The wanker

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Movie
Original title The wanker
The wixxer.svg
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2004
length 82 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 10
Rod
Director Tobi Baumann
script Oliver Kalkofe ,
Oliver Welke ,
Bastian Pastewka
production Christian Becker ,
David Groenewold ,
Anita Schneider ,
Oliver Kalkofe
music Andreas Grimm
camera Gerhard Schirlo
cut Ueli Christen ,
Marco Pav D'Auria
occupation

Der Wixxer is a German comedy film from 2004 by director Tobi Baumann . The film, based on a script by Oliver Kalkofe , Oliver Welke and Bastian Pastewka , parodies the Edgar Wallace films of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly the 1964 film The Witcher. In 2007, the sequel Neues vom Wixxer was released in German cinemas.

action

In the woods near London lies the mysterious Black White Castle , one of the last “black and white castles ” in the United Kingdom . There the Earl of Cockwood resides and goes about his evil machinations. One day the Saxon couple Dubinsky from Bitterfeld get lost in the woods and witness a murder: A delivery truck hits the monk with a whip - the wanker has struck again. The wanker is a dangerous criminal masked with a top hat and a bony skull who wants to take control of the London underworld and therefore kills various bandits from the British crime scene.

Scotland Yard then puts its - supposedly - best man on the case: Chief Inspector Even Longer . He feels guilty about the death of his partner Rather Short , who was shot by the wanker. The Chief Inspector receives support from his new partner, Inspector Very Long , who is a gifted yo-yo player. As the main suspect, the Earl of Cockwood is targeted by the two investigators. The Earl is officially a pug breeder , although he is more concerned with other (criminal) things and runs a thriving smuggling ring for girl groups . But ultimately Wixxer gives him - like the entire underworld of England - a headache.

The investigation finally leads the two inspectors back to London, where they meet the dubious Harry Smeerlap , a Cockwood henchman who tries by all means to hide his machinations and those of his bread maker. Here Longer is almost from another criminal, the thicknesses Hai , killed, and shortly afterwards the Wixxer stolen from Cockwood Piranhas is murdered. Because of this lead, Longer drives to Blackwhite Castle alone, where he has a car accident and therefore cannot arrest Cockwood and bring him to London. Instead, after Smeerlaps tried in vain to kill him with a rattlesnake , he was quartered in a room with Jennifer Pennymarket (employed at Blackwhite Castle "because of the pugs"). There they watch a talk show in which the frog with the mask is interviewed. He claims to know who the wanker is, but is shot by the wanker disguised as a talk show host.

At the same time, the housekeeper at Castle Blackwhite, Ms. Drycunt , Long and Dubinsky confesses that Ms. Pennymarket is the daughter of the last Lord Blackwhite and thus the rightful owner of the castle. When she inadvertently informs Cockwood, the latter strangles her and makes a plan to marry Jennifer. Long and Dubinsky are kidnapped by the pigeon Jack to Blackwhite Castle and imprisoned there. Cockwood's sons Pomeroy and Fitzgerald build a death machine to get rid of them.

Longer has meanwhile returned to London and is investigating together with Sir John and coroner Dr. Brinkman in the Fishy Fingers bar, where Smeerlap usually stays. Smeerlap can almost shoot Longer, but in the last second he is shot himself by the wanker. This tells Longer that he wants to marry Ms. Pennymarket. Longer then went to Blackwhite Castle for the third time, where he was able to prevent Ms. Pennymarket from marrying Cockwood and at the last moment saved Long and Dubinsky. The death machine instead kills Pomeroy and Fitzgerald.

In the end there is a chase on bicycles, which ends in the harbor not far from the "Fishy Fingers", with almost all (still living) film characters present. The Earl of Cockwood is impaled by a swordfish and dies. After two unsuccessful attempts, Long and Longer are able to expose the wanker: It is the believed Rather Short , who had killed the original wanker during a previous attempt to confront the original wanker, passed the body of the original wanker as his own and the identity of the Wixxers taken over. Apparently he is killing himself with a scorpion ring; However, this was a fake and now it threatens the others. Finally, he is distracted by Long with his yo-yo arts, drops his weapon and falls into the water. There Rather Short loses consciousness by throwing a pistol and is drowned in the water.

After the credits you see the wanker emerging from the water and driving off in a rickshaw .

History of origin

Originally Der Wixxer was a "crime series" in the radio comedy show Das Frühstyxradio . When the wanker's identity was to become known in the last episode, Uncle Hotte poured his coffee - with milk, sugar and some mustard - into the tape machine , so that the identity was not officially resolved.

In an alternative ending, which was broadcast as part of a special program (Kalk und Welk in The Hour That Does n't Exist ), the wanker is the narrator who wanted to stop the protagonists' nonsense and thus became angry.

