Klaus Kinski Movies

Troma Team Pictures, the independent production company who've taken a brave stand for creative tastelessness with such films as The Toxic Avenger, Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D., and Terror Firmer, launched their own film festival to provide a showcase for real independent filmmakers in the midst of the annual Utah chaos that is the Sundance, Slamdance, Slamdunk, Nodance, and other film festivals. Best of Tromadance Film Festival, Vol. 1 collects three hours worth of short films screened at the Troma-sponsored festival, which charges no entry fee to filmmakers and offers free admissions to all their screenings. Highlights include Deadbeats, which marked the first screen appearance of wrestling star Mick Foley; Kill Mr. Kinski, a short based on a number of strange stories about working with the brilliant but notoriously difficult actor Klaus Kinski; Psychotic Odyssey, a dramatization of the grim career of a real-life serial career, re-enacted using hand puppets; purposefully rancid children's show parody H.R. Pukenshette; and Los Vampirios Moronious, featuring Karen Black. The video also includes a documentary on the festival produced for the British television series Edge TV. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Director Werner Herzog, as usual, has spared no one -- especially himself -- in bringing this story of 19th-century African slave trading to the screen. Klaus Kinski plays an enterprising young Brazilian who after impregnating the three daughters of his plantation-owning employer, is sent to West Africa to round up slaves. Kinski goes to great lengths to befriend the very people he hopes to enslave and he eventually manages to overthrow a mad monarch and set himself up as king. As the years pass, Kinski grows wealthy -- and careless. However, despite enslaving the tribe, he does show some signs of humanitarian benevolence. This fifth and final collaboration between director Herzog and Kinski is considered the weakest of the five features. Though the title translates literally as Green Cobra, Cobra Verde was released in the U.S. as Slave Coast. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this spaghetti western, Klaus Kinski appears as a lustful gunman who's after three murderers. ~ Rovi

A homicidal maniac doctor specializes in murder and owns a peaceful boarding house for lovely aspiring actresses. They feel safe and comfortable there. Little do they know, the good-doctor is getting his jollies by crawling through narrow spaces between the walls peeking at them through the heating vents. Sometimes he likes to shake the women up by making scary noises in the vents and blaming them on rats. The poor women also do not know that he is also a sadistic killer with a taste for slow, gruesome torture and clever traps. The whole nasty situation comes to a head when a Nazi hunter begins to trail him. Although the doctor himself was never a Nazi, his father was a wanted war criminal. Later it is revealed that the physician feels that he is predestined to follow in his father's grisly footsteps. He proves this after every killing when he plays a game of Russian roulette with his revolver. Each empty chamber is an affirmation that he is doing what he should. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this sequel to 1987's Nosferatu the Vampire, Nosferatu (Klaus Kinski) is brought back to life by gypsies and shows his thanks by pushing an old lady out of a window onto a row of spikes. He seduces a local princess and battles a professor (Christopher Plummer) who is out to destroy him. Director Luigi Cozzi was brought in to finish the film when Kinski violently disagreed with original director Augustino Caminito and refused to be directed by him. ~ Brian Gusse, Rovi

In this commando action-adventure by Antonio Margheriti, Captain Wesley (Lewis Collins) has been charged with cleaning out some drug sites in Thailand and gathers up four of his mercenaries for the task. His superior is Fletcher (Ernest Borgnine), a drug enforcement officer with shady business contacts. Wesley and his crew, including the tough Charlton (Klaus Kinski) and China (Lee Van Cleef), head out into the jungle to eradicate the drugs at their source. Battles and explosions follow. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Based on John Le Carré's novel by the same name, this story about Charlie (Diane Keaton) a female double agent working between the Palestinians and Israelis, loses some of the excitement and in-depth characterization engendered by the long novel -- mainly because the novel is hard to capture in a two-hour filmed format. But the action itself carries viewers along as Charlie ends up leaving England and her job as an actress in a Brit repertory company to meet Kurtz (Klaus Kinski) in Greece who recruits her as a spy. Charlie later has to handle her own emotions when she gets romantically involved with her Israeli contact (Yorgo Voyagis), though events move her quickly along to a Palestinian military camp near Beirut. Once she has passed herself off as a reliable Palestinian agent and completed her military training at the camp, she goes to Germany to hunt down a Palestinian terrorist (Sami Frey). Filled with a multitude of characters and locations, not to mention camera shots, the intensity of this story is dissipated somewhat by literally and figuratively covering a lot of territory, though the thread of the story itself is never lost. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In this atmospheric, somewhat eerie retelling of the classic story, a young woman named Beauty (Susan Sarandon) is forced to leave her father's home and go to live in the castle of a frightening Beast Klaus Kinski. The reason for this demand is that Beauty's father, on his travels, had stolen a rose from the Beast's estate, to bring home as a gift for his beloved daughter. Now the Beast has demanded Beauty's presence, and going to live with him is the only way she can save her father's life. Beauty's sister (Anjelica Huston), jealous of her pretty and kindly sister, isn't sorry to see her go. Beauty, afraid and homesick at first, is surprised to find that the Beast treats her kindly. He asks every day if she will marry him, but Beauty refuses until something happens to help her see inside the Beast's true heart. One volume in the highly praised Faerie Tale Theatre series, created by Shelley Duvall. ~ Alice Duncan, Rovi

