THE DEVIL STRIKES AT NIGHT (1957)

During the war years, German director Robert Siodmak made a number of great movies in America, including THE KILLERS (1946) and CRISS CROSS (1949), then in the early 1950's he returned to Germany where he continued to make films, but many of them are hard to find...at least by me. I did recently come across a copy of THE DEVIL STRIKES AT NIGHT and it's an well-made film about a intellectually disabled strongman who's going around killing women during the chaos of the last years of WW2.

The SS are secretly investigating the murders.  When they arrest an innocent man for one of the killings, a lone police detective goes to great lengths to prove his innocence, but unfortunately for him the SS isn't interested in justice only keeping the population under their boot.

The guy who plays the investigator does a fine job, but it's the serial killer (played brilliantly by Mario Adorf) that steals the show. One look at him and you know he's bad news. You wouldn't want to be stuck in a broken elevator with this guy! But even more disturbing are the SS guys who lurk around behind the scenes pulling the strings with no concern for right or wrong or even who dies in the process.

If you can find a copy, it's well worth watching.