GarnettTeenage
The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.
Sameer Callahan
It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
Patience Watson
One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.
Kinley
This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
hasosch
Hans Beckert in "M" (1931) and Fritz Haarmann in "Die Zärtlichkeit Der Wölfe" (1973): Both films are based on the true story of the German series killer Fritz Haarmann (1879-1925).Comparing the two films, one feels the 40 years that lie between them. Peter Lorre, the Beckert of M., is not shown killing his victims. There is no blood, and the story is told as if we would gather it by change through rumors in the street and newspaper reports. On the other side, the magnificent actor Kurt Raab as Haarmann: We see how he picks his victims up - exclusively good-looking young boys. In "M", we are only told about missing little girls - perhaps the combination of series killer and homosexual would have been too much for the audience then. "Tenderness of the Wolves" is also in general much closer to the original Haarmann story - f.ex., when we see how Fritz sells sausages that he had made from the meat of his victims (Haarmann owned a short time a butcher store.) We see how Fritz lives, drinks and sleeps with his victims, and kills them. We also see him getting rid of their corpses in huge plastic bags which he sinks in the river. Nothing at all about the everyday's life of Hans Beckert: All we see him do, is walking up and then down the streets, sometimes visiting an inn for a schnapps. From his apartment that the police enters twice, we see his one table, nothing more. In the case of Fritz, we even meet his nosy and gossipy neighbors. So, when Beckert finally get caught by the horde of the mob, Lorre had to compensate all that what the director did not show us, so that we could not make ourselves a picture about Beckert, the human being. Therefore, Lorre is not allowed to just break together and admit his murders, but he is forced to cry also the motivations of his deeds into the jury. For me, what he is doing, is not convincing. It may have been more shocking in 1931 as it is now, but I doubt that, too. - On the other side, Kurt Raab alias Fritz was allowed to broadcast all his lust that he had with his boys, from the seduction via the intercourse up to his climax: the lethal bite in the neck. At the end, Fritz will say: "I give my life back in God's hands ... but I had them all, the handsomest of the handsomest". We feel his lust and believe him - because he had a chance to show it during the movie, we are his witnesses. But unfortunately nothing like that in M., so that Lorre's Beckert stays an isolated and widely artificially constructed figure, not a human, but a silhouette. On the other side Raab's Haarmann, played by the self-confessed pedophile homosexual Raab: There are moments in the movie where one trembles, if the actor has himself really under control - so good is his acting.
shaadowlove
This movie was one of the most interesting experiences that I have ever had! On one hand, it made me cringe. (The graphic sex was a surprise; I expected the gore.)On the other hand, it was beautiful and eerie. Great atmosphere... dark and smoky. Full of mystery and forbidden pleasures... cannibalism, vampirism, underage sex, corruption... the list goes on and on. Kurt Raab was frightening as Fritz Haarman: child molester, vampire, cannibal and black market salesman. He lures young boys off of the street and takes them back to his small, dingy apartment. Once there, he molests them (before, and sometimes after he kills them) murders them in cold blood and processes their carcasses to sell as meat in this post-WW2 drama. Both sexy and revolting, Raab draws the viewer into his dark, tortured psyche without garnering any sympathy for his dilemma. He is in one word, depraved.Fritz' neighbor is hearing strange chopping noises in the night--- she does not like his way of bringing strange boys to the apartment. Suspicious, she contacts the police, who basically patronize her, until the murders become so numerous that they are impossible to ignore any longer. Go see this film. It is a truly disturbing experience.
bcptn
This film brilliantly captures the decay, both physical and moral, of post-WWI Germany. The movie explores 2 key questions - Why did Fritz Haarman brutally murder young men, and perhaps more importantly, why was he allowed to get away with it for so long?Kurt Raab is terrific is Haarman, but deserves praise as well for his set decoration. The movie is filled with rich colors and textures and often breath-taking locations. Director Ulli Lommel creates a creepy atmosphere that's hard to look away from.
Olhado
I really wanted to like this film more than I eventually did. The plot just wasn't handled well enough to give me that extra thrill.It probably didn't help that I watched Fritz Lang's "M" the night before.Rather a waste of Fassbinder's talents.