Peter Kuiper Movies

Herbie Melbourne (Didi Hallervorden) is a poor schlemiel who is inadvertently caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea in this German farce about a cab driver (Hallervorden) assigned to bring a "comrade" back to the East German side of the Berlin wall, a passenger who is dead to the world, permanently, when he arrives. Herbie the cabbie is recruited by the KGB and East German Intelligence to help them discover who murdered the man in his back seat. After arriving on the West German side of the divide, Herbie is then recruited by the CIA and West German Intelligence to become a counterspy, for double what the other side is paying him. As Herbie seems to have no viable way out of this mess, he does what many have done before him, he goes to a therapist (Catherine Alric) for help. Reaching into her bag of tricks, the therapist gives Herbie a small bottle he can sniff when in need of self-confidence, an act guaranteed to put him on top of any situation. Now Herbie is a cabbie, a KGB agent, a CIA agent, and a bottle sniffer -- and he is falling in love with his gorgeous therapist. Although the standard chase routines are a bit lengthy and exaggerated, this spy spoof keeps its sense of humor intact.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Italo Bombolini (Anthony Quinn) is the mayor of the hillside village of Santa Vittorio. The wine-loving town leader erases a pro-Mussolini slogan when he hears of the fascist being killed and hanged from a meathook. His wife Rosa (Anna Magnani) throws him out of their wine shop when he and his friends celebrate and he gives away too much wine. When he hears the retreating Nazi Army will soon be in town, hundreds of villagers turn out to hide the wine in an old Roman cave. The people work day and night, hiding 1 million bottles just before the Nazis enter the town. SS officers threaten death to anyone who withholds the wine. Italo presents a single bottle to the irate general (Hardy Kruger), as the hapless Germans are powerless to force the villagers to produce the coveted bottles. Not even a pistol to the head of their beloved mayor is effective as the town stands by, watching in complete silence. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Produced in Germany, this is the story of a young mixed-race man struggling to find his place in West German society of the 1960's. Willy (Hubert Persicke) is the illegitimate child of an African-American G.I. of the Allied occupation forces and a young German woman, Klara (Hannelore Schroth). His mother raises him alone after his father returns to the United States. After graduation from high school, he attempts to find and keep a job. Willy and his mother must face the prejudices of their small town, and eventually she encourages him to pursue a better life in Hamburg, hoping that the impersonal setting of a large city might provide him better opportunities. Director and producer Allan A. Bruckantz is to be commended for his willingness to tackle the subject of racial prejudice in the racially hostile environment of post-war Germany, but unfortunately he does not do his subject matter the justice it deserves. The acting is too thin to be believable and is further hampered by insufficient dubbing. The subject is handled with too little imagination, lack of sufficient depth, and fails to evoke any real self-exploration in the viewers. ~ Lucinda Ramsey, Rovi