Fear (1983)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | fear |
| Country of production | Austria |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1983 |
| length |
Director's Cut : 75 minutes Theatrical version: 83 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Gerald Kargl |
| script | Gerald Kargl , Zbigniew Rybczyński |
| production | Gerald Kargl , Josef Reitinger-Laska |
| music | Klaus Schulze |
| camera | Zbigniew Rybczyński |
| cut | Zbigniew Rybczyński |
| occupation | |
| |
Angst is an Austrian psychological thriller and cult film by Gerald Kargl . The film tells the story of a psychopathic killer, played by Erwin Leder , and is loosely based on the serial killer Werner Kniesek . Kargl wrote the script together with the Polish Oscar winner Zbigniew Rybczyński , who is also responsible for the unconventional camera work.
action
The act is told or commented on by the perpetrator via voice-over .
A young man is released from custody at Stein Prison . It turns out that he has served a sentence for the murder of a woman but is still obsessed with the lust for murder. As he imagines who his next victims might be, he walks into a petrol station café and faces two young women. After leaving the café, he continues his way by taxi, where he ponders his youth and gets ready to strangle the driver with a shoelace. However, the latter notices his plan, whereupon he escapes into the forest and gains entry into a seemingly vacant, middle-class house.
As it turns out, the property is inhabited. A woman lives here with her two grown children, a young woman and a disabled son, as well as the dachshund they share. When the two women come home, the intruder reacts in panic. He ties the daughter to the door handle with tape and chokes the mother half to death. Then he pulls the wheelchair-bound son into the bathroom and drowns him in the bathtub. As he does this, he thinks back to his childhood and youth, his grandmother and sister, and his stepfather. After discovering that the woman is already dead, the young girl manages to escape. With a bread knife he follows her into a cellar corridor and brutally kills her with several stings. Smeared with blood, he penetrates her dead body.
The next morning, the murderer packs all three bodies in the trunk of the family car and leaves the property. He causes a rear-end collision at an intersection. He flees from the scene of the accident to the café he had visited the day before. Again the two girls are sitting at the bar. The man looks extremely tense and has traces of blood on his body, which makes the waitress and guests suspicious. You follow him to the car and witness how the police just arrived open the trunk. The film ends with an excerpt from Kniesek's psychiatric report.
Parallels to Werner Kniesek
Even if the events in the film are largely based on the triple murder of St. Pölten in 1980, there are still some differences to reality. While Kniesek was only on detention during the act, the viewer of the film gets the impression that the murderer is finally released. In addition, Kniesek carried a gas pistol with him when entering the house , but in the film the main character is clearly unarmed. The murders themselves, however, are portrayed fairly realistically. Only the torture scenes were shown significantly shortened compared to the actual course of events. An additional cat that was killed is not taken into account in the film, rather the family keeps a dachshund as a pet, which remains intact until the end. The capture of the perpetrator was also not quite as quick as in the film. The biographical contents of the first-person narrator also do not completely coincide with Kniesek's life story.
A psychiatrist classified Kniesek as "extremely abnormal, but not insane". In his confession, he uttered the following sentence: “I just love it when women tremble in fear of death before me. It's like an addiction that never ends. ”This statement is not quoted directly in the film, but it is made clear to the viewer by the voiceover.
production
A special feature of the film is the avant-garde camera work by Zbigniew Rybczyński, who received an Oscar for the best animated short film in the same year . Technical supports specially developed for Angst , as well as an expensive mirror system, were supposed to provide strange perspectives. For example, as soon as the murderer is released from prison, the viewer is offered spectacular pictures taken by a crane. Elaborate rope systems were used for the long, fast tracking shots in the forest. In order to keep the killer in focus and to isolate it from his surroundings, leading actor Erwin Leder was put on a ring for certain scenes to which a handheld camera was attached.
