Hostage

While working at an amusement park in Australia, Christine starts a relationship with a German man, Walter. She marries him and has a child with him. When an job opportunity presents itself, Walter and Christine move to Germany. There his deepest, darkest secret is revealed: he's a fervent neo-Nazi. Appalled by this revelation, Christine's life, and that of her child, are now in danger.

Based on a true story but you wouldn't think so. Yes, the story is quite extreme but not implausible. No, it's more the way the story is told that makes it less than believable. There's a B-grade quality to proceedings that make it seem cheap and cheesy.

Direction is pretty unimaginative and performances are quite hammy. Ralph Schicha as Walter is the worst of it: absurd overacting. Kerry Mack's performance as Christine is actually semi-decent. Supporting cast are so-so.

With a bit more edginess, tension and engagement this could have been a fairly decent film. Instead it's quite flat, even dull despite the storyline.

True story of a horrific case of Stockholm Syndrome tropes in late 1970s Australia which sees a young Australian lady meet and falling in love with a German with some secret political views that come out as the film develops.

The film seems to get unfair criticism in some quarters. True, it's your typical low budget Australian Ozploitation film but it has a true story, horrific but interesting never the less.

I liked the location photography although Broken Hill standing in for Turkey is an eye opener!

It kept me engrossed throughout and deserves it's place amongst the best of 1980s Australian cinema offerings.

Hostage (1983)

** (out of 4)

This movie is based on the true events of Christine Maresch (Kerry Mack) who ended up marrying a man named Walter (Ralph Schicha) and turn her life into a living hell. Before you know it they have a child but Walter turns out to be a Nazi sympathizer and before long he is abusing Christine and taking her on a crime spree that she didn't want.

Before watching this film I had no idea about the true story behind it. Apparently it was very big new in Australia and it managed to produce a best-selling book as well as this movie, which goes under several titles including SAVAGE ATTRACTION. I must admit that the movie really let me down for a number of reasons but the biggest is the fact that you really never learned too much about either of the characters.

I'm going to guess that the filmmakers felt most people would be familiar with the tale so they'd just show off the highlights of the couple's life together as well as the various violent ones. The entire film pretty much as Christine playing a victim to Walter who will either beat her, force her into robberies or threaten harm to their child. There's no question that this here is rather ugly story but I didn't think either character was fully developed and as the movie went on I had more questions than anything else.

I thought both Mack and Schicha were good in their roles. Again, I thought the characters were as simple as a victim and a bully but both actors did a fine job. The screenplay felt like something you'd see on American television but I think the lackluster direction is what really killed the film. I say this because there's never any tension to anything you're watching and the deadly slow pace just really drags the film out and makes it feel much longer than it actually is.

Never mind the ridiculous cover (at least of my old VHS tape) showing the heroine simpering like baby-doll jailbait on a bed in lingerie--this is an at least somewhat serious attempt to dramatize a purportedly true story, however loosely based it may be. Yet it does occasionally lurch into cheesy sexploitation, just one among many ways it can't seem to maintain any tone or focus at all.

Kerry Mack's heroine starts out kinda white-trashy, and one feels for her callous dismissal of carny co-worker Ralph Schicha's earnest marriage proposal. Then suddenly she's the poor victim, pregnant and into marriage against her will--his life in danger, he refuses surgery unless she gets consents--and he's acting like an obsessed stalker in a horror movie. They move to his native Germany, where he reveals himself as a Nazi fanatic and forces her to perform a bank robbery with wig and machine gun like Patty Hearst. That's hardly the end of the extreme globe-trotting melodramatics, either.

Mack is made to jump through too many emotional hoops, and the very handsome Schicha can't make sense of a character who's sweet and loyal one minute, then psycho and abusive the next. (On the plus side, the kid who plays their toddler daughter is adorable, and seems very relaxed around her "parents.") The movie just doesn't have the finesse to pull off such a complicated relationship in psychological terms, and stylistically it reels from sober drama to broad, lurid, sometimes choppily edited sequences.

Despite its alleged factual basis in the experiences of a woman who endured some years tied to a delusional Nazi husband, the film's progress is too erratic to be credible. It awkwardly lands between drive-in fare and something more respectable. Still, it's too hectic to be dull.

While yes this is a B-grade movie it still does a great job in telling the true story of Christine Maresch, a young girl who at 16 was coerced into marrying a charming yet psychotic and delusional pro Nazi supporter, after which she was relentlessly abused, raped, shot and blackmailed into robbing banks. Although it may seem cheesy to show so much of Kerry Mack's breasts, it was to point out that Walter treated his wife as his sex slave and constantly demanded sex from her as it was "her duty" to obey him.

This really is a horrifying story, especially since it's a true story based closely on Christine's autobiography. While it's a low budget film it's unfair to rate it on that alone. You really have to feel for Christine. If this movie was made Hollywood style the viewers would be far more sympathetic. Think of Julia Roberts character in Sleeping With The Enemy; what happened to Christine was far worse and horrific. You also have to ignore the trashy cover which gives the false impression that this has something to do with prostitution. I really don't know who came up with that as it has nothing to do with the movie.

Ignore the cheesy faults due to low budget, this is still a great movie worth watching.