Like Fritz Lang’s great Weimar-era classic M, Robert Siodmak’s The Devil Strikes at Night is the story of a serial killer. Siodmak’s film, however, takes place during the Third Reich, and every aspect of the case is filtered through the political reality and interests of that regime. Based on the real case of murderer Bruno Lüdke, Siodmak’s character has killed more than eighty women and is ultimately apprehended by an honest police officer. Yet in 1944 Germany, it was inconceivable to admit that a mass murderer had eluded detection or capture for more than a decade; by order of Hitler himself, news of the case is completely suppressed, and the police officer is sent to the front. Siodmak narrates this story with a kind of chilling detachment, avoiding sensationalism while focusing on the omnipresent influence of the Gestapo, even on criminal investigations.