This movie is just great! "La muerte camina en la lluvia" (death walks in the rain) It's set in Buenos Aires when a serial murderer kills people only in rainy days and always leaving a note beside the body: "S. Lopez". The police find out that the killer lives in an old "pension" (some kind of big house in which the owner rents the rooms). So, when a professor from Uruguay arrives at the mansion, he is asked by the police to help the investigation. Problems begin when the professor is murdered, as if the killer knows he's being chased by the police. If you enjoy mystery and who-done-its, then you should give this movie a try. Guillermo Battaglia's and Nicolás Fregues's performances are superb. This movie deserves a remake.
3 Reviews
another Carlos Hugo Christensen masterpiece
happytrigger-64-39051723 February 2019
I discovered my first Carlos Hugo Christensen films noir with "No Abras Nunca Esa Puerta", brilliant adaptation of two William Irish novels, with an astounding cinematography.
So I got back to youtube, and found that second adaptation of Steeman's "l'Assassin Habite Au 21", after Clouzot's already brilliant direction. And the result is again marvellous, everything is chirurgically precise : cinematography, editing, actors direction (and they're all excellent, very tense). I cannot say more without spoiling, it's a true cinema lesson to be studied in universities.
On youtube, there are two versions : don't chose the 1h13 with nasty print, search the 1h20 restored and be ready to discover a completly forgotten and truely cinematic director, Carlos Hugo Christensen. Brilliant director from 1939 to 1996.
So I got back to youtube, and found that second adaptation of Steeman's "l'Assassin Habite Au 21", after Clouzot's already brilliant direction. And the result is again marvellous, everything is chirurgically precise : cinematography, editing, actors direction (and they're all excellent, very tense). I cannot say more without spoiling, it's a true cinema lesson to be studied in universities.
On youtube, there are two versions : don't chose the 1h13 with nasty print, search the 1h20 restored and be ready to discover a completly forgotten and truely cinematic director, Carlos Hugo Christensen. Brilliant director from 1939 to 1996.
Carlos Hugo scores again
tony-70-66792013 March 2022
Warning: Spoilers
I see I'm the third person to review this film, and the third to give it 10/10, which should tell you something. It's the third of Carlos Hugo Christensen's films I've seen, after "The Trap" and "Never Open that Door": none of them in perfect prints, but all so good that it didn't matter.
This one is a remake of Clouzot's "The Killer Lives at No.21", which used the title of the original novel by S.- A. Steeman and was made six years before. It must be 50 years since I saw that, so I can't compare the two versions, and not having read the book can't say which is more faithful . I suspect it's Clouzot's , since Pierre Fresnay was top-billed and played Inspector Wens, a character Steeman used in other novels. In CHC's version a lodger at No.21 (played by Olga Zubarry) and her reporter boyfriend (Horacio Peterson) play a bigger part in solving the mystery than the police, who keep charging people only to have to release them.
The young leads are good (Peterson was only in his early twenties, but this was his last screen role: he moved to Venezuela and then, apart from co-directing one film, he devoted himself to the theatre.) However, as usual it's the older actors who are more interesting, and make the film special. Guillermo Battaglia as a hammy Russian actor, Nicolas Fregues as a doctor who'd been struck off and Eduardo Coitino as the leading cop stand out particularly.
This one is a remake of Clouzot's "The Killer Lives at No.21", which used the title of the original novel by S.- A. Steeman and was made six years before. It must be 50 years since I saw that, so I can't compare the two versions, and not having read the book can't say which is more faithful . I suspect it's Clouzot's , since Pierre Fresnay was top-billed and played Inspector Wens, a character Steeman used in other novels. In CHC's version a lodger at No.21 (played by Olga Zubarry) and her reporter boyfriend (Horacio Peterson) play a bigger part in solving the mystery than the police, who keep charging people only to have to release them.
The young leads are good (Peterson was only in his early twenties, but this was his last screen role: he moved to Venezuela and then, apart from co-directing one film, he devoted himself to the theatre.) However, as usual it's the older actors who are more interesting, and make the film special. Guillermo Battaglia as a hammy Russian actor, Nicolas Fregues as a doctor who'd been struck off and Eduardo Coitino as the leading cop stand out particularly.
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