In the 1960s two film companies made a long series of films using the Edgar Wallace byline – the UK thrillers were made for Anglo Amalgamated (my microsite devoted to these is here), while Rialto filmed their own in Germany, though often set in England. Solange is very loosely based on the Wallace novel The Clue of the New Pin but along with this bit of heritage it offers a fascinating example of pop culture cross-pollination as an Italo-German co-production filmed largely in London that acts effectively as a sort of giallo-krimi cross-over.
The following is for Tuesday’s Overlooked Film meme hosted by Todd Mason at his fab Sweet Freedom blog
The 44th entry in the Ed McBain series of police procedurals offers two main storylines. In the first, Carella and Meyer investigate two cases of attempted murder against one person and two related deaths; in the second we carry on the story from the previous book in the series, 
Made on location in the Loire Valley in France, this 99-minute thriller takes a simple, stripped down concept – two people on a biking holiday become isolated and fear they are being stalked by a killer – and then stretches and squeezes it to extract the maximum amount of suspense. The result is a movie that, despite a little bit of padding here and there, offers a fascinating exercise in how to create and sustain jeopardy and even a sense of claustrophobia despite the story all taking place in wide open spaces. It was the clever notion of Brian Clemens, here using the main production personnel that he had just finished working with for nearly a decade on his greatest TV hit, The Avengers (1961-69).
Regular Fedora visitors will know that I love 
