Overview
The Devil Strikes at Night is a 1957 West German film directed by Robert Siodmak. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film as well as winning German Film Award for Best Fiction Film in its native country. It is based on the true story of Bruno Lüdke.
It is a highly fictionalized account of the hunt for a serial killer, as he murders women during the last year or two of World War II. In one of the crimes a man is arrested who is obviously innocent. An investigator who starts to get a thread which leads to the real killer is frustrated by Nazi authorities who feel that revealing the truth will undermine the people's faith in their supposedly infallible system. The detective story gradually becomes a story about the evils of political propaganda and corruption.
The film's sets were designed by the art directors Gottfried Will and Rolf Zehetbauer. Location shooting took place in Berlin and Munich.
Cast
Claus Holm as Kriminalkommissar Axel Kersten
Annemarie Düringer as Helga Hornung
Mario Adorf as Bruno Lüdke
Hannes Messemer as SS-Gruppenfuehrer Rossdorf
Carl Lange as Major Thomas Wollenberg
Werner Peters as Willi Keun
Walter Janssen as Kriminalrat Boehm
Peter Carsten as SS- Standartenfuhrer Mollwitz
Wilmut Borell as SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Heinrich, Rossdorf's aide
Monika John as Lucy Hansen, Kellnerin
Rose Schäfer as Anna Hohmann
Lukas Ammann as Pflichtverteidiger von Keun
Karl-Heinz Peters as Hauswart
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).