Claudia Butenuth Movies
- 1982
This first-time film for writer and director Friedemann Schulz is about a budding novelist who leaves school to focus on his writing career, supporting himself by working in a car wash by day. A newspaper accepts one of his feature stories, and next he finishes a novel titled "Death in a Car Wash" (the translation of the title of this film, creating a certain parallel between Schulz and his fictional writer). The film itself focuses more on the growing career of the young writer, and his relationship with Jutta (Beate Finckh), the daughter of one of his former teachers. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Benjamin Voelz, Beate Finckh, (more)
- 1979
- PG
In mid-1978, the cult fantasy guru and comic book illustrator Bill Richert -- after months directing Jeff Bridges and Belinda Bauer in the scattergun carnival of a political satire, Winter Kills -- faced a real head-scratcher. With Winter yet to be completed, Richert's backer, Avco-Embassy, lopped off all funding and suspended production indefinitely. Projectless, Richert spun around, picked up an unproduced feature script by drive-in director Larry Cohen (Q, It's Alive!), and somehow found the cash to churn out a second piece of eccentricity with Bridges and Bauer in the leads, this one for Columbia Pictures -- hoping he could use the latter's earnings to polish off Winter. Thus began a very shaky history over the next 30 years for a little film originally called The American Success Company. This ghost of a picture bombed at the box office in 1979, was later reedited twice by Richert under distinct titles (first as American Success in 1981 and then as Success in 1983), and received limited theatrical distribution. It has since fallen through the cracks of movie history, never receiving official distribution on home video but popping up in bootleg versions under the titles Good as Gold and The Ringer. The movie tells the story of Harry Flowers (Bridges), a Milquetoast employee of a Munich-based credit card company, AmSucCo (did AmEx raise any eyebrows at that?), married to the daughter (Bauer) of his slightly tyrannical boss (Ned Beatty). Flowers allows himself to be shoved around and coddled by everyone, until he suddenly decides to slip into an assumed identity -- that of a gruff, bull-by-the-horns modern-day prince, determined to "rescue himself" from wimpdom by learning sexual aggression from a prostitute (Bianca Jagger) and ultimately wresting millions from the hand that feeds him. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeff Bridges, Belinda Bauer, (more)
- 1978
- R
What if General George S. Patton didn't die in a car accident, as history tells us, but at the hands of a paid assassin? That's the premise of Brass Target, another in a series of espionage thrillers, like The Eagle Has Landed, that speculates on the fates of real-life figures from World War II. Robert Vaughn, Ed Bishop, and Edward Herrmann are three Allied officers in occupied Germany who steal Nazi gold with the help of OSS officer Patrick McGoohan. Patton (George Kennedy) personally supervises the investigation of the theft, assisted by Major Joe DeLuca (John Cassavetes). Soon, however, a professional assassin (Max Von Sydow) is on their trail, Patton is killed on the orders of his own staff, and only DeLuca and his lover (Sophia Loren), who is also involved with the assassin, are left alive for the finale. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sophia Loren, John Cassavetes, (more)
- 1975
Based on the best-selling novel by Nobel-laureate Heinrich Böll, this drama is a passionate indictment of Catholicism. Hans Schnier (Helmut Griem) has earned his living as a clown, though he is in fact a very covert sort of social critic. After enduring a difficult childhood in Bonn during the Second World War, including his mother's fanatic Nazism, he is appalled to discover many of the people he knows and loves swept deeply into involvement in the Catholic Church. His complete estrangement from his family and friends, who are now either bourgeois or passionately Catholic (or both), is demonstrated to him, after he makes a series of efforts to make contact. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Helmut Griem, Hanna Schygulla, (more)
- 1972
Alex Karras stars as a naive backwoods strong-man, whose acute ability to lift weights brings him to the attention of a slick sports promoter (James Franciscus). Karras is carefully groomed to compete in the 1972 Olympics; Franciscus gives him explicit instructions to flex his muscles, tote his weights, and to steer clear of trouble. But the bucolic muscle-man upsets the apple-cart by falling in love with a beautiful Russian gymnast (Claudia Butenuth). Karras innocently enmeshes the American team in a hot-potato International incident. Telecast some three months after the actual Olympics (allowing for plenty of stock footage of the real games), 500 Pound Jerk has become a perennial local-station entry, suitable for weekend showings whenever a sports event is suddenly cancelled. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
One of the final links between the Edgar Wallace-based German krimi genre and the Italian giallo thriller, this creepy mystery stars Fabio Testi as a college professor who sleeps with his students and is blamed when a string of murders occurs. Joachim Fuchsberger, as usual, is the police inspector trying to solve the killings; Camille Keaton, Buster Keaton's grand-niece and later the star of Meir Zarchi's I Spit on Your Grave (1980) has a supporting role; cameraman Aristide Massaccesi, later infamous as gore director "Joe D'Amato," turns up as a cop. Massimo Dallamano's direction is assured. This first-rate thriller was based on Wallace's Secret of the Green Pin. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- 1971
Willi (Heinz Erhardt) is the president of a soccer club located in the provinces. The team is deeply in debt and may have to go out of business if something isn't done. He enlists the help of a photographer and his three lovely daughters, and a rich aunt from Brazil arranges for a famous soccer player to join the team. Clever publicity and the new star turn things around. This movie is the fourth in the popular "Willi" series to star Heinz Erhardt. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
Noted novelist and sometime film director James Clavell, wrote, directed, and produced this adaptation of J.B. Pick's novel, set during the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648. During the chaotic confrontations and shifting alliances of the war, a hidden valley protected from the outside world becomes an oasis of peace. Vogel (Omar Sharif), a one-time school teacher now on the run, travels into the peaceful valley. Following Vogel a short time later is a rag-tag and exhausted army, led by The Captain (Michael Caine). Utilizing Vogel as a mediator, the Captain arranges a truce with the valley population -- pledging to protect the people of the valley from invasion in return for food and shelter during the cold winter months. At the end of the season, the army leaves to fight another battle, Vogel is asked to depart from the hidden valley, and the valley and its population continues on and endures. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Caine, Omar Sharif, (more)
