Peter Kern Movies

This trashy German comedy is only for those adventurous few who find humor in the basest bodily functions, graphic violence, and degrading sex. The free-form story is set somewhere in Africa where an unhinged UN general is seen playing S&M games with his athletically handsome, but pea-brained body-building coach. One day his bride, an aging virgin, "miraculously" gives birth to a black child and names him Peter Panne. A deposed, radical bishop who desires to overthrow the Vatican comes around and hails the babe as the Messiah. Simultaneously, the local despot conspires to kill the US president via special rockets powered by burning human sacrifices. The bishop is playing with the child, when the baby gets a marble stuck up its nose. During the resulting surgery, the doctor screws up, leaving the boy horribly disfigured; five years after the surgery, he has but a gaping, mucous spewing slit where his nose should have been. Whenever the lad gets excited, copious amounts of slime come gushing from his face. Naturally, he is a very excitable boy, and unfortunately, his frequently naked mother ends up being his human handkerchief. Still his mother really loves Peter and wholeheartedly believes that he is the true Messiah, so when he grows up she has sex with him and becomes his bride after they crash land in a rocket that destroys the White House. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This unique, erotic film is a compilation of four separate vignettes done by four different artists. The first episode, "Let's Talk about Love," focuses on a phone-sex worker, Rosie, who finds herself attracted to a regular caller. The story focuses upon their conversations and upon the revenge she exacts from him after she learns the truth. In the second, "Taboo Parlor," two lesbians plan to go out and make it with a man. They go to Taboo Parlor, a local club which is managed by Hilde and Franz. In the third episode, "Final Call," a teacher who gets attacked on a train begins a relationship with her rescuer. The fourth episode, " Wonton Soup," examines an Australian-born Chinese man and his ex-girlfriend from Hong Kong, who reunite after years apart. In an effort to reconnect, the man prepares an evening of gourmet food and Chinese sexual techniques for the ex-girlfriend. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Just as there are wide-angle lenses and wide-spray shotgun shells, there are broadly aimed spoofs, and this is one of them. Left, right, neo-Nazis and do-gooders all come in for brickbats in this equal-opportunity slam. Even the reunification of Germany falls under the category of "tasteless modern inventions." In the story, a secret service agent and his female partner are given the job of investigating the murder of some people seeking political asylum in Germany. In the vision of the world that emerges while they chase the very baddest bad guys, the powerless enjoy being messed with by bullies and rapists, and mental health is a nonsensical idea. This dark, nihilistic view of life reportedly suited this film's largely teen male target audience to a "t," but more sensitive sorts (almost anyone else) is liable to find it offensive. Nonetheless, this is a fast-paced, expertly made thriller in addition to being a spoof, and it can readily be appreciated on that level. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this movie, a woman is going mad, literally, with frustration. Based on a novel by Ingeborg Bachmann, Isabelle Huppert plays the distraught woman who feels that the choice between her uninspiring husband and her indifferent lover warrants ever-escalating displays of rage, distress and loss of self-control. Eventually her self-indulgence leads to her setting her now-demolished Viennese apartment on fire and burning herself alive in it while the movie score plays songs from grand opera to celebrate her dramatic departure from life. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Peter Kern, the director of this offbeat film, was one of the regular actors in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's films, and it seems unlikely that reviewers will ever let him live that down. In this story, a shy, inhibited executive in a computer firm seeks his sexual release through the materials available to him in porn shops. He gets much more personally involved in life when he accidentally hits a crazed woman while driving his car. Basically uninjured, she becomes fixated on him, following him around and singing opera to him - at work, at home, and elsewhere. Otherwise she is mute. Needless to say, her attentions completely upset the orderly schedule of his life. Meanwhile, this otherwise timid man has undertaken to shelter an Asian prostitute from her abusive pimp. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

