De aardwolf

Watching "De Aardwolf" was a unique and confusing, but primarily frustrating experience. I'm from Belgium, like the film itself, and also over here it has an obscure status and a bizarre reputation.

However, the aspects I expected to be controversial and offensive were really weak, pathetic, and almost neglectable. Upon its release in 1984, "The Aardwolf" - which is a completely meaningless title, by the way - got banished, supposedly because it featured Nazi symbolism and because it glorified a sexist portrayal of traditional gender roles. The Nazi symbols, well, yeah ... there's a bit of that. But it's minimal and I find the use of it rather satirical. And yes, lead protagonist Tony is an arrogant and sexist schmuck, who forbids his wife to have a career or hang around with friends he doesn't like, but the plot also revolves on how HE totally fails at everything. Tony sees himself as a brilliant businessman and follows expensive trainings to behave as a confident manager, but he leads his father's construction company to bankruptcy and pushes his wife to leave him.

It's a well-known fact here in Flanders, Belgium, that lead actor Kurt Van Eeghem hates the film and does whatever he can to keep it as obscure and unseen as possible. Shortly after the film, Van Eeghem became a popular radio and television game show host and distanced himself entirely from the film. Can't say I blame him but, on the other hand, he has nothing to be ashamed. His depiction of the loathsome, overly confident, and snobbish yuppy is spot on! I'm glad my two fellow reviewers agree.

One year later, in 1985, writer/director Rob Van Eyck returned with the bonkers post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi film "The Afterman" (which I actually quite liked), and in 2000 he made the atrocious crime flick "Blue Belgium". The trio of films gained him the questionable reputation of being Belgium's worst director.

"De Aardwolf" may not look controversial by today's standards, but you have to keep in mind how conservative the Belgian film industry was in the 1980s. We were not a communist country, but you could certainly be fooled by our film output. Most of these films were funded by the government, who certainly had a say in the content as well. For this reason, Belgium mostly made (way too) faithfull adaptations of century-old classic novels. In most countries, students are delighted when the hungover teacher just plays a movie instead of actually teaching. In Belgium this was only fun for about fifteen seconds. I've seen so many old farmers die I'm genuinely surprised there are any left.

"De Aardwolf" was immediately banned because there's some Nazi symbolism in there, but the most shocking about it was how it features recognisable people in recognisable situations, saying dialogues people could actually say. It wasn't the first Belgian movie to do so ("Zaman" would come to mind here), but it was still relatively new at the time. Writer/Director Rob Van Eyck may be a glorified amateur, but he's a trailblazer at the same time. As cheap and technically limited as this movie looks, it is highly engaging.

Main actor Kurt Van Eeghem doesn't like to be reminded of this film, which is weird because he's absolutely nailing it here. He plays an arrogant, snobbish banker with an iron confidence, but very limited skill. Van Eeghem finds the perfect balance between a cartoon character and someone we could see in everyday life. Who doesn't know someone with a vague, probably redundant consultant job who thinks he is saving the world? Watching this guy squirm as he gets himself in more and more trouble is incredibly entertaining, so Van Eeghem has nothing to be ashamed of.

As I said, Van Eyck is not a technically accomplished director. His most famous work is "The Afterman", which is basically en exploitation movie that has nothing to offer besides violence and nudity (I give it two thumbs up). He also made the downright appalling "Blue Belgium", a very controversial film about a real-life rapist and murderer. "De Aardwolf" has more depth and is quite clearly his best work. It's a shame this was banned for so long, but thankfully the Belgian film archive dug it up and even showed it on television. What an age we live in!

When this flick came out in Belgium it immediately was banned due the Nazi symbolism used and references towards the adoration of Nazism. The courthouse in Brussels banned it and in fact De Aardwolf never got a proper release, even back then it was hard to find a copy at your local rental shop. So it rather became one of those notorious hard to find flicks just like The Antwerp Killer (1983). And being directed by controversial director Rob Van Eyck it was a must have in a lot of collections.

2009 already had rumours that De Aardwolf would get a proper release but there were problems of course with the rights owned with the score and some of the actors being involved would do anything to delay the release. One of them was in fact the main lead here, Kurt Van Eeghem. He was very popular back then with the cult program Hitring and was then called Rafael Goossens. This was in fact his only full feature he made but he did appear in a lot of series. Still today you can catch him on Belgian's radio.

There are other names that are worth seeing like Dora Van Der Groen and Nellie Rosiers among others, they all became big names in the dutch era's.

But the demand was so big that in 2013 it was confirmed that an official release would be available online. Finally it did, still, it's to watch in 4:3 format and hasn't been digitally upgraded. So it still has it's VHS look. Funny to see The Scabs playing a song. Strange to see that the Nazism is so low on today's standards. There's nothing controversial to see nowadays in De Aardwolf. But it's worth seeing for so many reasons and for a Rob Van Eyck flick I was surprised that it looked rather tame and wasn't offending (except for the SS signs) like he used to do with other flicks. And Kurt hasn't to be ashamed for his acting abilities here to see. The overall look was surely eighties, a must have if you collect Belgian flicks. Let's hope that The Antwerp Killer finally will see it's proper release after all those years.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 0/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5