La tendresse des loups

Tenderness of the Wolves (1973)

*** (out of 4)

Homosexual serial killer Fritz Haarmann (Kurt Raab) stalks the young boys and men of Germany as he lures them back to his apartment. If they're lucky it's just a sexual thing but for dozens of young people they were lured back to Haarmann's apartment where they were murdered and eaten.

Ulli Lommel's TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES certainly isn't a film that's going to appeal to many for a number of reasons. For starters, if you're expecting a horror film then you're barking up the wrong tree. I guess you could call this a crime picture with horror elements but if you're wanting the gory kind of story then you'll be disappointed because this is one of the most laid back thrillers that you'll ever see. Of course, the subject matter itself is another thing that is going to keep most people away.

Lommel certainly deserves a lot of credit for not delivering your average crime picture but instead he goes for more of a bizarre atmosphere. What's so strange about this picture is that you're watching a monster who murders and eats children yet you don't ever really hate him. What I liked about the movie is that it's really not that judgmental on its subject as it doesn't try to make him a villain, a misunderstood psycho or anything else. Lommel basically just tells us the story and he really keeps all emotion out of the picture.

Technically speaking this is an extremely well-made movie. The camera-work is wonderful and there's no doubt that the director builds up a rather eerie atmosphere with ease. The subject matter is a very dark one yet Lommel never sends the material over-the-top or into a graphic area. It should go without saying but the biggest reason the film works so well is due to the performance by Raab. He's rather remarkable at how good he is in the role and not for a second do you ever feel as if you're watching an actor. You really do feel as if you're watching a troubled mind work his way into the trust of these victims.

TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES has a lot of similarities with Fritz Lang's M, another German movie about a serial killer. While this film doesn't reach the same levels of that one, this Lommel picture certainly deserves to be better known than it is.

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.

Based on the true story of Fritz Haarman who was a serial killer who preyed on young men and boys between the wars, this is a repositioning of the time line to be just after World War II in a devastated Germany. He was a man who had come under the watch of the Police but they chose to keep him as informant rather than look into his more nefarious habits.

He sells 'meat' on the black market and his visits are eagerly awaited by his customers. At night he patrols the local train station and helps out waifs and strays – some of them he takes under his wing and brings them back to his attic room. There the neighbours start to complain about the ungodly noises that emanate from the loft long into the wee hours of the German night.

Now this is deeply chilling and has scenes that will stay with you. The nasty bits are far from gratuitous but they have more of an impact because of that. Openly gay he lusts after Hans who is the German equivalent of a 'Spiv' and equally as loathsome. The lighting is just brilliant too, adding to the eerie atmosphere and the squalid detritus of post war life. Rainer Werner Fassbinder puts in an on screen appearance too – which is just cinematic gravy as far as I am concerned. The actual transfer by Arrow Video is really high quality too and it feels as if this could have been made a few years ago and not in 1973 as indeed it was. A great and worthy film to have some new life breathed into it.

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.

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.