Tenderness of the Wolves
Director: Ulli Lommel
Year Released: 1973
Rating: 1.5
A disturbed public official (Kurt Raab, who also provided the script) doubles as a murderer of teenage boys and a black marketer (who sells the boys' salvaged organs as food) - people in town insist he's a nice person, but they're also dense. Made in a style that attempts to emulate Fassbinder (who produced this and has a small role as a pimp who "only loves women" ... marvelous inside joke), it turns particularly shocking material into a mannered, almost blasé affair. I didn't think it was possible to make a gay serial killer and cannibal such an uninteresting figure, but Lommel and Raab do precisely that - the movie drowsily follows him around performing his various misdeeds before he's caught, taken away and the credits appear: dramatic tension be damned!
