Peter Pewas remains one of the most venerated wild cards of German cinema; his maiden feature, Der verzauberte Tag (1943), a wild-at-heart exercise in Carnéian poetic realism, was suppressed by the Nazi censors, and his sophomore effort, Straßenbekanntschaft (1948), an exposé on prostitution and venereal diseases in Weimar-era Straßenfilm-guise, became one of the biggest moneymakers for the newly-founded DEFA, the East German state-run film studio. The latter became something of a problem when Pewas decided to seek his fortunes in West Germany; while it was okay for genre craftsmen like Hans Deppe or Arthur Maria Rabenalt to have worked in the Soviet Occupied Zone or even the GDR (especially when they had “done their bit” for Nazi Germany), the likes of Pewas faced hard times in the FRG. Viele kamen vorbei was, in fact, a project offered to him by another maverick, anarcho-conservative producer-writer-director Gerhard T. Buchholz (Weg ohne Umkehr, 1953), who was desperately looking for someone to do this serial killer-yarn told from several perspectives: that of perpetrator, victim, investigator and innocent bystander (the victim’s adorato). Pewas used the opportunity to create a visually dazzling genre exercise for which he mixes styles and moods like mad. The title of Hans Fischerkösen’s splendid bitters ad in the shape of an ultra-condensed horror film (nightmares! ghosts!) would also work perfectly for Pewas’ gem: Through the Night to the Light.