James Toback wrote and directed this typically intense and idiosyncratic satiric thriller. Byron Levin (Ray Sharkey) is an investment planner who has grown tired of his job and is bored by his relationship with his girlfriend Vicky (Susan Heldfond). When Frederick Stockheinz (Klaus Kinski), an international business magnate, approaches Byron about helping him establish a new firm in a small South American nation, he gladly accepts the offer. It isn't long before Byron discovers that he's gotten involved in something far more complicated than he ever imagined. The country has rich reserves of silver, but it is also in a state of political upheaval, and Byron is dealing with dictators and fending off revolutionaries as often as he minds the bottom line. Byron also encounters Frederick's wife Catherine (Ornella Muti), a beautiful woman with whom he begins having a very dangerous affair. Love and Money also features legendary director King Vidor in a small role as Byron's father; it was his first acting role in a film, and his last (he died nine months after the film's release). ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A big black mamba snake that has gotten loose in a townhouse slithers through a kidnapping plot in this film. Based on a novel by Alan Scholefield, Venom features a big name British cast that seems to be slumming in a B-movie project. Dr. Marion Stowe (Sarah Miles) is a toxicologist who has brought the snake to London to study the properties of its deadly venom. It escapes and terrorizes the inhabitants of the townhouse, where an attempted kidnapping is in progress. Dave (Oliver Reed), Jacmel (Klaus Kinski) and Louise (Susan George) are the villains trying to hold the son of a wealthy family for ransom. Original director Tobe Hooper was replaced by Piers Haggard. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

A compelling but very strange relationship between a young and lonely fourteen-year-old girl and a mute peasant farmer is at the core of this curious film by Raphaele Billetdoux. Elisabeth (Penelope Palmer) has reason to be unhappy at home so when she meets Marcel (Klaus Kinski), a farmer who indulges her, the two enjoy many an innocent moment together every morning before she leaves for school. Eventually, Elisabeth's parents send her off to study the organ because of her musical talent. As a result, she begins to develop her abilities and grow beyond the relationship she once had with Marcel. But the mute farmer does not necessarily see this change from Elisabeth's perspective. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

As if in some way Billy Wilder sensed that Buddy Buddy would ultimately turn out to be his final feature film, Wilder lets loose scatter-shot stingers at a wide range of pop-culture targets -- from sex clinics, to 60 Minutes, to movie references, to disco, to Betamax video recorders. Based on Francis Veber and Edouard Molinaro's L'emmerdeur (known in the United States as A Pain in the A. . .), Buddy Buddy concerns the unlikely pairing of a gruff hitman and a suicidal klutz. Walter Matthau plays a professional killer going by the name of Trabucco, who is on his way to rub out gangster Rudy "Disco" Gambola (Fil Formicola), set to testify against the mob. As Trabucco heads off to a hotel across the street from the courthouse where he plans to set his hit, he runs into the depressed Victor Clooney (Jack Lemmon), who laments the fact that his wife has left him for the head of a weird Californian sex clinic. Trabucco keeps walking and sets up his rifle in a hotel room. He is disturbed by Victor trying to hang himself in the adjoining hotel room and tries to prevent him from killing himself by restraining him, but Victor breaks loose and climbs onto the ledge of the hotel window. To get Victor to come back in, he agrees to drive him to the clinic to see his wife. The two go to the clinic where Victor's wife Celia (Paula Prentiss) informs Victor that she is in love in the head of the clinic, quack Dr. Zuckerbrot (Klaus Kinski). When Victor finds out that Celia is filing for divorce, he heads back to the hotel to kill himself, with Celia and Dr. Zuckerbrot in pursuit. Arriving at the hotel, they plan to inject Victor with a sedative but stick Trabucco with the needle instead. Trabucco reveals to Victor his assignment to kill Rudy, and Victor tries to help him with the killing. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi