Powerful

good back-story, and good acting

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

"Im Banne des Unheimlichen" or "The Zombie Walks" or "The hand of Power" is a German color movie from 1968, so not too long anymore until this film has its 50th birthday. If you read the name of the director Alfred Vohrer, the name of writer Ladislas Fodor and the name of lead actor Joachim Fuchsberger, you will realize immediately that this is another West German movie adaptation of the Edgar Wallace crime novels. This trio worked on many of these. There is one unusual thing about this one here and that is the title. Usually, it includes the name of the main antagonist, mostly a non-human creature (that is in fact a human dressing up), so this film also could have been called "The Laughing Corpse", but it is not. The rest of it is the usual though. It runs for under 90 minutes, there are several unrealistic plot twists, unsuccessful attempts at humor (especially at the very ending for example the sound effect when she injects herself the deadly poison) and of course many characters with whom you can never be sure who's the good guy and who is the bad guy. And the women are also always the same in these films in the way they were written, which is pretty tough as they are really just vehicles to the story or to make the police detective look good. No strong characters here in terms of females. As a whole, I thought this was a pretty mediocre watch, like basically almost all the other Wallace films. Kinda disappointing looking at how America and the UK dished out one good Bond film after the other during that era. I give "Im Banne des Unheimlichen" a thumbs-down.

This is pretty poor. I started well and being in colour and made in 1968 had high-ish hopes. The thing here is that there were just too many people involved and the tale far too ridiculous and uninteresting. It needs more than a few colourful sets and humour. Actually the humorous element was okay but then the seriousness of the tangled tale then becomes undermined and more difficult to watch. The only reason this gets any points at all from me is the 'zombie'. An absolute object lesson to all low budget film makers. A black cloak, a wide brimmed hat and a skull face mask with beautifully working jaw and great lighting. It is increasingly such a joy when the killer 'zombie' arrives to relieve us from our boredom that we are immediately on the wrong side.

Basically all of these German movies based on the Edgar Wallace novels are being pretty silly and even bad ones but thing about them it that they are being so (delibertatly) silly that it actually does work out as great entertainment.The psychedelic '60's was nearing its end, so so was this movie series, featuring the Inspektor Higgins characters. And I'm also glad because of that, since there is no way really that this type of movie would had worked out in any other decade than the '60's. It's perfectly silly and laid back all, as if it simply doesn't seem to worry about the fact that it's being a pretty silly and bad movie.Germans are not exactly know for their great humor but there are of course some exception here and there. And this movie does really feature some amusing comedy, that is being quite cheap and predictable but it works out thanks to its fine timing and the handling by its actors. The actors all play their roles as straight as possible, which is often something that can strengthen a movie its comedy actually.As for the movie and story itself; it really is being a very typical crime/mystery movie, in which a murdered needs to be literally unmasked. There is really nothing specular or special about any of it and some moment really don't make that much sense but at least it has a pretty cool killer; a person in a skeleton costume that kills people with his poisonous ring. But really, it just isn't the story that makes this movie such an effective and fun one to watch; it simply is its '60's atmosphere and tone throughout the movie, combined with fine humor and plenty of deliberately silly moments.Simply effective as some great entertainment.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

As far as bad movies goes, this one is a gem. Everything, from the killer's skull mask to the cheesy melodrama effects, makes it extremely funny. One extraordinary line shows a mechanism triggering the door to a secret passage opened by. a penny bank! Some wacko characters shows the filmmakers didn't take themselves very seriously. The final explanation doesn't explain anything. But this is a murder mystery far over the edge, on the tradition of "Doctor X".