Volker Spengler Movies

Matthais Glasner directs this wild, bizarre crime thriller set in Berlin's fetish club scene. Bubble-brained bimbo Shirley (Nicolette Krebitz) dumps her club-owning boyfriend Lupo, swipes his car, and shacks up with ultra-mellow D.J. Sunny (Moritz Bleibtreu). Unfortunately for Shirley and her new beau, Lupo realizes that the car was full of the drugs that he owes to murderous tattooed lesbian gangster Duke, and he begins to pursue the couple. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Reviewers were intrigued by this film's trashy title and found its attempts to emulate the stylish bad taste of director John Waters' films appropriate and interesting but felt that in the "bad films that are good anyway" department, this movie was a serious letdown. In the story, after killing her husband (or so she believes), an East German woman flees to the West, becoming the companion of a super-tough lesbian. However, when Germany gets reunified, her by now thoroughly deranged husband comes after her with a chainsaw, and he's not going to let anybody or anything come between him and his vengeance ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Four renegade street-kids band together to form a family of sorts while they live in an abandoned warehouse. They say that they prefer to endure any hardship rather than return to their families. One is a male prostitute, another is a Turkish girl whose family wants her to enter an arranged marriage, another is a Japanese boy who wants to be in a rock band. They are finally getting their squat set up in a liveable way, and are coming to terms with one another when much of their harmony is destroyed by vandals. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A sailor learns to take, and give, it like a man in this surrealistic adaptation of writer and thief Jean Genet's novel Querelle de Brest by avant-garde German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In a colorful brothel in the port of Brest, proprietor Nono (Gunther Kaufmann) is known for wagering with his customers. Win a throw of the dice, and they get to make love with his wife, Lysiane (Jeanne Moreau); lose, and they must take it from behind by Nono himself. One day, Lysiane reads the tarot for her lover, Robert (Hanno Poschl), and learns in the cards of his intense passion for his brother, Querelle (Brad Davis). Querelle himself soon arrives, and the brothers enact a bizarre greeting halfway between a hug and a wrestling match. Querelle, it seems, is looking for partners in a drug deal; Robert points him in the right direction. An argument about the merits of sex between men soon leads Querelle to murder his fellow smuggler, Vic (Dieter Schidor). Back at the whorehouse, Querelle loses on purpose to Nono and finds he has a taste for passive gay sex. Meanwhile, fellow sailor Gil, who looks exactly like Querelle's brother (and is played by the same actor), murders one of his compatriots after the brute publicly impugns his manhood. Wanted by the police for both his own crime and Querelle's, Gil goes on the lam. Querelle soon crashes his hideout, and an intense bond develops between the two murderers -- a friendship that will lead Querelle to the greatest love, and the greatest treachery, of his life. Director Fassbinder was in the process of editing Querelle when he died of a drug overdose in June 1982. Gunther Kaufmann, who plays Nono, was Fassbinder's ex-lover; the film is dedicated to another former lover, El Hedi Ben Salem, the news of whose suicide had just reached the director. Critically derided even by many of Fassbinder's admirers, Querelle earned a Golden Raspberry award for Worst "Original" Song for "Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves," an Oscar Wilde poem set to music by Peer Raben and sung repeatedly by Jeanne Moreau. Moreau had previously starred in Mademoiselle, a Tony Richardson effort co-scripted by Genet. Look for Frank Ripploh, another pioneering German director, in a cameo. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

In this send-up of politics and sex, and what is or is not obscene, director Hans -Christof Stenzel has hero Peter Herzl (Volker Spengler) is forced by circumstances into temporary shelter with Kathi Zokan (Lydia Kreibohm), a prostitute who keeps Peter's presence a secret from her pimp, Joe Neuffer (Hanno Poeschi). While Joe is busy with his especially depraved sex parlors, complete with balconies for viewing in one case, Peter is also making the acquaintance of Edeltraut, Kathi's daughter (Karina Fallenstein). The Karl Marx apartment complex was once the scene of heavy fighting between socialists and right-wing radicals - something that is forgotten by everyone except Edeltraut, who holds to her idealized vision of this earlier, tumultuous world. When Joe spies on Kathi and finds out she is housing Peter, he calls in the police accusing Peter of terrorism. Now Peter's life could be in danger, as the police get set to storm the apartment complex and arrest him. ~ 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

The film that elevated German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder from domestic approbation to international acclaim, The Marriage of Maria Braun stars the director's on-and-off favorite actress Hanna Schygulla in the title role. During the allied siege of Germany in the last year of the war, Maria's new husband (Klaus Löwitsch) is shipped off to the Russian front before the marriage is consummated. As she struggles to survive wartime deprivations, Maria haunts the local train station, seeking out information concerning her husband. When it appears that she's a widow, Maria takes a job as a barmaid and befriends a black soldier (George Byrd) from the occupying allied troops, who sees to it that Maria's family receives vital food and supplies. The opportunistic Maria eventually takes a job with a wealthy importer (Ivan Desny), building herself up to a position of power and indispensability. Though she sleeps with her employer, Maria still carries a torch for her husband. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder both directed and photographed The Third Generation (Die Dritte Generation). Displaying a sense of humor that can most kindly be described as perverse, Fassbinder follows the exploits of a group of well-heeled German terrorists. Without truly taking sides, the director demonstrates how the terrorists are essentially shooting themselves in the foot. The more havoc they spread, the tighter the government restrictions against other radicals. Eddie Constantine, the sang-froid leading man of many a Lemmy Caution espionage film, is ironically cast in The Third Generation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Rainer Werner Fassbinder drama centers around the lonely quest for love of Elvira Weishaupt, a man who became a woman to please his/her man. Just prior to that, Elivira had been jilted by her previous live-in partner, a man. She does the operation to win the heart of another, Anton. Unfortunately, the sex-change operation does not change the intended's mind; Anton is simply not interested. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This fast-paced black comedy by wunderkind director Rainer Werner Fassbinder follows the frantic efforts of a starving and confused writer, Walter Kranz (Kurt Raab) to beg, borrow or steal enough money to survive on, and at the same time make some sense of his confusing life. Unable to write enough to keep his publisher's royalty advances coming, he seeks out a woman he imagines is a prostitute and interviews her for material. He is also inspired to utter some poetry, which his brassy, outspoken wife identifies as coming from the famous homosexuality-advocating mystical German poet, Stefan George. This inspires Walter to take a closer look at the "gay scene," and he quickly becomes a sort of celebrity there. ~ 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