The film was entirely privately funded and received no public support. The implementation was carried out with a budget of 400,000 euros by Kargl's own production company Gerald Kargl Ges.mbH. The performance bans (see below) meanwhile even meant economic ruin for the director.
music
The film music, which is probably better known than the film itself, comes from Klaus Schulze , a prominent representative of electronic music , and is reminiscent of his band Tangerine Dream . In addition to the typical 80s synthpop , it is characterized by ambient elements and contributes significantly to alienation. Schulze composed the music unusually without having seen the finished film beforehand. The filmmakers then followed Schulze's soundtrack when editing .
publication
Was first performed afraid on 28 October 1983 in three cinemas in Vienna , including the legendary Colosseum . When it was released, the film caused heated controversy because of its realistic portrayal. It was banned in several European countries, including Germany and Great Britain , even before a possible premiere. In France , the film was released on VHS under the title Schizophrenia and developed into a cult film over the years. In the US , the film received an X rating and was classified as "pornographic".
After the film itself had an unknown existence for a long time in Austria, the country of origin, it was released on DVD in 2007 on the Berlin label Epix . In addition to the 75-minute Director's Cut , this release contains an intro by Jörg Buttgereit, an interview with the director, as well as making-of photos and a collection of press reviews. A bonus DVD contains film interviews with Klaus Schulze and Erwin Leder.
Between June and August 2015, the film was shown uncensored for the first time in selected cinemas in the USA and Canada . In addition, the Cult Epics label released a Blu-ray version under the original title Angst in August 2015 .
Interpretation and effect
Marcus Stiglegger recognizes fear as a "subjective one-person drama" with few action ellipses and hardly any dialogues. The film is unique in Austrian cinema for two reasons: On the one hand, it is half a documentary of a “true crime”, on the other hand it is a stylized slasher film similar to the Italian tradition . Stiglegger sees both similarities to Joe D'Amato's Absurd and a European counterpart to John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer . Like the latter, fear is "irritating, bloody and completely hopeless". In addition to Werner Kniesek, other serial killers are also quoted in the film, above all Peter Kürten , the notorious vampire from Düsseldorf .
The French filmmaker Gaspar Noé named fear as one of his five favorite films and drew inspiration from it for his controversial works such as Misanthrope and Irreversible . Jörg Buttgereit , whose film Schramm creates a similar psychogram of a serial killer, was also impressed .
Reviews
Despite the controversy, the film received some praise, especially for the camera work and the intense portrayal of Erwin Leder. The domestic press reviews were mostly positive:
"... poetic, artistically designed landscapes and atmospheric images in which the blood flows in rivers."
"The horror quality [...] withstands [sic] comparison with relevant Hollywood productions."
"Of the few Austrian feature film productions that have actually hit cinemas in the recent past [...], Angst , Gerald Kargl's directorial debut, is the cleverest."
"Shameless."
"... a breathtaking film."
"... technically perfect and very well done."
"A film that [...] sparked heated discussions."
In the IMDb film database , the film received an average rating of 7.6 out of 10 points.
Web links
- Fear in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Anxiety in the online movie database
- Interview by Marcus Stiglegger with Gerald Kargl
- Anxiety at Epix Media AG
- Online article at Central Europe Review
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for fear . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2005 (PDF; test number: 103 720 DVD).
- ↑ a b c d e f Schizophrenia - Q & A with the Austrian director Gerald Kargl of the psycho-thriller ANGST (1983). Ikonen, August 29, 2003, accessed July 19, 2015 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j DVD fear . Special edition with bonus DVD. Epix Media AG 2007.
- ↑ Gerald Kargl's cult film ANGST in North American theaters for the first time. Rue Morgue, accessed July 21, 2015 .
- ↑ Exclusive: Infamous Austrian Horror, Angst goes theatrical. shocktillyoudrop.com, accessed July 21, 2015 .
- ^ Gaspar Noe's Five Favorite Films. Rotten Tomatoes , November 5, 2015, accessed November 6, 2015 .
- ↑ Fear in the IMDb. Retrieved July 21, 2015 .