Das Amulett des Todes

Hum, I don't know if Rutger Hauer "good" role was only in Blade Runner movie, but in Cold Blood, like many other movie, his role is boring.

Like the movie of course. The only thing I find funny about "Cold Blood" was people in this movie smoke a lot. And in today movie people stop smoke.

But yesterday like today people continue to drink (like it's not a problem too).

Like I say if you want really appreciate the acting of Rutger Hauer rent or buy "Blade Runner". But the Original version and not the stupid "Director's Cut" version. The version where at end we see "Rick Deckard" (Harrison Ford) and "Rachel" (Sean Young)in car on the highway and where we hear all during the movie the voice of Harrison Ford in "background".

Concerning "Cold Blood" it's really a bad movie. And I give it 1/10. Like often in many movie, the story have no sense. Acting are bad. Music is bad. Technical is old and not good.

If you are insomniac well it can be good to buy this movie. Cause you are sure to sleep in each day and fast if you put the DVD in the reader each night.

One of several early European films US distributers released in order to exploit Hauer's stardom during the eighties. This one is especially hard to find, but could pop up anywhere at random. If it does don't bother, despite your curiosity of seeing a young dashing Hauer. The plot has the standard morally impaired Hauer ripping off his employers, only to be tracked down by them. He falls in love with a rural beauty and wears a trenchcoat (eventually a trademark.) Ambiguity in the performances (Hauer seems bored when he should be getting intense) plot, ending all make this a waste of time and effort. The muddy dubbing certainly doesn't help.

Finally, after much hard work and searching, I found a Rutger Hauer movie that is worse than Beyond Justice (which co-starred Omar Sharif and Elliot Gould!). Had to dig deep, but this confused film takes the cake. It's dated, not just by the fluffy hairstyles and constant cigarette puffing, but also by the unfortunate synthesizer soundtrack.

The plot, what there is of it, is hard to follow and none of the characters are particularly likable. The dubbing is distracting. The film comes across as muddy on many levels, though some of that may be due to the iffy DVD transfer.

So why 3 stars? Because it has Rutger Hauer and I'll watch anything he's in. But that doesn't mean I'll watch it twice...

Caught this on late night television one time. ITV used to show (badly) dubbed European (usually French or German) films at 1 in the morning. Some were good, like the Jean Paul Belmondo films. Some were bad, like this one.

Even with Rutger Hauer, this isn't worth watching. The awful dubbing doesn't help, but this is still another Euro cheapie. Stick to Hauer's Dutch stuff with Paul Verhoeven if you want to catch him in good roles pre-America.

A sinister German sports pilot is getting a job by a gang of smugglers to fly some millions of Marks abroad but tries to escape with the money on his own. Now the gangsters are chasing him and an innocent female eyewitness through the woods.

The plot of this German 1974 production sounds so old-fashioned as the film really is - just boring. In the beginning, the action is nearly non-existent, the pacing is just dumb and uninteresting, and only in the second half of the movie, when you're possibly waking up again and trying to get hold of what it's all about.... Ralf Gregan's direction and Michael Ballhaus' photography are missing everything you're expecting from a simply crime thriller, and it's no wonder that the German cinema of the seventies was no highlight at all except for stupid sex comedies and boring art house student films with no space left for well-made mainstream entertainment.

There is also some sex and crime involved, notably a hot sex scene between Dutch main actor Rutger Hauer of later Hollywood fame (Blade Runner, Hitcher, Flesh and Blood etc.) and sexy Vera Tschechowa. Especially in the end during the fight between Hauer (ridiculously named "Blondi" here) and the gangster boss, German b-movie standard villain Horst Frank, lots of blood and guts are all around (although these scenes are badly edited in later TV screenings).

You will wonder how such actors became involved in such a boring stuff. Other notable supporting actors are Bavarian star actor Walter Sedlmayer (who gets beaten to death like in his real life later on during a spectacular homosexual killing affair), "Tatort" detective Walter Richter and Edgar-Wallace-movie veteran Gunther Stoll. The movie was mainly filmed in the Black Forest woods and some private houses which gives him a really cheap and home-made touch. And nobody really knows what the "Amulett des Todes" (the bracelet of death), worn by lovely looking Vera Tschechowa, really stands for... probably a touch of horror which cannot save the movie at all.

O.K., enough words for such a boring movie, but if you get the occasion to watch this film in groovy seventies fashion and hair styles with its driving Moog synthesizer score and some famous European actors in some of their worst roles just do it once and forget it afterwards!