Review: "Der Sandmann"/The Sandman 1995 Götz George goes bad

 In the early 1990s, private German TV-giant RTL was in a huge battle with the other TV- giant, SAT 1. Just a few years earlier, the state-monopol for TV stations had been cut, and those were the two that emerged from the ashes of the rat-race that had followed. RTL then had the idea to give four young, emerging, and unpredictably voracious movie-makers a comfortable cushion by financing one film each. Those movies would be shown on RTL2 to establish this station for a younger, more urban audience. The series was called "Junge Wilde"/Young Wild Ones.

Women in peril, wide-open eyes, unshaved armpits.
Yes, it truly is a German Krimi!

The first batch of four films consisted of truly remarkable, fresh Krimi movies: "Patricias Geheimnis"/The Mystery of Patricia (Ellen and Patricia are students and part-time escorts; then Patricia is found dead, but while the police consider this to have been an accident, Ellen is suspicious of Patricia's current customer and begins to investigate). "Unter Druck"/Under Pressure is kind of like the German "Play Misty for Me," "Rohe Ostern"/Raw Eastern is more on the supernatural side, and this one here :"Der Sandmann."

Directed by Nico Hoffmann (who, at 36, was a bit more experienced than the other directors), who was able to get the veteran Krimi OG Götz George and the current impersonation of female Krimi desire Barbara Rudnik to do this movie.

The story: A young female writer for a controversial talk show thinks she has found the ultimate TV attraction. A former prostitute-killer, (George), now free again after having done his time for "manslaughter," has become a multi-million-selling book author. To promote his new book, he is invited to the talk show, but our writer follows him secretly and, by doing so, is convinced that he is the current prostitute killer that prowls Germany. She can persuade the talk-show host (Barbara Rudnik) to confront him with her findings during the talk show with witnesses and the police present in the audience.

With a surprising amount of gore, boldness, violence, sadism, and nudity (this is a free-TV movie!!!), competent direction and camera operation, and with George and Rudnik at their best (and simply adorable to watch), this is a full treat and not at all inferior to cinematic productions at that time. Up-coming attraction Karoline Eichhorn is good at playing the driven writer, willing to step over corpses to get her big breakthrough. Even more so, this is a thinking man's movie that poses the question of who is more inhumane: the killer or the system of endless sensationalism in the media. The movie actually answers the question, but the end is more open than you would wish for, making it a bit unsatisfactory.

It was a huge hit and finally showed George to be able to play it nasty and be the villain. He perfected this in "Der Totmacher"/Deathmaker, a semi-documentary movie about true crime serial killer Fritz Haarmann, in the same year.

Rudnik was nearing her peak of popularity here, having literally taken over the strong female lead roles from the likes of Karin Baal and Vera Tschechova, only to suffer from cancer and an untimely death a few years later.

Barbara Rudnik

Karoline Eichhorn still is part of the Krimiverse in numerous TV and cinematic productions, while director Nico Hoffmann became a big-time producer in Germany. He teamed up with George a few years later for the remarkable cinematic Krimi production "Solo für Klarinette".

Karoline Eichhorn

The movie, rightfully scored a whopping 17% of audience participation and was awarded numerous prestigious non-TV awards. The next movies fared worse, leading to the cancellation of the "Junge Wilde" series after movie #9.

The DVD I saw was really bad. A reminder of how careless DVD had been produced back then. This is single-layer, first gen, with a bad scan from the TV print in the original aspect ratio of 1:1.33. I was not happy seeing this very well-shot and staged movie in this bad transfer. A 2K transfer would be highly appreciated.