Spooky under the ferris wheel

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Television series
Original title Spooky under the ferris wheel
Country of production GDR
original language German
year 1978
length a total of 200 minutes
Episodes 7 in 1 season
genre Children's series , horror , comedy film
music Thomas Natschinski
First broadcast January 1, 1979 on GDR 1
occupation

Spuk unterm Riesenrad is a seven-part children's series by CU Wiesner and Günter Meyer , which was shown on GDR television from New Year 1979 and, after great success, was cut into a two-part movie (Part 1: The Runaways, Part 2: A Castle in Danger). This was shown regularly in GDR cinemas in the children's program and was also broadcast in the Federal Republic of Germany.

action

The three children Keks, Umbo and Tammi spend the summer holidays with their grandparents, who run a ghost train in Berlin in the Plänterwald cultural park (former demon express / now the ghost train by Hahnemann & Sohn). There, by chance, they bring three figures from the ghost train - a witch , a giant and Rumpelstiltskin - to life in the Spree. On their flight from the children, they get new clothes and, after a "foray" through the Centrum Warenhaus on Alexanderplatz, fly into the Harz Mountains with a vacuum cleaner .

Once in the Harz Mountains, the three want to go to the Hexentanzplatz . This venture turns out to be a mistake, because the three quiet Hexentanzplatz during his lifetime has now become a popular tourist magnet. Chased by the children and their grandfather as well as being battered by the many people, the three of them flee to Falkenstein Castle . There the situation comes to a head when the three ghosts have to face the children again and Rumpelstiltskin wants to take control of the castle. Only with the ancient spell, which is discovered in an old chronicle in the basement of the castle, can they now do something against the ghosts. When the grandfather finds the saying, he realizes that it is an encrypted reference to the fact that only ice or snow makes the reconversion possible. Meanwhile, Keks encounters the witch, who turns out to be the princess of the castle and befriends Keks. Rumpelstiltskin kidnaps biscuit and causes the giant to bring him wood to set fire to the castle. When Umbo and Tammi rescue biscuit with the help of the witch, Rumpelstiltskin threatens the castle director to set it on fire if he is not declared the new lord of the castle. The witch and the also purified giant help to put out the fire and the giant hangs Rumpelstiltskin from a pole above the castle gate. When the policeman, Lieutenant Märzenbecher, comes with a fire extinguisher, Rumpelstiltskin can be turned back into a doll. Now the Märzenbecher armed with the fire extinguisher, the grandfather and the castle director pursue the other two as the children intervene and defend them.

The series ends in Berlin with the grandparents, where the new identity cards of the two former fairy tale characters Otto Riese and Emma Falkenstein are shown, when a Märzenbecher accidentally throws a spoonful of semolina behind him and meets the giant, who only says: “Now it's going to happen again going ahead. "

Episodes

  1. The outliers
  2. Ghosts on Wheels
  3. Alarm in the warehouse
  4. Escape to the mountains
  5. A castle in danger
  6. The horrible night
  7. Rumpi strikes

Origin and background

Filming locations included the Plänterwald cultural park , which housed the ferris wheel and ghost train, the banks of the Spree across from the Stralau peninsula , the Centrum department store on Alexanderplatz and various streets in Berlin as well as Thale and Falkenstein Castle in the Harz Mountains. Shooting started in September 1976 and ended in March 1978.

When the series was first broadcast, the people in charge of GDR television wanted the third part (alarm in the department store) not to be broadcast. The reason for this decision was a shortage of meat and sausage products in the GDR. In this situation, no one wanted to show the audience full displays at a meat stand in the department store, nor a scene in which the giant lets meat and sausage fall down a flight of stairs in the department store. After protests from the writer and director, it was decided on television to show the episode cut with the relevant shots. Director Meyer was also able to ensure that the cuts were not made in the 35 mm copy of the film, but only in the broadcast VTR . Since VTR tapes were used several times on GDR television during this time, the 35 mm copy was used the next time the series was repeated and the episode was shown unabridged, as was the case with all other repetitions.

In the same episode there is a scene in which Rumpelstiltskin welds the wire mesh on a door. To do this, it uses its finger, which it can make glow. For this purpose, the finger of the Rumpelstiltskin actor Siegfried Seibt was provided with a special "finger mask", which allowed the finger to "glow" with an electric light bulb. In addition, smoke fed in could be blown out through a small pipe. It took more than an hour to put on this mask because the glue had to dry out. A layer of burn was applied to the grid, as is also used for sparklers . So the grille could burn itself down and the actor only had to move his glowing and smoking finger parallel to it. During the recordings, however, Seibt's finger got so close to the wire that the finger started to burn (which you can see in the film on closer inspection). With strict discipline and pain, Seibt finished the shot, although he suffered burn blisters on his finger. With this, however, the actor saved the day of shooting, because putting on the finger mask again would not have been timely.

In the last episode, Giant and Rumpelstiltskin act on a brushwood pile that is to be used to fumigate the castle. During a shot in which the giant throws Rumpelstiltskin on his shoulder, Lisewski Seibt accidentally broke two ribs. In return, Lisewski was injured in the face by a branch leaping forward when he pulled Seibt out of this brushwood pile in a different shot. As a result, Lisewski was unable to shoot for eight days.

Performers and reception

After the great success of Spuk under the Ferris wheel , director Günter Meyer shot the conceptually similar series Spuk im Hochhaus und Spuk aus Outside . Stefan Lisewski is the only actor who plays a bigger role in all three GDR spooky series by Günter Meyer: as a giant in Spuk under the Ferris wheel , as a caretaker (and singer of the theme song) in Spuk im Hochhaus and as Graf von Bärenfels in Spuk from outside . Siegfried Seibt played the role of Rumpelstiltskin 19 years earlier in the DEFA film “ The Magic Man ” and can also be seen as a répétiteur in episode 4 of Spuk im Hochhaus . Dima Gratschow and Henning Lehmbäcker can also be seen in episode 5 of Spuk im Hochhaus as young people. Wolfgang Winkler (1996–2013 Chief Inspector Herbert Schneider in Police Call 110 ) played a small role in Spuk under the Ferris wheel as a stoker on a steam locomotive.

Icestorm Entertainment released the series version of "Spuk unterm Riesenrad" in cooperation with the German Broadcasting Archive on October 12, 2009 on DVD. In 2011 a radio play was published that uses original voices from the television series and is narrated by Claus Ulrich Wiesner . On October 7, 2013, Telepool and Icestorm released the series on Blu-ray Disc .

Play

In 2012, the summer theater of the same name was premiered at the original location, the now abandoned Spreepark amusement park in Plänterwald, under the patronage of haunted inventor CU Wiesner. Due to the demand, there were new seasons in 2013 and 2015. A total of over 7,000 visitors saw the open-air piece in Plänterwald. There were also productions in Rostock in 2012 and 2013.

The play has been performed in Dresden since 2012, currently with great success at the boulevard theater. a. with Jürgen Mai as a giant, Ulrike Mai as a witch and Volker Michalowski as Rumpelstiltskin.

Web links