This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Blistering performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This movie should have been so much better. Lang is capable of a lot more. Unfortunately, it did not live up to its creator's abilities. The writing was stilted and awkward with unrealistic dialogue. Whenever anyone spoke, they basically said whatever they needed to advance the plot regardless if it was believable. There were a few lines about the gods thrown in to remind us we are in India. There is absolutely no subtlety here at all. The worst part about this film was the acting. Not one of these actors was believable or natural. I realize acting styles have changed over the years. The prince with his bad Indian makeup and phony looking jewelry had two moods: bland or outraged. He marched in front of cages of tigers for no apparent reason other than that he's a prince who controls everything and because this movie has tiger in the title. Some of the other actors were caricatures of what they thought Indians should be like. Dark brown makeup with blue eyes and Nordic features? What was Lang thinking? Then we've got the two leads: the dancer and the German architect. Paget the dancer was beautiful to look at, but that's where her talent ended. If she's sad, she's sitting there with a huge frown. If scared, an exaggerated wide eyed look. It's ridiculous how badly she acts in this movie. Reminds me of acting from the 20s. At least then they had no dialogue to work with, so movement was everything. Another thing that is bound to make the acting awful is that the lead actress is not speaking the same language as her paramour... Literally. This makes it impossible for them to relate to and respond to one another. Her lines were overdubbed in German while she spoke them in English in the scene. Her lover spoke German throughout. I'm not sure why Lang chose to cast someone who didn't speak German. Finally, we come to the love interest for our dancer. He's not only creepy, but he's got zero charisma and is unpleasant to watch. At times he's yelling his lines just to inject some emotion into his scenes. It's the work of an amateur. Again, no subtlety. They all are behaving like a bunch of people who have never acted a day in their lives. Considering they are all experienced, i can only lay these errors at the director's feet. Even the costumes and props looked unrealistic and poorly constructed. Perhaps Lang was past it or maybe he just wasn't able to change with the times. Either way, it made for a very poorly constructed picture.

At the end of his career, Fritz Lang made two films in India: The Tiger of Eschnapur (1959) and its sequel, The Indian Tomb (also known as The Tomb of Love) starring Debra Paget, Paul Christian (billed as Paul Hubschmid), Walter Reyer, Claus Holm and Luciana Paluzzi. (In 1960, both movies were combined and edited down to a mere 94 minutes. The resultant hard-to-follow pastiche was then released as Journey to the Lost City). I thoroughly enjoyed The Tiger of Eschnapur. Admittedly, the plot is Boys Own Paper stuff, but on its juvenile level, it offers plenty of spectacular action – and typical Fritz Lang suspense – set against some truly magnificent backgrounds. And who could resist Debra Paget as she appears here, so lovingly photographed and so exotically attired? The only draw-back is that the movie ends like the chapter of a serial and you are then forced to view The Indian Tomb to see how it all comes out. I found this sequel a little tiresome, but many of my colleagues disagreed. To them, this chapter was even more exciting and colorful than The Tiger of Eschnapur. I would hazard that how you react depends to some extent on the interval of time involved. I watched the sequel straightaway. My colleagues viewed it at intervals varying from a week to six months. Both films are now available on excellent DVDs.

I was wary of purchasing Fantoma's 2-Disc Set of "Fritz Lang's Indian Epic" after being somewhat let down by the 1921 Silent original (co-scripted by Lang himself) and also its less-than-stellar reputation. For this reason, when the second part of the saga turned up on Italian TV a couple of years ago, I decided to check it out just the same so as to get an inkling of what to expect! I recall thinking it pretty kitschy and unworthy of Lang's enormous talent, but Fantoma's sale (through their website) of their entire DVD catalog a few months back made it an irresistible acquisition! Well, having now watched the entire saga (with dialogue and in color, as opposed to the rather static Silent version directed by Joe May - although hearing the Indian-garbed characters talking in German took some getting used to), I was pleasantly surprised by how genuinely engaging and sheerly enjoyable it all was! Though it was sold as an epic production (to the point of concluding ESCHNAPUR with the promise that Part II would feature greater thrills and even more spectacle) at a time when such films were all the rage, the saga was actually a pretty modest undertaking by eclectic (and prolific) German producer Artur Brauner. Despite the two films' exotic, handsome look (not least in the provocative dances of Debra Paget), the budgetary constraints were painfully obvious in the special effects department, especially the hilarious appearance of a 'ropey' cobra which is intended to 'test' (the scantily-clad) Miss Paget's faithfulness to the Maharajah!! All in all, even if these films hardly constitute Lang's greatest work (though he harbored an evident affection throughout his life for this particular tale, which was originally conceived by his former wife Thea von Harbou), they have great - and enduring - appeal for aficionados of old-fashioned, serial-like adventure stories tinged with romance and mysticism.Even so, while I don't subscribe to that school of thought myself, there are some film critics (Tom Gunning, Jean Douchet and Pierre Rissient among them) who think very highly of Lang's Indian diptych - the first considering it one of Lang's towering achievements and the last two numbering it among the ten greatest films of all time!!

Der Tiger von Eschnapur looks like a silent movie with dialogue. The settings are magnificent and the story telling comes close to Der Müde Tod. Unfortunately the characters will speak and that breaks the magic in it. Especially for the lead actor playing architect Harald Berger: he is awful and it's even worse with the dubbing in the French version. I wonder why Fritz Lang had to make do with him. Perhaps his eyesight was starting to decline. Perhaps he was just not able to shoot his great tragedies of the 20s with dialogue although he prided himself on being a good script doctor. Well, he had to adapt to the American Motion Picture Industry then his Art would be stemmed, obstructed.The pity is Fritz Lang never topped himself after his marvelous silent works of the 20s. Metropolis is overrated but despite all the wooden sentimentalism in it we have insights of the German director at his best. With M he gave us the best out of the silent era but he never again reach the magic of his previous work. While it took twenty years to Hitchcock to come to the masterpieces he shot in the 50s Lang did not improve his visual mastering. And worst of all the scripts he was handed in Hollywood hardly appealed to his deepest talent whereas he closely engaged in the making of Thea von Harbou's screenplays.