Nachts wenn der Teufel kam

Berlin, summer of '44. A detective links a couple of murders and backtracks to a strangler who's been killing women since before the war. Psycho Bruno is eventually arrested, but the case presents a problem for the Nazis: impossible to admit that in the Third Reich a mass murderer could rampage undetected for so long, and - Himmel! - he's not even a Jew or a Slav, but a pure Aryan. Steps must be taken. Less intense than Siodmak's Hollywood noirs and overly familiar in its details (the cop's anti-Nazi asides, his hero's limp, the orgy during an air raid) the film benefits most from Krause's atmospheric camerawork. (He shot Paths of Glory the same year.) Werner Peters enjoyably essays another of his sweaty losers and the depiction of Bruno as a squalid dimwit makes a change from the Hannibal Lecter fantasy of the suave serial-killing mastermind.