'Mord und Todschlag' carries you back to the moods of 1967, the year of its production. Although not intended, the cleverly invoked nostalgia makes this film worth watching -- in any case for those around in Germany at the time.

Apart from this: its story is fairly original. Its picturing, acting and music are mediocre, or a little better than that.

The big eye-catcher, however, is Anita Pallenberg, aged 25 at the time. She started as a fashion-model, and got famous for getting involved with three different Rolling Stones. It's quite clear that producer Schloendorff wrapped his film around her, and well ... he could have chosen worse.

This low-grade German movie does not focus on the investigation of a murder but the efforts of the perpetrator to cover up her crime. The story opens as 22-year-old Marie, played by a vacant Anita Pallenberg, is awakened by Hans, her ex-boyfriend who has come to collect her belongings. An argument ensues and she winds up killing him. Unmoved by the moral aspect of what she's done, she concerns herself with the business of disposing of the body, immediately involving another young man who in turn becomes her lover. This banal melodrama is slow, poorly acted and often illogical, and is sporadically interrupted by mechanical lovemaking scenes. Equally illogical: this film won three German Film Awards and was entered into the 1967 Cannes Film Festival, where it did not win but elevated director Volker Schlöndorff as the new find of German cinema, which he obliged in his later movies, such as THE TIN DRUM. DEGREE OF MURDER is remembered only for its mediocre soundtrack, which was created by The Rolling Stones' Brian Jones.