L'ago sotto la pelle

Curd Jürgens plays the title role, the doctor from St. Pauli, Jan Diffring. He is the good guy, of the breed of good guys that mostly went out of fashion during the 1960s if not earlier. He heals the sick (sometimes just by touch), protects the innocent (even from the police) and punishes the guilty. He is just short of tights and a cape to become a superhero.

His main adversary is his brother Klaus, also a doctor. His female patients are rich, and if they are good-looking they are lured into his sordid parties where they are drugged and taken advantage of. And when other evil-doers photograph all this depravity for blackmailing purposes Klaus intervenes ruthlessly and the story of this film gets really going.

More than 30 years on one can only watch this with a sense of awe and fascination. Characters as black and white as this are rarely seen outside comicdom, even the heroes and villains of the Love Bug series possess a wider moral range than these citizens of Hamburg.