Edgar Wallace’s career as a writer began at the tail end of the 19th century. Much of Wallace’s success came from his crime novels, and 1963’s West German release The Curse of the Yellow Snake adapts his 1926 novel The Yellow Snake.

In Hong Kong, Joe Bray (Fritz Tillman) attempts to keep a powerful totem called the “Tellow Snake” hidden. However, nefarious cult members kill his house servant Ling () and make off with this object that could bring about cataclysm if not found before a particular date.

Joe’s associate Clifford Lynn (Joachim Fuchsberger) heads to London on his boss’s orders and he runs into half-brother Fing-Su (Pinkas Braun), aka “Graham St. Clair”. All of this factors into a race to find the Yellow Snake before it gets used for evil means.

Or something like that. To put it mildly, Curse brings us a curiously contrived and convoluted plot.

And an unnecessarily contrived and convoluted plot at that. At its core, Curse comes with what should become a pretty taut thriller.

Evildoers steal a valuable object. Good guys try to stop them. The end.

But no - Curse muddies the waters in an extreme manner. Indeed, the film focuses more on its many extraneous subplots than it does on its primary purpose.

This mystifies me and seems like a wasted opportunity. No, I can’t claim that a more concise Curse would become a great film, but at least it would seem more logical.

Instead, we get a muddled project that lacks consistency. Curse throws in weird complications between the half-brothers as well as utterly unnecessary connections to Bray’s extended family.

We learn that his cousin Stephan Narth (Werner Peters) finds himself in a financial bind and he hopes that if he can get either his daughter Mabel (Doris Kirchner) or his foster daughter Joan Bray (Brigitte Grothum) to marry Clifford, then he’ll wind up on Easy Street.

Thanks to this thread, Curse wanders down a slew of pointless detours. None of it seems necessary and it just feels like a contrivance to add some romance to the proceedings.

We also get cheap comic relief from goofy antiques dealer Samuel Carter (Eddi Arent). He exists for dumb laughs and sloppy exposition.

Curse actually starts on a promising note, as the introduction offers intrigue. The scenes in Hong Kong imply we’ll get a good “race against the clock” thriller.

However, Curse almost immediately flies to London and goes off the rails. Occasional scenes show mild entertainment, but the tale meanders so much that nothing really connects.

All that and rampant racism, too! Curse squanders its potential and becomes a messy dud.

The Curse of the Yellow Snake appears in an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Overall, the transfer held up well.

For the most part, sharpness looked solid. A few slightly soft images materialized, but not a lot. Instead, I thought the majority of the flick boasted nice clarity and delineation.

I noticed no issues with jagged edges or shimmering, and edge haloes remained absent. Grain appeared natural and outside of some stock footage of London, print flaws failed to mar the proceedings.

Black levels were pretty strong, as they presented good depth and dimensionality along with nice contrast. Shadows were also fine. In the end, the movie looked good.

Curse featured a perfectly adequate DTS-HD MA monaural sound mix, one that seemed typical of efforts from the era. The audio was somewhat shrill at times but not terribly so.

Music leaned a bit toward the treble side of the street but seemed acceptable. Speech was a little edgy but seemed intelligible and without real concerns.

Effects also came across as slightly too bright bit not without significant distortion. The soundtrack felt acceptable based on the age of the movie.

Note that the disc came with an LPCM monaural English dub of Curse as well. Audio quality appeared worse than the German version, as the mix felt rougher around the edges and the looped dialogue didn’t blend well.

Performances also seemed lackluster. A few of the voice actors did fine, but most Went Cartoony so this left the German version as the way to go.

As we shift to extras, we get an audio commentary from film historians Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw. Both sit together for a running, screen-specific look at story and characters, cast and crew, genre domains, production topics and their thoughts about the film.

While not the tightest commentary, this one nonetheless becomes fairly informative. It could use a more concise path through its topics but it still gives us a positive look at the material.

We can view the film with or without a 12-minutes, 26-second introduction from film historian Tim Lucas in which he discusses basics about the production and its cast/crew. He gives us a solid little summary.

Lucas also provides a general intro called What Is Krimi? that goes for five minutes, 51 seconds. Intended to launch viewers into this six-film “Terror in the Fog” set, Lucas offers a quick summary of the krimi genre in this useful summary.

The disc concludes with a trailer for Curse.

If it stayed with its core plot, The Curse of the Yellow Snake could’ve become a compelling little thriller. Instead, it meanders around so many unnecessary story points that it becomes a clumsy clunker. The Blu-ray offers pretty good visuals as well as acceptable audio and a handful of bonus features. Despite a few positives, Curse doesn’t work.

Note that as of May 2025, this Blu-ray for The Curse of the Yellow Snake comes only as part of a six-film collection called “Terror in the Fog”. It also includes fellow West German 1960s flicks The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle, The Mad Executioners, The Phantom of Soho, The Monster of London City and The Racetrack Murders.