The Green Spider is a nightclub and cabaret run by Elena Korner (Bettina Schon). The main attraction to the club is a beautiful singer named Maria. After her performance Maria leaves the stage and Ted Wagner (Hans von Borsody) leads a lively number featuring Ted’s trumpet. After Ted’s performance Maria is found dead in her dressing room. No one heard any shots due to the loud sound of the trumpet.
Commissioner Bock (Jochen Brockmann) arrives to investigate. At first blush it looks like Maria may have committed suicide. Bock learns that several people were seen going in or out of Maria’s dressing room during the trumpet performance by Mrs. Berta, the wardrobe mistress. Also found unconscious in the room was Yvonne (Renate Ewert), a barmaid at the club and singing hopeful. Yvonne becomes the main suspect when it is determined that Maria did not commit suicide but was murdered.
On hand at the Green Spider is Peter Thorsten (Adrian Hoven), a reporter with the local newspaper. Peter begins snooping around and, trying to prove that Yvonne is innocent, ends up falling in love with her. He finds out that Yvonne was in shock when she found Maria dead and fainted herself. Yvonne tells Peter that the reason she fainted was that the scene reminded her of her mother’s death years ago. Back then it was determined that her mother’s death was a suicide, but Yvonne maintains that she was murdered as well. Yvonne spent a couple years in an institution due to the breakdown caused by her mother’s death and the fact that no one believed her when she claimed it was murder.
As Peter and Commissioner Bock are trying to figure out who the killer is, more murders occur.
“The Mystery of the Green Spider” AKA “Das Ratsel der grunen Spinne” was released in 1960 and was written and directed by Franz Marischka. It is a West German musical crime thriller and a krimi.
This is a lesser known krimi and is a bit different from the usual fare. There are more song and dance numbers in the film than there is murder or mystery. Well over half of the film is either musical numbers or people talking while musical routines are playing on a nearby stage. This type of film is referred to as a schlager film, a genre that was popular right after WWII in West Germany. They are the West German version of the American musical.
The film boasts some musical talents for the era, specifically, Jacqueline Boyer, Rolf “Hazy” Osterwald and Will Brandes.
I lot of people liked the combination of musical and thriller together. I’m not a fan of the mash-up. I don’t mind a song or two, but this was mostly singing and dancing to the point where you lost some of the plot bouncing back and forth between the musical interludes and the actual storyline.