of the other films that Fuchsberger and Dor churned out together, indeed, like most of the other krimis of the period.

Dor's reporter, when we first see her, seems to be a strong, independent woman. But as soon as Fuchsberger shows up, she automatically switches back to damsel-in-distress mode, helpless as she's menaced and coerced by all those around her, and needing saving. Fuchsberger, although a journalist here, displays all the same fighting and shooting prowess that he did as a policeman. During the final fight, the actual policeman ends up literally sitting on the floor, merely looking on, so that Fuchsberger can get the glory of single-handedly defeating the bad guy. The scene could have been written so much better.

The case itself isn't that interesting. We have the usual mix of well-to-do suspects with secrets, blackmail, vested interests, rivalries, jealousies and affairs. That in itself isn't necessary bad - those factors are a staple of the genre even today - but it's not done in any engaging way here and the story becomes boring. And because I've seen so many murder mysteries over the years, just the way that the eventual killer first appeared on screen had me immediately saying, "That's 100% the murderer." To be fair, though, if I'd been watching back in 1965 without the benefit of having seen the same kind of thing in tons of later films, it wouldn't have been so obvious. So I can't deduct marks for that.

As I said, everything happens in the hotel, so we don't get to see anything of San Remo, or whichever part of Germany the filmmakers would have tried to pass off as San Remo. And the closest we get to the music festival is watching Elke Sommer sing a schlager. That's not a positive.

There's an arrest made at the end which defies belief. There is not a shred of evidence to support the the theory accepted by the police as to why and by whom the crime was committed, and everyone who knew or could have known the truth is dead, apart from the suspect. So there is absolutely nothing to justify an arrest, much less a charge, and even less an eventual conviction. But the suspect surrenders meekly, without a word of protest, in order to neatly wrap up that particular plot strand, however unrealistically.

And then the dreaded out-of-the-blue romance. The two reporters knew each other before (they might even work for the same company; it's never made clear) and there's no hint that there's ever been anything between them. But now that they're "on film", so to speak, they fall madly in love so that we can finish with the obligatory Final Kiss and happily-ever-after glow.

So, pretty much exactly the same elements as you will have seen in nearly all the other Fuchsberger-Dor krimis. It's almost like the two spent the first half of the 60s making the same film over and over again. A good director might have been able to salvage it, but production delays meant that the producers had to give the job to Eberhard Itzenplitz, a TV director who had never done a cinema film before and never would again. And a film with a recycled storyline, with the same lead actors as so often before, full of cliches and directed in a pedestrian, workman-like fashion never really stood much chance of being a winner.

Mr Manager, I'm downgrading your hotel's rating to three stars.