"Der Fluch der gelben Schlange" or "The Curse of the Yellow Snake" is a West German black-and-white film from the 1960s. There were German films from around that era that had color already, but the early films of the Edgar Wallace trilogy do not. This one here will have its 55th anniversary soon. Ateasily over 90 minutes, it is longer than most of the Wallace films from back then. The writer and director is Austrian Franz Josef Gottlieb and he adapted several other Wallace works for the screen in the 1960s. This period was probably also the most successful and most defining of his career, even if he was still pretty young at this point, namely in his 30s. He went on to make many many more films, some of which are still known today as they are from the time when Karl May, soft-core and trash movies were very successful. But back to this film here: We have an animal in the title, a color and something that sounds like danger and with all these components, the title is the epitome of an Edgar Wallace film title, even if this film is far from the most famous Edgar Wallace films as we perceive them today. On the contrary, you rarely find one here on IMDb with a lower rating than 5. And I can understand why. Then again, I am generally not the greatest fan of this era of German crime movies. The known names (mostly Fuchsberger of course) attached to this project cannot elevate the very mediocre (sometimes even weak) material. It is not a racist film, but not a good one either. I give it a thumbs-down.
