THE GREEN ARCHER (1961)
aka Der grune Bogenschutze
Article 3770 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-28-2011
Posting Date: 12-10-2011
Directed by Jurgen Roland
Featuring Klausjurgen Wussow, Karin Dor, Eddi Arent
Country: West Germany
What it is: Krimi

A phantom known as the Green Archer is on the loose, knocking off people with his green arrows. But is he fighting against an American businessman in England, or for him…?

Some krimis I enjoy; they can be fun and atmospheric at their best. However, some, like this one, can be frustrating. The problem here is that there are just too many characters, many of which aren’t established strongly enough to stick in the memory from scene to scene. There are also a wealth of subplots to further complicate things. Finally, there’s the fact that the story threads are usually kept a secret until the end of the movie. Here we have a businessman (played by Gert Frobe) who is keeping a woman locked in a secret room in his house, whose son is believed to be dead and whose daughter the businessman is trying to dispose of. Not knowing why this is all happening wouldn’t be quite as maddening if the plot wasn’t wandering all over the place; after a while you don’t know which characters are really important, even if you can remember them from one scene to the next. Furthermore, the title character appears so rarely during the first two-thirds of the movie that it’s rather jarring in the last third that he’s all over the place. But, I’ve seen enough krimis now to know that some of them end up like this.