The boss doesn't want any witnesses
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The boss doesn't want any witnesses |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1964 |
| length | 94 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Hans Albin Peter Berneis |
| script | Peter Berneis |
| production | Hans Albin |
| music | Hermann Thieme |
| camera | Heinz Schnackertz |
| cut | Claus from Boro |
| occupation | |
Also: Wolfgang Zilzer , Armin Dahlen , | |
The boss does not want witnesses is a German feature film by Hans Albin and Peter Berneis from 1964 with Maria Perschy and Uwe Friedrichsen in the leading roles.
action
Flight 112 with US Senator Farnsworth on board crashes in the Mexican jungle. After the crash landing, the pilot receives the following instruction from an ominous superior: “No survivors!” All passengers who remain alive are then murdered, and ultimately the diplomat is only indirectly spared. From now on, like many other decision-makers on earth, it should only serve as a puppet whose body is used for other purposes. This is the starting point of the story.
In the following years, in addition to the senator and US ambassador, a German scientist and a Soviet general, among others, are killed in further mysterious accidents - one falls from a bridge, another falls from a passenger steamer. And yet: they live on! The young reporter Howard Moore tries to get to the bottom of this strange phenomenon. Soon he makes a gruesome discovery: The murdered and brought back to "life", now seeming remotely controlled, are only empty shells whose bodies have been "taken over" by aliens from the planet Orion. A white-haired man who is only called "the boss" turns out to be the mastermind behind the processes. And according to the title, he doesn't want any witnesses in his attempt to gain power over the earth. In order to achieve this goal, all important decision-makers from politics, business and the military are to be replaced by his aliens. A certain Armand does the dirty work for the boss. New York (the UN), Paris and Rio become the places of action for the "body occupants".
Moore, who would like to interview some of these supposedly exchanged, central personalities of this world, is now in great danger, because he finds out the following: Before the rule of the earth's inhabitants over their own planet is ended, the boss plans that the foreign-controlled human bodies in the central positions of their respective states should instigate an all-destructive nuclear war between East and West. At the side of his friend Ginny Desmond, the former secretary of Farnsworth, the reporter takes on the seemingly hopeless fight against the squatters and their extraterrestrial pullers and at the last second can thwart their all-destructive plans. The two young people have to pay for this heroic effort to save the earth with their lives.
production
The boss does not want any witnesses is an extremely rare excursion into the science fiction genre in German cinema . In view of the Cuba crisis that had just been overcome (1962), it reflects the then widespread fear of a nuclear world war. Producer and Heimatfilm specialist Hans Albin enlisted Peter Berneis, an émigré, who had returned from Hollywood to Berlin in the 1950s, as a screenwriter for this unfamiliar genre . Both men directed it together.
The film was shot in 1963 and passed the FSK exam on January 30, 1964. It premiered on April 24, 1964.
The film, which is only shown extremely rarely, is thematically based on Don Siegel's legendary science fiction film classic Die Demonischen , but was neither in Germany nor abroad - in the USA it was shown under the title No Survivors, Please - a commercial success. The actor Robert Cunningham was hired from the USA for one of the two male leading roles , and the USA remigrants Stefan Schnabel and Wolfgang Zilzer also play supporting roles. Thomas Mauch assisted chief cameraman Heinz Schnackertz , the buildings were designed by Tibor Rednas.
criticism
"Improbable, end-of-itself colportage, speculating cynically on the nuclear fear."
“A mysterious secret organization is planning total war to destroy all life. Nightmare cinema based on Wallace's recipes that speculates on the viewers' fear of nuclear power. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bodo Traber : It's about the bomb. The B-film The Boss Doesn't Want Witnesses (1964), the self-destruction of mankind and the disappearance of aliens. In: Filmblatt , Vol. 18 [Winter 2013/14], No. 53, pp. 18–31.
- ↑ The boss doesn't want any witnesses. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .