El Muerto Hace las Maletas on AllMovie

This strange comic-thriller was one the final entries in the West German "krimi" series based on the mystery novels of Edgar Wallace and his son. Fred Williams plays Scotland Yard detective Robert Redford, who is hunting a mysterious knife-throwing murderer through London. His search leads him to the Flamingo nightclub and a drug-dealing doctor named Blackmoor (Siegfried Schuerenberg) whose secretary's supposedly dead husband Charles (Horst Tappert) is posing as a dead mystery writer while "ridding the streets" of undesirables. Luis Morris provides comic relief as a photographer who mistakenly hands people nude photographs instead of evidence, and there are some slapstick moments involving London's Finest. The film is undeniably amusing, but Manuel Merino's photography is too dark in many places and it isn't as gripping as Werner Klingler's 1963 version of the same story, Das Geheimnis der Schwarzen Koffer. There are some odd scenes typical of director Jesus Franco, however, such as the cartoon-like "boing-g-g-g" noise whenever the killer's knife finds its target, and the director appears as a knife expert, saying things like "To you he's just another murderer. To me he's an idol."