Die Zärtlichkeit der Wölfe

Back in the early 70's, when his name wasn't yet a synonym for insufferably crappy hand-held camera horror stuff, Ulli Lommel actually was quite the promising and visionary young (barely 29 years old) director in his home country Germany. The powerful impact of "The Tenderness of Wolves" alone is already more than enough evidence to back up this statement. This is a thoroughly unsettling and disturbing drama/horror hybrid based on the true facts in the case of one of the most notorious European criminal figures of the previous century. Fritz Haarmann was a German pedophile and serial killer of young adolescent males during the Interbellum period and made nearly 30 victims in only five years of time. Haarmann makes his money by trades food and goods on the black market that he himself falsely confiscated by pretending to be a policeman. This is also how he picks up young lads in the train station and lures them to his apartment loft. Uncle Fritz probes for homeless boys and eventually murders them by biting their throats; which gave him the nickname "The Vampire of Hanover". The atrocities became even more inhuman when Fritz, together with his lover/partner-in-crime Hans Grans, sold the hacked up flesh of the victims on the black market. "The Tenderness of Wolves" is definitely not an overly graphical or tasteless film, but the subject matter is sickening and the whole portrayal of pedophilia is beyond disturbing. Haarmann pretty openly declares his affection for young boys and his entire surrounding either deliberately ignores this or even considers it to be the most common thing in the world. Only his neighbor from the apartment below suspects his psychopathic tendencies and attempts to alert the authorities, but that fails as Haarmann actually had connections with the police where he worked as a "rat".

The sequences in which Haarmann is intimate with his victims are extremely discomforting, but at the same time they make the film all the more powerful and hauntingly realistic. It seems unthinkable in this modern day and age, but it was so easy for twisted perverts to pick up unsuspecting and youthful victims. Especially in times of poverty and despair, like the case in Germany between the two World Wars. Every time Haarmann comes near a boy, you can already assume the poor kid's fate is sealed, like the runaway drifter at the railway station or the boy at the carnival. Whenever he approaches a kid, your skin is guaranteed to crawl, because his voice is so stern and despicable. "The Tenderness of Wolves" also benefices from a more than decent re-creation of the depressing era and – of course – the incredibly brilliant and courageous performance of lead actor/writer Kurt Raab. He truly depicts Fritz Haarmann exactly like an emotionless and depraved monster ought to be depicted. This certainly isn't a film that is suitable for all tastes (and even the most hardened cult fanatics need to feel in a certain state of mind to watch it), but it's undeniably a unique experience and easily one of the top five most unpleasant yet fascinating things I ever watched. Moreover, after witnessing the unforgettable tour-de-force accomplishment that is "The Tenderness of Wolves", it's all the more difficult to accept that Ulli Lommel is nowadays directing junk entitled "Zombie Nation", "Diary of a Cannibal" or "BTK Killer".

This movie was one of the most interesting experiences that I have ever had! On one hand, it made me cringe. (The graphic sex was a surprise; I expected the gore.)On the other hand, it was beautiful and eerie. Great atmosphere... dark and smoky. Full of mystery and forbidden pleasures... cannibalism, vampirism, underage sex, corruption... the list goes on and on. Kurt Raab was frightening as Fritz Haarman: child molester, vampire, cannibal and black market salesman. He lures young boys off of the street and takes them back to his small, dingy apartment. Once there, he molests them (before, and sometimes after he kills them) murders them in cold blood and processes their carcasses to sell as meat in this post-WW2 drama. Both sexy and revolting, Raab draws the viewer into his dark, tortured psyche without garnering any sympathy for his dilemma. He is in one word, depraved.

Fritz' neighbor is hearing strange chopping noises in the night--- she does not like his way of bringing strange boys to the apartment. Suspicious, she contacts the police, who basically patronize her, until the murders become so numerous that they are impossible to ignore any longer. Go see this film. It is a truly disturbing experience.

I found this film to be more interesting than I expected. The film, to me, is clearly not meant to be a historic film about Fritz Haarmann. There is a line in the film that makes a reference to the Nazi's (their rise to power wasn't until nine years after Haarmann's execution) and how difficult life is for everyone in post-war Germany. The character of Fritz Haarmann was used as a metaphor for the German people "cannabalizing" each other just to survive. The costumes, language, and vehicles also seemed to be of a later decade. Much like Werner Herzog's "The Enegma of Kaspar Hauser", "Tenderness of the Wolves" uses a real historical figure (taken with some liberties) as a criticism of society as a whole. Having said that, the film is not particularly outstanding in any way. The concept is interesting, and contains the leading actors of Fassbinder's "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul", as well as Fissbinder himself. Still, I would have to say the film is only slightly above average; both as a Fassbinder film and the German New Wave.

German cinema from the early 1970's is amongst the most unique, original and in this case disturbing. Based on a predatory serial killer of the 1920's whose prey was young men and boys this piece of film certainly takes a bite.

Surprisingly deemed too controversial a topic to direct himself, infant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder handed the reins of Tenderness of the Wolves, a deeply unsettling portrayal of serial killer Fritz Haarmann, to his protégé Ulli Lommel, the man later responsible for video nasty The Boogeyman (1980) and countless straight-to-video efforts that linger in the IMDb's Bottom 100 list. Despite this, the film looks and feels like a Fassbinder film. The characters inhabit the same sleazily-filmed world, many of Fassbinder's troupe of actors appear, and the great man himself has a small role as an ugly pimp.

Written by the great Kurt Raab, who also stars as Haarmann, Tenderness of the Wolves doesn't spend any time trying to understand the motivation of the man dubbed the Vampire of Hanover, but instead shows us a snippet of his debauched life. Moving the story from 1924 (when Haarmann was arrested in real-life) to post World War II, Germany is a country clearly feeling the economic strain of losing the war, where the black market is flourishing and con-man Haarmann is doing very well for himself. Along with his on-and-off lover and pimp Hans Grans (Jeff Roden), he swindles clothes from good Samaritans and sells them on for profit, as well as selling meat to bar owner Louise (Brigitte Mira) which may or may not be the bodies of his victims.

As a horror, it achieves it's disturbing atmosphere not through gratuitousness, but through the squalor of its setting, observant direction, and Raab's magnificent performance. Haartmann was a gay child molester who enjoyed throttling his victims, biting into their throats (often through the Adam's apple), before chopping them into pieces and throwing them into the Leine River. We don't see much of the murders, but when they do occur they are filmed without sensationalism, made all the more unsettling due to the full-frontal male nudity of some of the film's under-age actors, something extremely rare in horror even today.

Haartmann, shaven-headed and ghostly pale, manipulates his victims by posing as a police officer before drugging and overpowering them, often making little effort to cover his tracks or dispose of the bodies discretely. This arrogance, although it would eventually lead to his arrest, makes him even more of a monster, and Raab delivers a truly terrific performance. Without attempting to explain his actions or even offer a background of how Haarmann got into the criminal business and how he developed a taste for human blood, Tenderness of the Wolves becomes more about the world he inhabits and the creepy characters who surround him. It's hardly a film to discuss over breakfast, but it will no doubt stay with you for long after the credits have rolled.