Lord Curtain (Wilhelm Vorwerg) is murdered by his nephew Archie Moore (Robert Hoffman) in cahoots with the family butler, Edwards (Klaus Kinski). A note is left with the body the claims he was killed by a notorious criminal known as The Hexer. In trying to shift blame onto the Hexer, Archie and Edwards instead end up garnering the attention of the real Hexer, Arthur Milton (Rene Deltgen), who is living in Australia. At Scotland Yard Sir John (Siegfried Schurenberg) taps the expertise of Australian police detective Inspector James Wesby (Heinz Drache) to get to the bottom of the Hexer element of the crime.
Arthur Milton, his wife Cora Ann (Margot Trooger), and Milton’s secretary Archibald Finch (Eddi Arent), decide to come to England to find out who is framing the Hexer for a murder he did not commit. Wesby doesn’t believe that Milton is responsible for Lord Curtain’s death but would love to arrest him for other crimes that the wily felon managed to escape responsibility for when he fled down under.
While Wesby hunts for Milton and Lord Curtain’s murderer, someone is systematically killing all of the Milton family members one by one.
“Again the Ringer” AKA “Neues vom Hexer” or “News from the Sorcerer” was released in 1965 and was directed by Alfred Vohrer. It is a West German mystery thriller and a krimi. The film is a sequel to the 1964 krimi film “Der Hexer”. It is based on the characters created by author Edgar Wallace but is not directly based on any specific Wallace novel. It is the only Edgar Wallace style krimi that is a sequel. Plans were made for another; however, a poor showing of the film caused the filmmakers to cancel their plans.
The actor that plays the young one-armed nephew Charles is Teddy Naumann. Naumann is the son of a lion tamer and lost his arm in an accident while playing with a bear at the age of three. His grew up with big cats and became a trainer himself so the scene with him locked in a room with three tigers is real. He is actually petting and riding them.
The sequence of scenes with other carnival animals, especially the shootout between the legs of a camel, and Naumann’s handling of the tigers add a fascinating aspect to the film. That and the opening scene where Kinski rises from a coffin add a lot of texture and intrigue to the movie. In between it is mostly your standard krimi with the usual complicated story plot and volumes of characters. Those aspects alone make it an interesting addition to the krimi-Wallace cannon.
Director Vohrer has a cameo voice appearance as Philip Curtain and Edgar Wallace.