Reinl is an Austrian director and screenwriter. As a student, he was a successful skier. During a race, he was discovered by the German director Arnold Franck, who offered him work as an extra in his films (he was also an extra in Leni Riefenstahl’s films). After graduation, he devoted his career to skiing and also made short and feature films on the side. He was an assistant director to Leni Riefenstahl on her four-year-long project Tiefland. He made his directing debut with the feature film Bergkristall (1949). He made about two or three films a year and specialized in the so-called Heimatfilm genre whose story is set in rural areas and glorifies the beauty of nature while combining it with an appropriate sentimental story. Some of his films from that period are Die Fischerin vom Bodensee (1956), Die Prinzessin von St. Wolfgang (1957), Die Zwillinge vom Zillertal (1957). He also made films in other genres such as As Long as You Live (Solange du lebst, 1955), a story set in the era of the Spanish Civil War, which was criticized as too militant. Afterwards he made two more war films: U47 - Kapitänleutnant Prien (1958) and Die grünen Teufel von Monte Cassino (1958). In 1959, he made the crime drama Face of the Frog (Der Frosch mit der Maske, 1959), a film adaptation of Edgar Wallace’s novel. It was a great success and inspired a series of films based on Wallace’s novels, of which Reinl directed four: The Terrible People (Die Bande des Schreckens, 1960), The Forger of London (Der Fälscher von Londonm, 1961), Room 13 (Zimmer 13, 1964) and The Sinister Monk (Der unheimliche Mönch, 1965). He directed two films from the series of films about Dr. Mabuse: The Return of Dr. Mabuse (Im Stahlnetz des Dr. Mabuse, 1961) and The Invisible Dr. Mabuse (Die unsichtbaren Krallen des Dr. Mabuse, 1962). In 1962, he directed Treasure of Silver Lake (Der Schatz im Silbersee, 1962), the first the many of German Westerns based on Karl May’s novels. After the shooting a trilogy about Winnetou (1963-1965), he also directed the film In the Valley of Death (Winnetou und Shatterhand im Tal der Toten, 1968). In the late 1960’s and 1970’s he directed a series of crime films: Death and Diamonds (Dynamit in grüner Seide, 1968), FBI Operation Pakistan (Kommissar X jagt die roten Tiger, 1971) and several comedies. He also made several action films and his last films were documentaries such as Mysteries of the Gods (Botschaft der Götter, 1976) based on Erich von Däniken’s book.