When her search for the chemical components of "romantic" love prove fruitless in her native Hamburg, naïve German journalist Dorothee travels to San Francisco to conduct "research" in director Monika Treut's unabashedly hedonistic exploration of one woman's sexuality. Soon introduced to the city's thriving lesbian scene, Dorothee's encounters with a series of sexually liberated ladies eventually lead her to wonder if she has finally found the true meaning of love. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A tough black comedy that reaches into the absurd to bring its message across, this effort by director Josef Roedl is a true original. Jacob (Sigi Zimmerschied) comes from a small village in Bavaria that has disappeared, eaten up by a sprawling U.S. military base. When he gets a job with a greedy capitalist known only as the Boss (Peter Kern) he does not know it is a ruse; his new employer wants Jacob's aunt's house and land. The Boss hires Janis (Sunnyi Melles) to seduce Jacob into a trap that would force him to hand over his aunt's property (his aunt is in a mental institution and legally incapacitated). When he catches on to these plots, Jacob puts on Army fatigues and goes to live in an abandoned barn in his old village, which just happens to be smack dab on the military base's firing range. To Jacob, he is now in the U.S. and can launch attacks against the Boss. From this point onward, other characters come in and out of his barn, including Janis, who must decide whether or not she can take the dive bombers and artillery fire in order to stay with Jacob. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Two bit players in the movies share a home together, spend their days getting as much work as they can, and keep scrapbooks of their minor triumphs - literally in the background of the cinematic world. Costumed in character as an executive, one of the players is riding the bus to work when a woman mistakes him for a studio head and before the ride is over, she has been easily convinced to be a bit player. She quits her job and does become a bit player, in fact, when one day her mother decides to make a surprise visit to the studio. By coincidence, the crew have rebelled against the head of the studio that day, and the crazy bit players put on a false show to fool her mother into thinking that her daughter is a lead actress - making in fact, a film within a film. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Having made as many films as he had years, at 31, Rainer Werner Fassbinder essayed a slightly different approach for his 32nd film, Despair. Here, he uses a witty screenplay written by the well-known playwright Tom Stoppard, based on a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. Furthermore, the entire film, set in 1930s Germany, is in English. It received mixed reviews, if only because it is so unlike the director's other works. In the story, a Russian owner of a German chocolate-factory, whose business and marriage are both on the rocks, fantasizes about leaving his current life, and living another one. Indeed, he has delusions that he is somehow outside himself, watching himself live his life. So strong is his desire to alter his life that when he encounters a tramp while on a brief business trip, he imagines that the man looks exactly like him, decides to exchange identities with the tramp, and murders him. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This seven-hour long epic completes the "German Trilogy" of Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, which began with his meditation on the life of Ludwig II of Bavaria and continued with a biography of popular writer Karl May. In this film, he explores the factors in the German psyche which sought for and then deified a man like Hitler. Using absolutely no archival footage from the Nazi era, this highly symbolic and poetic film explores German culture and history. At times, Hitler is depicted as a toga-clad spirit, quoting Richard Wagner, and at times he appears in other guises -- all of them critical to understanding his role in the German mind, and hence to understanding the phenomena which caused the German people to support him. The film uses transcripts from radio broadcasts made during the Nazi era to underscore the importance of radio in unifying the nation at that time. Hitler: ein Film aus Deutschland was made to run in four segments on German, British and French television. The segments were titled "The Grail," "A German Dream," "The End of the Winter's Tale," and "We Children of Hell." Understanding that evil is clearly the purpose of this epochal and difficult film, the director said that, "It is easy to understand the revolt of slaves but difficult to comprehend the evil of tyrants." ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The lovely Leni (Katja Rupe) lives in a cottage on the slopes of the hill owned by the wealthy Sternstein farming family. She has had her eye on Toni, the son of that family, for some time and hopes to wed him and occupy the glorious Sternstein manor. Toni, too, has been longing to marry her. Instead, each is forced to marry others. When both their spouses die, the two are finally able to wed, but by then the war intervenes, and the mansion goes unoccupied. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Mother Kusters (Brigette Kira) is the wife of a factory worker who goes beserk one day, killing himself and the boss' son. Mother finds herself a media celebrity, which only serves to make herself and her late husband look like idiots. Later, Mother is "adopted" by a Communist couple who wish to exploit her husband's "act of defiance" for their own purposes. Finally left alone, Mother Kusters decides to stop living off her husband's notoriety and turn into a human being again. Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder used the 1929 film Mother Krausen's Journey to Happiness as a springboard for his own mysoginistic slant on opportunism. The film hit a bit too close to home in his own country, where it was banned from entering the Berlin Film Festival. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide