One of many Edgar Wallace adaptations Alfred Vohrer directed for the big screen, The College-Girl Murders begins with a scene straight out of Business 101: A scientist invents a new, odorless poison that’s 100-percent efficient in causing immediate death in its inhalants. As soon as he sells his find, he’s killed by the buyer.
We know not who this mysterious purchaser is, but we know what he intends to do with it: Annihilate some co-eds. One of those Dr. Mabuse-ian villains who rules over a hideout with a built-in crocodile lair, this enigmatic antagonist has more than one nut doing his bidding, including felons snuck in and out of their prison cells via garbage cans.
Most notable, however, is a whip-wielding monk clad in hooded duds that look like a Ku Klux Klan uniform accidentally got mixed with a load of reds in the wash. The robed menace runs amok in a girls’ dormitory, planting booby-trapped Bibles that spray the deadly gas upon opening. He then exits via the fireplace, which raises to reveal a secret passageway, natch.
Colorful in look and swinging in sound, The College-Girl Murders is such a blast on several levels that I’m willing to overlook the title’s unnecessary hyphen. The German film marks a solid krimi — not just among the Wallace adaptations, which number so many that they make up their own subgenre, but among the country’s thrillers of that era. It boasts a genuine whodunit plot, lovely ladies ripe for the offing, gadgetry galore and one way-out ending in which the authorities scamper out of frame as soon as they notice a card reading “ENDE” floating in the turtle aquarium behind them. —Rod Lott