Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Boring, long, and too preachy.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A number of rich foreign businessmen living in London are being killed, their bodies tossed into the Thames & made to look like drownings. Scotland Yard inspector Larry Holt & his always cheerful colleague Sgt. Harvey are on the case. They find pieces of paper on each of the victims, written in Braille as well as a piece of rope on the feet on the victims. They bring in Nora Ward, an expert in Braille, who tells them that the deaths are the result of foul play & that the paper notes reveal that the killer is blind. Investigation also reveals that the victims had large insurance policies on themselves. Whilst investigating the insurance broker, Holt discovers a conspiracy by an unknown party to swindle the insurance money for gambling debts & that Nora Ward is actually the illegitimate daughter of one of the victims, as well as the sole beneficiary of the dead man's policy. At the same time, the mastermind behind the killings is competing with some of his underlings in a deadly game to collect the money.One of a number of German B-grade crime thrillers based on the works of Edgar Wallace that came about in the early 1960s, Dead Eyes of London is a pretty routine thriller as far as thrillers go. But what makes this quite interesting is the weird story that serves as the film's plot, as well as some inventive deaths & a modest atmosphere. In case you don't guess so from the English language version, the film is a German production with German actors (including Klaus Kinski) & dubbed into English, although the dubbing isn't obvious at first glance.Director Alfred Vohrer manages to make a passable detective yarn out of the convoluted storyline & despite the dragging pace, actually makes for an interesting watch. Some of the killings – everything from drownings in laundry vats (& the bodies tied to salt rocks that dissolve after a while to release the bodies & make them look like accidental deaths), hit-&-runs, gunshots to the face, a janitor getting shot in the eye while looking in a peephole, people thrown out the window & a priest wielding a flamethrower – are quite full-on for 1961 standards. Not just that, but there has to be something said for a film where the likes of Klaus Kinski (himself a very weird actor) is not the weirdest person in the cast. From a detective who knits clothes for the Salvation Army & who is always cheerful, even in dire circumstances, to the pudgy fat killer who resembles Tor Johnson in some aspects, Dead Eyes of London is chock-full of strangeness that will make this a reasonable night in.

"Die toten Augen von London" is a German movie from 55 years ago and another Edgar Wallace adaptation by Egon Eis. The director is Alfred Vohrer, one of the most known German filmmakers from that time, mostly because of his involvement with the famous Karl May westerns. The title already says it: This film is once again set in London and it is a black-and-white film that takes us into the world of a crime syndicate apparently made up of blind people. A couple people get murdered as usual and (also as usual) Joachim "Blacky" Fuchsberger plays the police detective in charge of finding the killer(s). I personally thought this movie here had a couple really interesting characters, mostly the villain, even if some were more evil than others. One of them is played by Klaus Kinski in a fairly early career turn. He is in his early 30s here and the talent is very much visible. But sadly, the writing and the story as a whole is not on par with the characters and the performances. I was never really interested in who the bad (baddest) guy is and it never felt like an edge-of-seat film for me. Plus there are some (un)intentionally funny moments that do not help the film at all, for example near the end when one of the detectives finally understands who the bad guy must be he makes the most embarrassing sound and really has to apologize afterward to the audience for it. Another fairly forgettable Wallace adaptation. Not recommended. This is one of the longest Edgar Wallace films, clearly makes it past the 90-minute mark and as a consequence it drags on several occasions. The only scene I liked was the tape recorder with the voice and the attempt to assassinate the cop with the gun in the box.

This is my favorite of the German-made Edgar Wallaces. Brilliantly directed by Alfred Vohrer, atmospherically photographed and luxuriously produced, it imaginatively maintains atmosphere and suspense right from its dramatically eerie opening to the shattering surprise finale. (In an article on Edgar Wallace in Films In Review, Jack Edmund Nolan maintains that the plot, characters and background are closer to Wallace's conception than the 1940 British version of the novel, starring Bela Lugosi).It's hard to judge the quality of the acting from the dubbed edition, but the players do seem to acquit themselves well.And for once the dubbed version runs longer than that released in the home country!

After a long time, I saw a German Edgar Wallace film again and I was not surprised. Those films are about all the same. Klaus Kinski plays the dark guy, Eddi Arent the funny one and Joachim Fuchsberger the smart and handsome detective. The idea (blind men are forming a gang and kill wealthy old men in foggy nights) is extremely far-fetched this time but that's Edgar Wallace's fault and not that of the filmmakers. There are also too many coincidences to call it a crime story of great quality. Still, the film is well directed: in traditional black and white, thrilling and gruesome, but more serious than other films of the series like „The Indian Scarf` for instance.The solution of the crime is good, less far-fetched than the rest of it. On the whole, this is one of the best Edgar Wallace films – and I've seen many, though it happened some time ago.