William Berger Movies

A made-for-TV effort from horror director Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), this supernatural thriller is ostensibly based on the novella of the same name by Cornell Woolrich -- but the title is pretty much where the similarity ends. The plot involves a possessed Aztec ceremonial cloak (once used to line a sacred burial chamber) which poisons the soul of anyone who wears it. An improbable string of events sees the cloak turned into a little slip of a dress -- donned by several different women, but worn to evil perfection by Madchen Amick (Twin Peaks's Shelly). I'm Dangerous Tonight features colorful supporting performances from Anthony Perkins and R. Lee Ermey. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Noted French director Claude Chabrol helmed this oddity, a remake of German director Fritz Lang's 1922 classic Dr. Mabuse. The film features an all-star international cast as it tells the futuristic horror story of a bizarre epidemic which has swept West Berlin leaving a grim trail of grisly suicides. Meanwhile, the media broadcasts weird, highly suggestive propaganda. The authorities are appalled by all the bloodshed, but only one lone cop suspects that the "suicides" are really the work of a demented criminal mastermind. The film is also known as Dr. M. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this English-dubbed version of an Italian sci-fi film, a group of aliens lands on the planet in spirit form and take over the bodies of the recently dead. Trouble begins when a toddler tells his dad that he sees his deceased mother walking around every day. When the father investigates, he sees her too, and it soon becomes evident that there's a kind of epidemic of revived bodies going on. However, the aliens are not malevolent, and when their new bodies are gathered into one area by the worried authorities, they give them up. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Django was a successful and highly influential "spaghetti western," spawning over 30 pseudo-sequels that borrowed the name and the main character's bloodthirsty ways, but Django 2: Il Grande Ritorno (aka Django Strikes Again) was the first follow-up to feature Franco Nero reprising the title role from the original film, and the only one made with the participation of the director of Django, Sergio Corbucci (though only in an advisory capacity.) In this story, Django (Franco Nero) has spent a decade in a monastery, trying to live down his violent past as a gunman. However, Django is forced to renounce his vows when word gets back to him that a villainous slave trader, Orlowsky (Christopher Connelly), has kidnapped his daughter. Enraged and determined to bring the abductors to justice, Django digs up his old Gatling gun (literally - he had buried it in a graveyard, under a headstone with the name "Django" on it) and once again begins cutting a swath through the countryside as he seeks to free his daughter. Django 2: Il Grande Ritorno also starred Donald Pleasence, William Berger and Robert Posse; some prints are missing a five minute prologue sequence. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Set in a country estate beside the river Alz, the focus on this intellectual German drama, an adaptation of a text by Goethe, is on the complex interaction and conversations between four people involved with the film industry. Edouard is a restless filmmaker who is planning to make a film out of his fiancee Charlotte's upcoming first book. She is an actress and will star in the film. To help with the scripting, Edouard invites screenwriter Otto to stay with them. The last member of the quartet is Charlotte's pretty niece Ottilie, a classical guitar student. Tensions arise when Charlotte and Otto find each other equally inept as writers. Much of the film centers upon the heavy and frequently aloof discourse that goes on between the foursome as they wrangle their way towards finishing and marketing the script. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This entertaining thriller, set along Germany's northern seacoast in the deserted off-season, is garnished with a dash of comedy and easily carried by its two main protagonists: Flutterer, a police detective (Bernard Fresson) and Zorro (Oliver Stritzel) a petty criminal who has to be escorted to a safe haven. Zorro is the unfortunate witness to a Mafia assassination, and if he is going to be around to testify in court against the killers, he needs to be well-hidden in the meantime. Assigned to that job is the burned-out Flutterer, and although the two men are an unlikely team, that is exactly what they become when someone -- either organized crime or crooked cops -- is out to silence both of them, permanently.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In 1938 Berlin, Gudrun Landgrebe, wife of Nazi functionary Kevin McNally, begins taking art lessons. She makes the acquaintance of another student, Japanese ambassador's daughter Mio Takaki. Soon afterwards, the two women begin a passionate lesbian affair. This leads to a chain reaction of disaster and tragedy, culminating with the inevitable intervention of the Gestapo. Despite the film's galloping sexual passions, The Berlin Affair is an exercise in aloofness, keeping the characters at arm's length-surprising, considering that the director was Liliana Cavani, auteur of the erotic classic The Night Porter (1974). The film was based on The Buddhist Cross, a novel by Junichiro Tanizaki. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Unlike other feature-length versions of European TV miniseries, Heimat loses nothing in its translation to the big screen. It was 15 1/2 hours on TV, and remained 15 1/2 hours in theatres! Produced for German television over a 5-year period, Heimat details the turbulent years between 1919 and 1982 through the eyes of the citizens of a small, fictional German village. The central character is Marita Breuer, who matures from a fresh-faced teen to a wrinkled, grim-visaged survivor of the best and the worst life has to offer. The final sequences, far removed from such traumatic collective experiences as the inflation of 1923 and the war of the 1940s, tend to be more sentimental than the earlier passages, but are no less masterfully handled by director Edgar Reitz. Also worth noting is cinematographer Gernot Roll's creative use of color, often switching between hues and monochrome within a scene for dramatic impact. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this moronic genre hybrid, at least seven credited writers -- including Luigi Cozzi, Sergio Martino, and Dardano Sacchetti -- throw Jaws, Piranha, and anything else they can find into a hopeless amalgam of hackneyed story, dull subplots, and terrible effects. Michael Sopkiw and Valentine Monnier are the typically dedicated scientists who try to avert ecological disaster while pawing each other like overheated teenagers. The monster, which is supposed to be a genetically-created hybrid of an octopus and a prehistoric proto-shark (instead resembling a toothy starfish with leprosy), spends most of its time just floating through the water. To compensate for this lack of movement, the victims flail about frantically while pulling the creature's inert tentacles over their bodies. Dr. Davis, the mad scientist behind the "Seakiller Project," gets to babble endlessly while his henchmen run around killing everyone in sight, including a woman who is beaten, stripped naked, and thrown in a bathtub before being electrocuted with a hair dryer. The filmmakers seem to enjoy the sight of women getting beaten up, because all of the female cast members get pummeled at one point or another while wearing very little clothing. Most viewers will find that even the appearance of such Euro-film favorites as Gianni Garko, William Berger, and Dagmar Lassander aren't enough to make this awful mess worth enduring. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

As the discovery of an ancient map leads to the archaeological search for a long-lost sculptor's studio, the outcome hardly seems as though it will be victorious for anyone, right from the beginning. Two Italian art forgers are in competition with an American dealer to lay claim to the ancient site and its treasures, yet the sparse dialogue, sensitive cinematography, and interest in human nature tend to undermine the impact of any action or drama in this film. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi