[REVIEW-CAST #10] HOT TRACES OF ST. PAULI (aka, FLUCHTWEG ST. PAULI; 1971)

The film's antihero, Horst Frank ... and the genre “hook” that allowed me to find the film. 

 

[NOTE: This is the tenth in a series of reviews that will focus on genres related to the Krimi and Giallo; for more info, read this post. As with all posts on this site, SPOILERS SHOULD BE EXPECTED.]

[GENRE]: Eurocrime  [>exploitation]
[VERSION WATCHED]: German Subkultur-Entertainment DVD 


Christian Keßler, in his liner notes for Camera Obscura's Blu-ray release of SAN BABILA ORE 20: UN DELITTO INUTILE (1976), writes:

“The development of many a film enthusiast’s love for Italian cinema proceeds like a reverse zoom. You start with a certain genre and slowly grope your way into all the other areas that were captured by Italian film cameras. In my generation—who experienced its cineastic socialization during the 80s of the last century—the advent of home video as an instrument of leisure-time-refinement determined this development. … The reason why Italian cinema is decidedly well-qualified for this backward-orientation is in part due to the fact that artists didn’t seem to be shy when it came to their occupation with the ‛vile’ genre cinema. Renowned theater actors like Enrico Maria Salerno could be seen in prestigious art house movies but also in police thrillers …”

Not only do I think that’s true, it feels just the tip of the iceberg: the nature of the multi-country “Euro-pudding” film productions of the era carry Keßler’s observation far outside Italian cinema. For instance it’s easy to find, in this “reverse zooming,” the genre faces from one European country populating the genre pictures being made in another. The popular genres in one, reconstituting themselves in the culture and film industry of another. Which is another way to say: This kind of cross-pollination is what put me on the track of Wolfgang Staudte’s HOT TRACES OF ST. PAULI.

I only discovered it because of its German-born star, Horst Frank. He who I’d first seen in Dario Argento’s sophomore Giallo THE CAT O’NINE TAILS (1971). There he plays the urbane-but-grimacing Dr. Braun, the Terzi Institute’s in-the-closet genetic researcher—he who may or may not be selling corporate secrets to the opposition. When he isn't busy frequenting the “St. Peter’s Club” and breaking Umberto Raho's heart.

After that, while working my way through the German Krimis (many of which can be viewed as, as much as anything, proto-Gialli), I watched him in one of the “Men’s Adventure Krimis”**, 1966’s JERRY COTTON: THE TRAP SNAPS SHUT AT MIDNIGHT. There he plays a gangland boss holding NYC ransom with a stolen shipment of nitro, dodging Jerry Cotton’s (George Nader’s) best efforts to ferret out his secret stash.

A gangland boss, but another urbane one: We get our first glimpse of him, floating in shorts and open shirt in his penthouse pool. He pilots a remote-controlled boat through the water as he sighs orders at his gang—he splashes them with his feet as his body language tells us that, more than anything, he finds this whole gangster schtick exceedingly passé.

So it’s refreshing to see him point his onscreen persona in another direction, as a deeply amoral ex-con who trades refinement for wanton violence. This German-produced slab of 70s-era exploitation—Constantin is the same co-producer, with Rialto, responsible for the “official” Krimis done from 1959-1972—exists right alongside its Italian Poliziotteschi brethren, with the same kind of in-the-streets, low-budget grit and sweaty, underworld sleaze weighing on its aesthetic.

Frank plays Willy Jensen, incarcerated for a bank heist gone wrong. He spends his time on the inside insisting that the half-a-million bucks he stole got “lost” while he was trying to evade arrest. Nobody buys this story, instead assuming he’s stashed the loot somewhere and is just biding his time until he can return to his hiding place and collect (shades of Gastone Moschin’s predicament in MILANO CALIBRO 9 [1972]). 

In order to get himself out of prison (and back to the phantom money), he fakes swallowing a bottle of cleaning solvent. This gets him into a hospital van, and outside the walls of the prison. En route, Frank slugs the guard riding with him and he (or a stuntman double) literally steps out of the moving ambulance (!) and into the next leg of his escape plan.

Having just watched Takashi Miike’s 2002 remake of GRAVEYARD OF HONOR, I couldn’t help but think of the ruse used similarly in that film. But, in true Miike fashion, the prisoner doesn't just fake his sickness, he stores the milk from his prison meals until it goes rancid, and poisons himself for real.

Snappy editing takes us through this first 10 minutes of the film, tempering a necessary setup of back story—expository dialogue cluing us into Willy's relationship with his brother Heinz; giving us thumbnail details about his pre-film heist—with a pace that keeps things from dragging: 

A desk sergeant muses, almost to himself, about how different “the Jensen brothers” are. This bit of exposition cuts directly to Willy in his cell, staging the fake poisoning. Which cuts to the ambulance ride and daring stunt. Which cuts back to the guards at the prison, discussing the bank heist. Only to be interrupted by a phone call informing them of Willy's escape. 

And so on.

Frank’s Willy has prearranged his escape down to the detail. But, as is often the case in the Eurocrime universe, fickle fate seems poised to knock the scheming antihero down at every turn. (In this way, the story feels equally at home with the fatally tragic “coincidences” that show up in Noir plots; more on that below). Frank’s character arranges for a motorcycle and a change of clothes to be left for him on the outside. When he shows up to claim them, he finds that they’ve been discovered by a couple of roadside workers. And later, when he goes to the building where he hid the half-million bucks, he arrives just in time to watch a demolition crew flattening it. Burying, presumably, any chance for him to recover the money.

