Face of the Frog

Trailer—Face of the Frog

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source: Face of the Frog

The Frog with the Mask aka Face of the Frog was based on the Edgar Wallace book Fellowship of the Frog. All things both krimini and giallo flow from Mr. Wallace, so this film is rather essential, as the success of this picture led to Rialto making a series of 32 Wallace films over the next twenty years. There's a gang of frog-tattooed ne'er do wells led by a frog-masked madman who is going hopping mad - sorry - in London. They are coming after Ella Bennett, who is protected by not only Scotland Yard, but by Richard Gordon, a millionaire playboy with a butler named James who is in no way Bruce Wayne in nature. This story had already been filmed by Archibald B Heath's as the serial The Mark of the Frog in 1928 and Jack Raymond's The Frog in 1937. Thanks, A Wasted Life! Man, there's a lot of plot jammed into the running time here and not a lot of it is memorable. You know what is? A frog man that orders the death of people. More of that please!

After the delightful wit of the Sacha Guitry title La poison (1951-also reviewed) I decided to again dig into my pile of unwatched DVDs. Having found his final Krimi The Sinister Monk (1965-also reviewed) to be superb,I decided it was time to discover where it had all began. View on the film: Before it become a genre which would have a huge impact on the Giallo years later, director Harald Reinl establishes the foundations of the Krimi with his regular cinematographer Ernst W. Kalinke scanning the streets of London under deep fog (filmed in Denmark as a stand in for the UK, which adds to the wonderfully off-beat atmosphere) in winding panning shots framing Inspector Hedge, (played with a enticing curiosity by Siegfried Lowitz) being blind towards standing right next to The Frog. Keeping the quirky mask of master criminal The Frog (animals later playing a major part in the Giallo) on until the final twist, Reinl webs the hard-nosed Film Noir mood from the police investigations, with strikingly stylised killer set-pieces leaving the burning hot mark of The Frog burning in the murder set-pieces which Reinl leaps into the seedy glamour of cabaret shows in underworld nightclubs. Introducing the master criminal with the sounds of frogs outside waking a couple up, the screenplay by Reinl's close collaborator J. Joachim Bartsch (here joined with Egon Eis) webs their adaptation of Edgar Wallace's novel with the pulpy thrills of The Frog and his knife-throwing gang becoming increasingly brutal in the execution of their crimes, as they start to fear the police leapfrogging to capturing them,before The Frog has had his taste of the Krimi.

Harald Reinl, an excellent director who has made films from the Mabuse series and the Winnetou series. This one is very well done and comic too, a pleasure to watch even today in 2019, after 60 years: old movies are the best! Well, not all of them but, definitely, I prefer them to those painful superhero productions of today...

Second Wallace film I saw and I found it utterly delightful! Many comical and funny situations, sometimes not very serious, but lighthearted drama, I loved the visuals, the compositions, lighting... and the frog costume. They made Kopenhagen into a very believable London for my taste (with the tools they had). I know it is not the most serious art house cinema, but just delightful 60s vibe with love for details. I found many clichees depicted in those films, from the bored inspector to the dandylike police man... This seems a picture book of film noir, shot mainly for delight. it is just fun to watch, don't take it too seriously!

Although not necessarily a personal favorite or an absolute must-see, "The Face of the Frog" is one of those movies I'll remain eternally grateful to, simply because they played an essential role in the founding of what eventually became my favorite exploitation/horror sub-genre. This was the first one of the German so-called "Krimis"; - a series of 30+ movies inspired by the writings of Edgar Wallace and practically always revolving around either the search for a sadist killer or relentless crime syndicates planning a massive heist. Out of these adaptations would later evolve the Italian gialli, with an even bigger emphasis on the whodunit aspect via flamboyant killers and their sickening modus operandi. Not every Krimi is great, mind you, but they are all worth seeking out. "The Face of the Frog" was the first, and paves the road with stylish elements and conceptual trademarks that would recur throughout the whole series. And, on the bright side, this film does not yet contain too many annoying comic relief aspects. Scotland Yard is on the hunt for a criminal gang led by a relentless murderer/master thief only known as "The Frog", since he always wears a mask and not even his most loyal accomplices ever saw his face. In the end, the identity of the Frog wasn't too hard to guess for me, but that's probably because I saw hundreds of gialli, Agatha Christie whodunits and teen slashers. I know what to pay attention to, in other words, but I'm sure that certain revelations must have shocked the audiences in 1959. There are a few astounding moments, notably the brute and totally unexpected killing of a defenseless girl near the climax and two or three really clever red herrings, and the performances are very solid.

The Frog is a master criminal who is sought both by the police and by an amateur American sleuth and his comical butler/sidekick. The Frog falls in love with a young woman and hatches a ridiculous Rube Goldbeg-like plot to get her to give herself him. He uses a singing siren named "Lolita" to ensnare her ne'r-do-well brother into a gruesome murder plot. The brother is convicted of the capital crime and sentenced to death only to find the executioner is someone very familiar to him. As other have said, this is the first of West German Edgar Wallace krimis. It's certainly not the best, but it is pretty entertaining. The comical sidekick (here played by Eddie Aren't) would become a staple of this series, to the annoyance of some, but personally I don't think this kind of comedy really hurts these films that much because the plots are already delightfully absurd and villains like the Frog are more than a little cartoonish to begin with(but I mean that in a good way). The butler/sidekick here kind of anticipates (perhaps even influenced?) the "Kato" character in the "Pink Panther" series in that he is always sparring with his boss to keep him sharp. The bigger liability here, however, is the "American" protagonist himself. But Joachim Fuchsberger, who was in nearly all these movies, would get a lot better in the future entries in the series, especially when he got to play an "English" detective (a role at which the German actor was much more convincing). But in addition to the serial-comic strip elements of the plot, there is also a little bit of raciness courtesy of "Lolita" (Eva Pflug), and some surprisingly gruesome violence--the centerpiece murder and a scene where the Frog very violently dispenses with one of his accomplices. In any event, if you enjoy the German krimi series (or the later but the closely related Italian gialli), you certainly won't want to miss this first one.

"Der Frosch mit der Maske" is a pretty bad title for this German black-and-white film from the late 1950s. It is actually a human with a mask obviously and you could see it as a bit of Germany's take on the character of Scarecrow. He is one of the key players in the criminal underground here and prefers to kill his enemies with poison. I personally felt early on, also the introduction, there were a couple scenes that were interesting and they certainly could have turned this into an edge-of-seat crime thriller. Instead the inclusion of far too many characters and unintentionally comedic elements made this 87-minute film uninteresting for the most part. Quite a shame as there was certainly the possibility of a better film here. Eis and Bartsch adapted this Edgar Wallace work over 25 years after Wallace's death and the duo worked on several of these German Edgar Wallace films. The director is Harald Reinl this time and he is mostly known for his Winnetou films. Overall, "Faces of the Frog" (much better international title is not worth the watch. Towards the end, I really did not care who the Frog really was, even if I suspected it. Not recommended.