Peng! Du bist tot!

The idea of the movie is similar to movies of the 1990ies playing on the subject of "killing by wire". Some mysterious group can delete your "virtual existence" as if you have never existed anyway. They can see you on surveillance cameras, they can modify prescription entries, and if hit the wrong spot, bang, you're dead (direct translation of the movie name). While this movie feels a lot like a B movie far away from movie busters like "The Net" starring Sandra Bullock I do still find this one interesting as it taking a background in the earliest times of networked computers with those people being able to break in with home computers and phone modems. It did hit in the 1980ies but it is somewhat antique today.

Taking this movie as a serious hacker movie would be a mistake, but it is a quite nice mix of comedy, hacker movie and thriller. It features some actors that were and are quite known and when this movie first was aired it was quite popular for it's attempt not to take the whole hacker stuff too serious. In some groups this is still a fun cult movie here in Germany and I also watch it now and then together with friends plus a nice night gambling session on the C=64. Concerning the movie: If you're a fan of the beginning of home computers it is quite a nice movie to watch with C=64's, C=128's and more of the good old stuff. The actors are not that bad as other comments state. Sure they could be better, but overall they do a nice job and fit good in their roles. The plot is simple but catching. Everything takes place in Germany and it also is a TV movie, so the quality is not of the ordinary cinema productions, but still nice. Give it a chance and decide for yourself: But I like it! Only problem: The movie is not aired often and also as far as I know there is no DVD, just a video cassette and this hardly can be found.

I've seen this movie on TV, and the only memorable thing for me about it is that it features my university linguistics professor Prof. Dr. Willy Elmer as "speaker #2"...besides that, it's another of those abysmal German movies from the 80's which try to be interesting (a little sex, a little crime, a little comedy), but fail miserably.

Ingolf Lueck, who moved from being a video-clip presenter on TV to "actor" to comedian on a TV show can be compared to Thomas Gottschalk: same career, same nose-size, same (non-existing) acting skills. The only funny thing in the movie actually was the speech of my prof, and I'm being polite... :)