Large parts of the film were shot in the Czech Republic . The filming locations included the Hostivar studios, the Kladnice mine and the near and far surroundings of Prague . The film was made within six weeks in the spring of 2003. The script came about through ideas from Bastian Pastewka, Oliver Kalkofe and Oliver Welke. The film was produced by Rat Pack Filmproduktion in Munich . The budget of the film was estimated at around 4.7 million euros.

With Grit Boettcher as waitress, Eva Ebner as Miss Drycunt and Wolfgang Völz as Sir John, there are three actors who have already played in the Edgar Wallace films. Originally, the creators wanted to win Joachim Fuchsberger for it, but outraged he refused when he heard the title. However, after Kalkofe and Pastewka sent him a DVD of the film, he watched the film, was enthusiastic about it and agreed to a sequel.

The cast of Achim Mentzel as the original wanker goes back to a feud in the nineties, when Mentzel and his guests of the folk music show Achim's hit parade were regularly satirized by Oliver Kalkofe in Kalkofe's screen .

movie theater

The world premiere took place on May 10, 2004 in Munich . The cinema release in Germany and Austria was on May 20, 2004. In Germany around 1.9 million cinema visitors were counted. In the German 2004 annual list of all productions according to audience numbers, it was ranked 18th, in the 2004 annual list of German productions it was ranked 4th.

media

The film was released on VHS video cassette, on a single DVD and a double DVD called “Deluxe Edition”, which contains numerous bonus material on a second disc. The first disc of the double DVD is not, as is often the case, identical to the single DVD, but contains two audio commentaries in addition to the main film, while the single DVD was released without audio commentary. The main menu has also been changed on the two-disc version and has accompanying comments from Christoph Maria Herbst in his role as Alfons Hatler.

music

The title song The Wizard was sung by the band Right Said Fred together with Anke Engelke (as Doris Dubinsky ). The Wizard is a cover version of a piece by the band Madness and was originally released on the 1999 album Wonderful . Kalkofe has been an avowed Madness fan for a long time. For the follow-up film Neues vom Wixxer he was able to win the band over for a collaboration and no longer had to resort to a cover version. The soundtrack album for the second film also includes The Wizard 's original Madness .

Reviews

“In a mixture of partly infantile, partly tasteless humor, a farce develops that knows its role models exactly and behind the surface of which one can recognize the longing for a (film) tradition and a time in which storytelling still imagined dream worlds . An effortless example of contemporary entertainment in a retro look. "

"'Der Wixxer' follows the tradition of American models like ' The Naked Cannon ' and doesn't make it any worse."

“And no, the wanker in the film is not the narrator of the radio play, as it was then, spoken by Dietmar Wischmeyer . Perhaps it would have taken his profound humor to turn the Kalkofe film into a really good parody. "

- Filmstarts.de

"The wanker, first of all, succeeds and entertains, albeit in a very modest way. The story is the least important thing here and serves more as a launch pad for a reasonably fast game with the Wallace touch. "

- Rüdiger Suchsland at Artechock

Awards

Sequels

The makers of Der Wixxer planned to produce a trilogy back in 2004, again based on the film Der Hexer .

After The Witcher there was the follow-up film News from the Witcher . Accordingly, the title of the second part of Der Wixxer 2007 was called Neues vom Wixxer . News from Wixxer started in German cinemas on March 15, 2007, and the film was shown in previews the day before.

According to the producers, there should have been a third part because of the title. This should bear the title Triple WixXx - Monks Like It Hot , based on the films xXx - Triple X and Some like it hot . After the project had been delayed again and again, Kalkofe announced in August 2015 that Triple WixXx would not be filmed due to Bastian Pastewka leaving. In the episode The Beeper from the Pastewka series , the fictional filming of the third part is shown.

literature

  • Der Wixxer by Andreas Quetsch (arrangement), Jörg Fischer (arrangement), Oliver Kalkofe (author), Bastian Pastewka (author), Oliver Welke (author), Vgs Köln 2007, ISBN 3-8025-1744-X .
  • Andreas Blödorn: Style formation and visual coding in film. Using the example of the German Edgar Wallace films of the 1960s and their parody in “Der Wixxer” . In: Kodikas / Ars Semeiotica 30, No. 1/2 (2007), pp. 137–152.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Release certificate for Der Wixxer . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , June 2004 (PDF; test number: 97 900 K).
  2. Age rating for Der Wixxer . Youth Media Commission .
  3. https://www.stern.de/kultur/film/joachim-fuchsberger--die-letzt-oelung-hab-ich-mir-selbst-erteilt--3363260.html
  4. FFA film hit list 2004
  5. The wanker. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 19, 2016 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  6. cinema.de
  7. Filmstarts.de
  8. artechock.de
  9. "News from Wixxer" or "Triple Wixx". ( Memento from May 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) November 25, 2004
  10. Oliver Kalkofe on the jungle camp and the Wixxer part 3. January 15, 2014
  11. Oliver Kalkofe ends "Triple Wixx" rumors August 9, 2015
  12. Der Piepser - Pastewka on myspass.de, accessed on March 16, 2016