Scourge of the flesh
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Scourge of the flesh |
| Country of production | Austria |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1965 |
| length | 83 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Eddy Saller |
| script | Eddy Saller |
| production | Herbert Heidmann for Commerz-Film, Vienna |
| music | Gerhard Heinz |
| camera |
Hanns King Edgar Osterberger |
| cut | Helga Zeiner |
| occupation | |
| |
Scourge of the Meat is an Austrian exploitation film made in 1965 , which was made in the guise of a court, violence and sex thriller. Herbert Fux received his first leading role from director Eddy Saller .
action
Vienna, mid-1960s. Alexander Jablonsky is a sex offender with a long criminal record. Now the bar pianist is on trial again. This time he is accused of having passed the ballet dancer of the Vienna State Opera Eva on her in the shower room there and then strangling her, as shown at the beginning of the film. Another woman is said to have strangled the lean, young man who hits the keys in the disreputable “Playboy Bar” during obscure “women's auctions”. A third woman he picked up on the street and taken with him in his vehicle was only very lucky to escape him during a stop after a chase through the undergrowth. Since then, Jablonsky has been on the trail, but nothing can be proven to him so far. The trial now rolls back the life of Jablonsky in flashbacks and tries to solve the murder alleged to him.
The defense attorney tries hard to prove his client's innocence. He tries to explain Jablonsky's behavior by means of a forensic psychiatric report by the fact that his stepfather despised him and his mother hated him because of his appearance and the classmates also ridiculed him as unattractive. As the flashbacks will soon show, the burden of proof against Jablonsky is overwhelming. For a long time, the dogged investigative Chief Inspector Wilhelm Behrens, a plump guy with a bizarre black whiskers, got ahead in this case. In court, Behrens tells how he tried to convict Jablonsky. He had come up with an unusual and not without risk plan to arrest Jablonsky: the very young and trained in judo defense technology, police officer Marianne Körner was to be used as a decoy on Jablonsky. In addition, she was equipped as an animation girl and, as the new bar girl at the Playboy bar, should make Jablonsky look good, in the hope that sooner or later he would try to murder her too.
Behrens and his assistant were in the bar one evening and were watching Jablonsky and his behavior towards Marianne very closely. The bar manager forces one of his reluctant girls to take part in the next "girls auction". For a moment, both Behrens and his assistant are no longer present in the bar because Behrens arrests a girl who is in his eyes endangered for her protection and her assistant chases a stranger into the basement of the establishment. Jablonsky has meanwhile disappeared, and now Marianne Körner tries to convict the suspect in her own way by sitting in Jablonsky's car and waiting for him there. Meanwhile, Jablonsky is approached by a prostitute on the street. When she wants to take him in, she almost becomes the sex offender's next murder victim. A little later, Jablonsky is finally on the run and ends up in his car, where Marianne is already waiting for him in the passenger seat. You drive off and are spotted by the police, who immediately attach themselves to Jablonsky's car. He tried to strangle Marianne several times, but the young policewoman managed to knock him unconscious on a construction site with a wooden slat.
The prosecutor advocates life imprisonment and points out that, in his opinion, there is evidence that no sexual arousal caused Jablonsky to commit his acts. Then the prosecutor shows three photos of brutally battered women that Jablonsky is also said to have on their conscience. Finally, a newspaper report appears that reads: "The murderer judged himself. Jablonsky hanged himself in his cell". The final shot shows a street café in downtown Vienna, where two young women are talking about the Jablonsky case. A well-to-do gentleman of advanced age looks at the slender legs of the young women, and his slightly lustful look will not go away. Obviously, it is insinuated, women who dress airy and sexy are not entirely innocent of their fate.
Production notes
Scourge of the Meat was filmed in Vienna and had its world premiere on November 19, 1965 in the Austrian capital. The film premiered in Germany on May 27, 1966.
Rudolf Höfling provided the equipment, Herbert Giesser the sound. Helmut Meewes designed the title sequence. Peter Leidenfrost took over the production management. The jazzy sounds of the film composer Gerhard Heinz , which were already heard in the opening credits, are remarkable . Edgar Osterberger , who later mainly photographed documentary, industrial and experimental films, shot his first feature film with Scourge of the Flesh .
Extremely unusual for a film of this time, nude photos of women are shown several times (e.g. in the shower room).
High German speaking actors like Friedrich Schoenfelder dubbed their Austrian colleagues for the Federal Republican version .
Historical background
The film is vaguely based on an actual event that rocked Vienna two years earlier. On March 12, 1963, the eleven-year-old ballet artist Dagmar Fuhrich was found murdered in the shower room of the ladies' dressing room of the Vienna State Opera. The girl was struck down with 34 stab wounds. The Viennese police then began their search for the escaped, unknown perpetrator using means that had never been used before. Three months later, three women were injured by knife attacks in downtown Vienna. When a victim called for help, the 33-year-old Josef Weinwurm, who had a criminal record for theft, was arrested and convicted as an “opera murderer”, as the press called him from then on.
Reviews
The film caused quite a stir at the time and over the years has received angry reviews in view of its shameless exploitative mentality. It was not until the beginning of the 1990s that Scourge of the Meat was rediscovered as an unusual contribution to Austrian post-war cinema.
In 1965, Paimann's film lists massively criticized the fact that instead of relying on the "psychological screening of the drive criminal", they had resulted in a series of "nudity, animation and rape scenes" and that countless brutalities had also been incorporated.
The Lexicon of International Films called the trash strip a "third-rate film that is content with blaming the media for sexual crimes".
Web links
- Scourge of the flesh in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ the year 1965, which is often read, is incorrect
- ↑ “Opernmord” on kurier.at
- ↑ The scourge of the meat in Paimann's film lists ( Memento of the original from August 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Scourge of the flesh. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed August 14, 2017 .
