Fraulein Doktor Reviews

In a muddled espionage story, Kendall plays a shifty German master spy during WW I, a mystery woman who brings devastation to the Allies far beyond the boudoir exploits of the more infamous Mata Hari. She and two German agents are spotted emerging from a sub at Scapa Flow in the Scottish Orkney Islands, where the British fleet lies at anchor. Kendall's job is to kill the redoubtable British military leader Lord Kitchener. Though her confederates are captured, Kendall manages to make it back to the submarine with information detailing the movements of the warship taking Kitchener to Russia on a hush-hush mission. The sub lays a series of mines in the path of the H.M.S. Hampshire and the ship is blown up, taking Kitchener and 700 more victims to a watery death. Kendall celebrates by taking morphine injections. Her unsavory past is examined by British intelligence officer More, who sends Booth to Germany to kill the dangerous woman. Meanwhile, Kendall forms an association with Capucine, a lesbian French scientist and the creator of a deadly poison gas. After murdering Capucine, Kendall steals the formula and turns it over to the Germans, who use it with devastating results. Booth tracks down Kendall and prepares to kill her, an act now sanctioned by the Germans, who have no more use for their drug-addicted spy. However, Booth falls in love with Kendall, and the Germans merely stage Kendall's death. She later turns up in Spain impersonating a noblewoman who is arranging a Red Cross train to aid Allied wounded. In reality she and other German spies are out to steal Allied battle plans. Kendall is discovered by More, but he is dispatched by Booth. Finally, when Booth is killed by Germans, Kendall laughs like a maniac, then breaks into hysterical sobbing, realizing the slaughter she has brought about. The Germans unleash the poison gas along the Allied front and thousands of men are shown dying horribe deaths. Kendall vanishes and is never heard from again. The production values of this film are excellent, and the battle scenes are spectacular, but the script is confusing and the direction is disjointed. The film's point of view changes frequently and abruptly, disorienting the viewer as the focus of the action shifts awkwardly from one character to another. Although the producers claimed that the Kendall character was based upon Anna Maria Lesser, the real "Fraulein Doktor" was Elsbeth "Tiger Eyes" Schragmuller), a German Ph.D who operated a school for spies in Antwerp during WW I. Clever and inventive, she adopted academic approaches to espionage, believing that intensive training was the true making of an agent.