Now hopelessly broke, Willy decides his next best bet will be to shake down his estranged wife and milquetoast brother. And milquetoast is right: Heinz Reincke (pictured below) plays Frank’s brother in true sad-sack fashion. He’s a  lower-middle-class taxi driver, whose honesty and work ethic get him nothing but further behind in life. We’re introduced to him in the opening credits, as he uneasily eyes his fare, a woman so drunk that she’s stripping in the back of his cab. His sense of fair play, his sense of right and wrong (something so totally absent in his brother’s makeup), drives him to turn the woman (plus a purse full of her money and priceless jewelry) into the police. His good deed means that he doesn't get paid for the fare, with the desk sergeant telling him he’ll have to go to the woman’s home the next day to collect.

This seemingly random event presents itself to brother Willy, in true Noir fashion, as the ticket out of his shitty criminal life: He impersonates his brother and goes to the house under the pretenses of collecting the unpaid fare. There he meets the woman’s much older, industrialist husband (played by Krimi familiar Ulrich Beiger) and, during the course of getting paid for his brother’s work, discovers there’s an easily accessible safe in the man’s study. Willy stakes out the house that night but fails to burgle the safe (as the safe’s key has been moved from its hiding place). This sends him prowling upstairs to the young wife’s bedroom, where he stumbles upon her massive jewelry collection. When she walks in on him, mid-theft, he doesn't hesitate a second in violently strangling her. Which sends the rest of the plot—and Willy’s ultimate fate as the film’s failing antihero—past the point of no return.

(The fact that all of Willy’s criminal energy seems fated, during a series of tragicomic mistakes, to end only one way echoes a recurring theme in the Eurocrime genre, what Dean Brierly, in his article on Italian Poliziotteschi in Cinema Retro, calls the genre’s tendency for “poetic fatalism”.)

And, as mentioned above, as surely as the film belongs to Eurocrime, it also feels a part of the Noir worldview. Frank’s character, rotten though he is, also seems to suffer from an unrelenting run of bad luck—not just bad luck, but a kind of malevolent string of fuck-ups that seem visited upon him by the universe itself. He comes across as an antihero whose “anti”-ness has been forced upon him by an uncaring, inhuman world (dialogue between he and his brother points to a rough childhood)—a world whose very nature conspires to make it impossible for him to succeed or “go straight”.

We also get plenty of other Noir set-dressing: Beiger as the probably corrupt (certainly uncaring) industrialist husband seems not at all sad when he comes home to discover his trophy wife’s corpse. Heinz Reincke, as the aforementioned schmuck brother, whose honesty only gets him accused of murder by a police force more interested in catching his brother than preserving his good name. And a thoroughly seedy underworld that acts as constant backdrop for the action—a world of hustling club owners, unreliable fences, and put-upon working girls. An ailing urban world that seems stuck in an “after the boom” economic decay.

This German Eurocrime also contains callbacks to that country's Krimi genre: Here we see Ulrich Beiger calling in his wife's murder (notice her in the background there, on the floor; notice also how he almost looks bemused by the whole situation). Beiger regularly appeared in the Rialto Krimis, with perhaps his best role coming as an unhinged villain (part of a larger family of villains) in Harald Reinl's great and perverse THE TERRIBLE PEOPLE (1960):

  Christiane Krüger plays Frank’s estranged (and long-suffering) wife. She's spent the two years of his incarceration in a relationship with his brother Heinz. Frank discovers this, kidnaps her as hostage (so he can escape a confrontation with the police), and proceeds to drag her from one safe house to the next for the rest of the movie. Her character is unfortunately little more than this—a plot device being bandied between two brothers—and feels underdeveloped because of it. Likewise with any possible dramatic payoff over whether she will survive the ordeal.

Some of the brother-on-brother violence. The violence in the film doesn’t ever approach the depravity of other, better-known Eurocrimes—think Tomas Milian and crew, juiced and on the lam, breaking into a home where they humiliate (then machine-gun) men, women, and children in Umberto Lenzi's ALMOST HUMAN (1974)—but it gives Frank the chance to show a surprisingly nasty (and pleasingly unrefined) villain.

I watched the German Subkultur-Entertainment DVD, released as No. 3 in their “Edition Deutsche Vita” series. The disc here offers German soundtrack with English subtitles and solid DVD-level video. From the caps above (compressed, so don’t take them as 1:1 visual representations of the disc) I think you can see that the disc, overall, serves up a satisfying presentation of the film (considering, esp., the age and budget of the film). It will be interesting to see how much of a jump in quality we’ll see in Subkultur’s next release in the series, THE BRUTES (1970), which will be the first on Blu-ray. (The company’s other Blu-rays—including Russell Mulcahy's SILENT TRIGGER [1996] and Eloy de la Iglesias’ THE CANNIBAL MAN [1973], which includes never-before-released scenes censored from the film—tend to be nothing if not impressive.) This release also includes the film’s soundtrack on a separate CD, a disc that's been on repeat-play around my house for awhile now.

Leonard Jacobs

June, 2015

**I’d be the first to admit that this subcategory inside the Krimi is one I've not yet seen described elsewhere. It's one I designated, in reviewing and analyzing the 50-odd Krimis I've seen so far. I think there’s a case to be made, though, for its applicability. Films like those in the JERRY COTTON series (also, maybe even more so, the KOMMISSAR X series) share countless plot points, stylistic quirks, aesthetic moods, and (perhaps most of all) cast and crew with the Krimi proper. So much so, it’s impossible not to watch and “read” these films right alongside each other. Add in the fact that Krimi authors like Edgar Wallace were just as well-known for "men’s adventures" set in exotic locales and/or back-alley gangland worlds, and the connection seems undeniable.