The 1970s Krimi That Forgot to Behave

Read Time:6 Minute, 6 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Death Packs a Suitcase (The Corpse Packs His Bags) (Der Todesrächer von Soho)
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Genre: Mystery, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Horror, Thriller
Year Released: 1972, Kino Cult Blu-ray 2025
Runtime: 1h 20m
Director(s): Jess Franco
Writer(s): Artur Brauner, Jess Franco, Bryan Edgar Wallace
Cast: Horst Tappert, Fred Williams, Barbara Rütting, Siegfried Schürenberg, Beni Cardoso
Where to Watch: available now, order your copy here: www.kinolorber.com or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: If there’s one thing Jess Franco could always do, it was find the line between camp and sleaze—and dance across the line with a grin. DEATH PACKS A SUITCASE (also known as Der Todesrächer von Soho or The Avenger of Soho) is one of the director’s stranger entries: a playful, oddly clean-cut mystery with all the hallmarks of German “Krimi” cinema and just enough Franco flavor to keep it weird. For an artist better known for erotic exploitation and psychotropic nightmares, this 1972 London-set whodunit feels like a weekend vacation—blood light but heavy on personality.

The premise sounds ripped from a pulp paperback. Somewhere in a foggy, imagined London (shot mostly in Spain with zero attempt to disguise it), a killer preps each murder by packing a suitcase for their victim—then finishes the job with an exotic dagger. It’s both absurd and morbidly charming, the sort of overcooked concept that could only come from a Wallace adaptation. Enter Inspector Ruppert Redford, played by Fred Williams, who enlists a famous crime novelist, Charles Barton (Horst Tappert), to help solve the killings. The partnership between the straight-laced detective and the cerebral author sets a tone of sardonic self-awareness that gives the film its groove.

Franco leans into the Krimi formula—crimes, motivations, eccentric suspects—but gives it a sense of elasticity. His dynamic camera glides, zooms, and prowls through every scene, even when the story itself stumbles. The visuals feel alive, even when the logic doesn’t. The camera becomes his lead actor, darting between cigarette smoke, swinging doors, and the eerie shadows of a city that never looks quite real. This is the movie’s charm: it’s not about coherence but about rhythm and atmosphere, a Euro pulp fantasy masquerading as a detective story.

The script, adapted from a story by Bryan Edgar Wallace, son of Edgar Wallace, has all the structural problems you’d expect from second-generation mystery royalty. There are so many suspects, red herrings, and digressions that the plot quickly eats itself. Subplots appear and vanish with little consequence. Even the killer’s motivations blur into a cocktail of jealousy, greed, and sheer narrative convenience. But Franco makes up for it with energy and style. The humor—much of it unintentional—is part of the appeal. One minute, the inspector is chasing clues; the next, a jazz score by Rolf Kühn turns the whole sequence into a lounge act.

That soundtrack is critical. Kühn’s brassy, freewheeling jazz score gives the film its pulse. It lends sophistication to a movie that might otherwise dissolve into parody. Each cue feels like it’s trying to class up the chaos, creating the illusion that we’re watching something smoother than we are. Franco’s ability to layer sound and visual absurdity creates moments that are, if not suspenseful, then at least hypnotic.

The cast, filled with Krimi veterans, holds it all together. Tappert, later famous for his long-running role as the TV detective “Derrick,” has an understated gravitas that grounds the nonsense around him. Fred Williams injects a roguish charm as the inspector, toeing the line between serious sleuth and comedic foil. Barbara Rütting and Siegfried Schürenberg lend the film a veneer of old-school respectability that offsets Franco’s wilder instincts. There’s also Beni Cardoso, the sort of glamorous distraction Franco adored, who lights up the screen whenever the mystery grows thin.

What makes DEATH PACKS A SUITCASE interesting isn’t just what it is—it’s what it isn’t. This is Jess Franco restraining himself. Gone are the surreal erotic overtones, the endless zooms into cleavage or cruelty. Instead, he channels his fascination with the artificial, the performative, and the cinematic into a relatively coherent structure. The result is something like a carnival version of a Hitchcock movie: all the gestures are there, but they’ve been turned into pantomime. It’s simultaneously knowing and naive, like a filmmaker pretending to play by the rules just to prove he can.

The Kino Cult restoration gives this oddity the kind of respect it’s never had before. The print looks sharp, the colors gleam with that peculiar ‘70s Euro-murk, and the commentary track from Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson adds thoughtful context to what might otherwise be dismissed as minor work. Franco’s career is a labyrinth of highs, lows, and hallucinatory side alleys; this release reminds us that even his detours can be worth exploring.

DEATH PACKS A SUITCASE might not rank among Jess Franco’s definitive films, but it captures something essential about him: the restless curiosity of a filmmaker who never stopped experimenting. Even when boxed into a formula, he finds ways to smuggle in his quirks, his humor, and his love of cinema itself. This is a rare case where a director known for chaos delivers something neat—and that neatness becomes its own oddity.

For viewers expecting gore, shock, or sleaze, this will feel unusually tame. For those open to watching a master provocateur flirt with convention, it’s a sly pleasure—a strange, stylish slice of pulp resurrected from obscurity.

In the grand archive of Franco’s work, this isn’t one of the masterpieces, but it’s one of the more revealing curiosities. DEATH PACKS A SUITCASE is cinema as improvisation: imperfect, indulgent, but endlessly watchable.

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[photo courtesy of KINO LORBER]

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