A man is murdered in a downtown London hotel. The woman with him, Leila Anderson (Heidrun Hankammer) witnesses the murder and runs away. The killer is a knife throwing villain in a disguise. Leila is a dancer in a troupe called "The Las Vegas Girls" who are performing at a London theater. Leila, however, doesn’t get away for long. While putting on a cat head mask for a dance number she is pricked by two needles attached to the headpiece and is poisoned.
Inspector Perkins (Horst Tappert), from Scotland Yard, and his assistant, Sergeant Pepper (Stefan Behrens), are assigned to the investigation. In the dead man’s pocket is a glass eye. Perkins finds out that the dead man was named Archibald Jefferson (Kurd Pieritz). It turns out that Jefferson was a billiard player often seen at a local billiard club called The Glass Eye. Perkins sends Pepper to the club to scope things out. The Sergeant notices that people with pool cues are being admitted into a back room by showing the guard at the door a glass eye. One of people who are given access to the back room is a young man.
When the theater ventriloquist, Eric (Otto Czarski) is murdered Perkins and Pepper visit the shop of Mr. Nuthacher (Rudolf Schundler). Nuthacher makes various props for the theater and made the puppet for the murdered ventriloquist. Pepper sees the same kid, Dick (Jorn Ahrendt), at Nuthacher’s shop that was at the pool parlor. Perkins now knows that the theater, pool hall and prop shop are all connected somehow.
Eventually Perkins learns that heroin is being smuggled in the cue sticks. In addition to the drug smuggling, a white slavery ring is working in London and is connected to both the pool parlor and the theater. Girls from different chorus lines are being kidnapped and sold overseas. As Inspector Perkins investigates, more people are killed; many of them are part of the criminal enterprise. Perkins tries to figure out if the killer is one of the gang or an outsider with a grudge. In addition, he attempts to learn the identity of the leader of the syndicate.
“The Man with the Glass Eye” AKA “Der Mann mit dem Glasauge” was released in 1969 and was directed by Alfred Vohrer. It is a West German crime drama and a krimi. The film was based on the Edgar Wallace novel of the same name. It was also the fourteenth and last Wallace adaption directed by Vohrer as well as one of the last films of the krimi subgenre.
Most krimis have a comedic aspect to them. However, the longer the krimi trend went on, the campier the movies got. There is a prolonged fight in a billiard club that is an example of how silly the movies got. In addition to the camp, later krimis had more blood than their earlier offerings. Not as much blood as gialli but more than usual, especially when the movies began to be in color instead of black and white. The transition of the krimi went from having noir influences to wacky giallo.
The film is full of the usual red herrings and subplots. Glass eyes show up all over the place. It is a little creepy at times but the most cringe worthy part of the movie was the ventriloquist’s dummy, Snooky. Most dolls are creepy to begin with but here the puppet is mostly a giant head with a sing song voice who calls his handler “daddy”. Creepy as hell.
In general, I found the movie to be a rather sloppy offering but not terrible.