We see the woman again, her dead eyes staring at us from the glass dome of a futuristic two-person mini-sub in some kind of underground cavern/pool. Seconds later, she is assaulted and strangled by an unseen assailant.

The Ringer begins with a striking pre-credits sequence of a young secretary spying on her lawyer boss by listening in on his phone calls. Allegedly, producer Horst Wendtland kept the last few pages of the script locked away in his safe and not even the actors themselves knew which one of them would turn out to be the Ringer in the end. The Ringer also was shot at the height of the Wallace craze and the identity of the titular character was guarded with the same sort of zeal that applies to Star Wars films and Harry Potter books these days. I’m not sure if it truly is the quintessential Wallace film as which it is sometimes portrayed, since some of the standard elements are missing (more on that later), but it is still a damned good one. I was due for yet another rewatch and decided to start with what is probably the most famous film of the series, Der Hexer a.k.a. Hence, I tend to rewatch my favourites every few years or so. Most of them need more than one viewing, if only because you’ll need at least two viewings to untangle the plot and at least one more to appreciate the artistic aspects. I’ve seen all of the thirty-plus German Wallace movies by now, many of them multiple times. However, for now you can read a PDF copy of the original article here. I even wrote an article about the films, which will eventually be republished in a collection of my critical writing. It’s no secret to those who have been following this blog for a while that I am a huge fan of the German Edgar Wallace film adaptions of the 1960s.

The Ringer by Edgar Wallace