Heißes Pflaster Köln (1967)

In 1960s Cologne, an underworld war is raging. Two rival gangs—the “Cologne men” and the “Vienna men”—are fighting tooth and nail ever since Poldi, an Austrian pimp and brothel owner, tried to break into Cologne’s red-light district. This does not sit well with his long-established rivals, since the districts have already been firmly divided up among the local pimps. When a full-scale brawl breaks out between the Cologne men and the Vienna men in a Cologne courtyard, a man dies. He has been beaten to death. The police hold a notorious local gangster responsible and arrest him. His brother, Paul “Paule” Keil, flies into a rage and, together with his cronies, begins extending the petty war to the investigating prosecutor, Dr. Stauffer. In broad daylight, in the middle of the street and among passersby, several thugs attack him, and his son Ernst is kidnapped. While the police investigate frantically, the gang war continues. People are punched and kicked, whipped and shot. But scenes also keep showing that, on the surface, the sex trade goes on as usual. For example, there is Alfons Schulz, a respectable Cologne citizen who always presents himself as a virtuous model citizen but secretly enjoys making frequent use of prostitutes’ services. Yet the “Cologne swamp,” with its “immorality,” also takes other forms: for example, two girls who regularly extort money from an old woman, drink alcohol shamelessly in public, and harass passersby. The hunt for Ernst Stauffer’s kidnappers leads to a showdown between the police and the gangsters in the Cologne exhibition halls; several of them are killed in the exchange of gunfire. Prosecutor Stauffer’s son is rescued from the criminals’ clutches at the last moment.