Tenderness of the Wolves (1973)

Best movie ever!

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Tenderness of the Wolves (1973)*** (out of 4)Homosexual serial killer Fritz Haarmann (Kurt Raab) stalks the young boys and men of Germany as he lures them back to his apartment. If they're lucky it's just a sexual thing but for dozens of young people they were lured back to Haarmann's apartment where they were murdered and eaten.Ulli Lommel's TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES certainly isn't a film that's going to appeal to many for a number of reasons. For starters, if you're expecting a horror film then you're barking up the wrong tree. I guess you could call this a crime picture with horror elements but if you're wanting the gory kind of story then you'll be disappointed because this is one of the most laid back thrillers that you'll ever see. Of course, the subject matter itself is another thing that is going to keep most people away.Lommel certainly deserves a lot of credit for not delivering your average crime picture but instead he goes for more of a bizarre atmosphere. What's so strange about this picture is that you're watching a monster who murders and eats children yet you don't ever really hate him. What I liked about the movie is that it's really not that judgmental on its subject as it doesn't try to make him a villain, a misunderstood psycho or anything else. Lommel basically just tells us the story and he really keeps all emotion out of the picture.Technically speaking this is an extremely well-made movie. The camera-work is wonderful and there's no doubt that the director builds up a rather eerie atmosphere with ease. The subject matter is a very dark one yet Lommel never sends the material over-the-top or into a graphic area. It should go without saying but the biggest reason the film works so well is due to the performance by Raab. He's rather remarkable at how good he is in the role and not for a second do you ever feel as if you're watching an actor. You really do feel as if you're watching a troubled mind work his way into the trust of these victims.TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES has a lot of similarities with Fritz Lang's M, another German movie about a serial killer. While this film doesn't reach the same levels of that one, this Lommel picture certainly deserves to be better known than it is.

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.

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.

This movie was shot in only 23 days at a theatre in Düsseldorf. It´s about a gay murderer who kills lots of young boys and then butchers them in order to eat ´em with his friends.-Sounds scary, but it´s incredible how the film crew created an stunning atmosphere with just a very low budget. Fassbinder couldn´t direct because he did other projects, so crew member and actor Uli Lommel did the job. Many Fassbinder friends join the movie. See this unusual one!