Schamlos

Schamlos (shameless) is an exceptional Austrian movie by an exceptional director. While Austrian movies in the 60s mainly were Heimatfilme - colorful pictures about the better days back in the monarchy - Saller did not care too much about this mainstream and started with b/w exploitation cinema. His first movie - "Geißel des Fleisches" - came as a shock to Austrians, his second movie "Schamlos" repeated that experience.

A very dynamic Udo Kier stars as Pohlmann, a teenager setting up a gang to collect protection money, who falls in love with an exotic dancer, who gets murdered. Can Pohlmann revenge her? Pohlmann investigates in caravans, used as mobile whorehouses, threatens everybody he meets with violence - all in all, he behaves like bad guys should behave - especially if you take the German TV series "Der Komissar" as a pattern (which started 2 years later).

The score unbelievable - especially the main theme played during the scenes in the "beatschuppen" (mixture between speakeasy and disco).

All in all a really entertaining movie - and don't forget: you can always tell people that you just watch it for historical research...

"Schamlos" is now released on DVD in an edition by Austrian newspaper "Der Standard" for the first time ever - audio is only available in German.

7 out of 10

Yes, this is a terrible movie.

Is it so terrible that it could be looked upon as great?

I contemplated on that.

But I would say no. It is just a terrible movie. Terrible directing, terrible script, terrible acting, terrible... well, terrible anything.

Trying to make an Austrian exploitation movie was a very good idea. And if I'm not wrong Eddy Saller's "Geissel des Fleisches" starring the unforgettable Herbert Fux was interesting. Or at least that's what my memory tells me.

But "Schamlos" is just bad. Meaning that the filmmakers were not able to produce anything that strikes you visually. So this movie is not about exploitation. It is about the lack of talent to create exploitation.

And that is why this movie is so disappointing. It seems as if complete amateurs tried to make a feature film. I like trash and exploitation movies.

But, please, go for Italian, French, British or German trash films. And don't bother yourself by wasting time on watching this example of irrelevant amateurism.

Because quite obviously the Austrian wannabee trash director didn't even try to produce an Austrian trash movie. Otherwise Vienna or any other Austrian city should have been the setting. No, what you see are Viennese streets, but the movie pretends to take place somewhere in Germany.

Ridiculous. At the best.

I am not sure about the filming location of this movie. The story seems to be set in Frankfurt/Germany. The cars have German number plates with "F"s. On the other hand I think I recognized some Viennese streets. I am sure that the Philips building which can be seen @ 0:20:21 is the Viennese head quarters of Philips (Wien Favoriten, Triesterstrasse 64). One of the characters (the assistant of Richard Kowalski) pretends to speak a Viennese dialect, the way it is imagined by Germans ... very funny!

All in all the movie captures the atmosphere of the late 60s in Vienna quite nicely.