The Sinister Monk

"I'm not going to cover up for you this time!"

Lord Wilmore has died and left his  whole estate to his grand daughter, Gwendolin (Karin Dor), but the will is stolen and without it, the estate will be divided among Wilmore's adult children. When the thieves send a copy of the will to the Lord Wilmore's son, Richard (Sigfried Lowitz), he uses it to blackmail his siblings John (Sigfried Schürenberg) and Patricia (Ilse Steppat) - give him the majority of the inheritance or lose it all to Gwendolin. In an effort to protect her and win her favor, Patricia invites Gwendolin to stay at the Manor, which is now a girls' boarding school. When Gwendolin arrives, she learns that the house is  haunted by the ghost of a Medieval monk - and soon people start getting murdered by a whip-weilding figure in a black hood. Is the ghost of the monk really behind the killings? Or could the killer be Patricia's smarmy son, Ronnie (Hartmut Reck), who has been implicated in the disappearance of three students? Maybe it's the creepy artist who rents a room in the manor or the mysterious new French teacher? Inspector Bratt ( Harald Leipnitz) has no shortage of suspects in this case!

The Sinister Monk is brought to you by the same team that made Room 13. In fact, Rialto Films did a whole series of popular films in the 60's based on the novels of Edgar Wallace, using the same stock cast and crew. All of the films cross over into the worlds of crime dramas and drawing room mysteries, but this one stands out for its unusual costumed killer and his gruesomely original method of murder. There's a lot going on with a wide array of suspects and subplots about human trafficking and Gewndolin's father's wrongful conviction for murder, but somehow it all manages come to a satisfying conclusion.

• Just like in Room 13, the movie is in black and white but the titles are in color.

• You may recognize Mary, one of the boarding school girls, as Uschi Glas (credited as Ursula Glas). This is one of her first film roles, but she'd go on to star in one of my favorite gialli, Seven Blood-Stained Orchids.

What the Hell am I Watching?

The craziest thing in this movie is how the Monk kills his victims - he whips them from a distance, coiling the lash around the victim's neck and then yanking to break their spine. 

Props to Lola (Uta Levka) who had the ingenuity to fill a squirt gun with sulfuric acid for self defense.

Also, I suspect that the taxidermy in Gwendolin's room might be a subtle homage to Psycho.

Fashion Moment:

Being the matriarch and Head Mistress of the school, Patricia is really the only one who gets to glam it up.

However in one scene, Gwendolin gets a note telling her to go to London to get proof of her wrongfully-convicted father's innocence and not to tell anyone. She complies but, remembering that several girls have been kidnapped during trips to the city, she makes sure Detective Bratt knows she's leaving the Manor wearing this suit with a bold houndstooth pattern, making it easy for the police to trail her.