Das Millionenspiel

The fiction seems to be perfect: Millions of TV-watchers experience the hunting of Bernhard Lotz, who as a candidate for a TV-Show is hunted seven days by a professional team of killers. Lotz is running to save his life - if he manages to survive the seven days he'll get one million DeutschMarks. What sounds like one of those cheap SciFi - Productions is produced in very realistic style. The airplay was 1970 - and some people could not decide whether it's fiction or reality. Some called the TV-Stations and complained about it, some asked to be the next candidate and some even asked if they could join the team of killers. The Author of this tv-drama has seen the future in a very realistic way: The breaks for tasteless advertising in the show, the boss of the private television station who does everything to boost the ratings, the talking about very intimate things with people on air etc. Nowadays people do the craziest things in those so called "reality shows" to get some money even do without their personal freedom and numerous human rights. Everything in this film which was fiction that time has become quite common today except of killing people - this makes the movie much more than one of those Hollywood stories, it's a document of time...

This German TV-production is an impressive satire on reality-TV-shows - and made almost three decades before reality-TV-shows existed!

"Das Millionenspiel" ("The million game") is a TV-show that gets broadcast live once a month for a week. One contestant is hunted by three ruthless killers through the country, and if he survives the week, he'll win one million. The film follows the contestant on the last day of the fifteenth show, the killers always on his toes. If things go to smoothly for him, the producers help the killers to catch up with him again, and vice versa. During the climax, the contestant has to got through a tube, where each of the three killers has a last chance to shoot him dead. The whole program is - of course - interrupted by TV-spots from the show's sponsors "Stabilelite".

Even though the settings look dated nowadays, this unusual thriller still works with its issues, even though the reality-TV-show-phenomenon is almost worn out again. Knowing that "Das Millionenspiel" was made over 30 years ago, it bares almost prophetic content, which makes it even more interesting in the 21st century. Strangely, the film was "lost" after its first broadcast in the beginning of the Seventies and never showed again on TV until 2002. Also very remarkable are some of the cast: The show is presented by Dieter Thomas Heck, who himself became a very well now showmaster in german television later in the Seventies. Heribert Fassbender, who went on as a sports presenter for German TV, also plays one of the show's hosts. And, most interesting, German comedian Dieter Hallervorden can be seen in one of his very few serious roles: he's the leader of the killer gang!

Undoubtedly one of the best German TV-productions ever made and somewhat a predecessor of the reality-TV-satire "Series 7: The Contenders", which is also highly recommended and can be called "the American approach" on reality-TV-show-satire, made over 30 years later, though. "Das Millionenspiel" certainly is worth checking out, rating: 8 out of 10.

Great film and above all very exciting. Camera always calm and no wobble. Not much talk besides the moderator. Music wasn't special, but the movie is just a TV movie and that's why it's great. In the end I also liked the one shot where Lotz was shocked and lay on the stretcher at the end, holding the one million EUR envelope. You can see or understand the message of the film from this.

"Das Millionenspiel" was locked away for 30 years due to copyright difficulties. It was made into a French film, Le Prix du Danger in 1983, based on the same short story by the great Robert Sheckley. But "made for television" was surely more appropriate than for the big screen. It was so visionary and presented in such a way that spectators took it for real and applied at the TV station to take part as the hunted person (I personally read some of the letters). The letters were handed out to the University of Cologne to conduct a psychological survey back in 1972.

"Das Millionenspiel" ("Million-Game") is a fictional reality-TV show of a fictional private TV-station named "TE-TV".

In the show, Contestant Bernard Lotz is hunted through (western-) Germany for a week by a group of hired killers and has, he and the killers being constantly monitored by 24 camera teams, to reach a series of checkpoints in order to win 1 million German mark (an enormous amount of money - consider the inflation).

In an - for Europe and Germany, where privately owned television stations were not very usual until the 1980's - almost prophetic manner the film draws a picture of a future full of private TV stations and reality-TV-shows competing for market-share.

The film is starring a series of famous German TV moderators and actors and features some bizarre fake-advertisements.

Worth watching.