Les aventures de Klaus aux commandes du chariot élévateur

This is one of those shorts that really surprises and delights. The fact that it is presented as your typical, cheesy safety-at-work type of video adds to the humour tremendously.

Our man- Klaus- is beginning a new job as a forklift driver in a warehouse. He does all the things he shouldn't where safety is concerned and is suitably admonished by the patronising safety expert who provides the voice over. The accidents start out as the fairly typical toe-curling scenes one usually sees in such instructional films, but soon they multiply into totally over-the-top affairs.

This may make it sound like a film only horror or gore fans would enjoy, but it really isn't. The effects are so daft that they would only put off the most extreme anti-blood viewers and I promise you that you will laugh yourself silly and be recommending it to your pals wholeheartedly. I certainly did, and everyone who's seen it has loved it.

If anyone ever criticises the German sense of humour, you have all the ammo you could ever need to shoot them down with this little number.

Can't recommend it enough.

As a huge fan of short films, I only recently had the opportunity to see this on Channel4 (a UK channel that shows programmes that other channels don't think are commercial enough) - the beginning was intriguing as I was about to change channels, but then became curious to watch what looked like a work safety parody.

Gory though it is, it's the unfortunate situations that continue to make you laugh till the very end.

If you're a fan of Peter Jackson's Bad Taste and Braindead, you'll feel at home. Those that have 10 minutes to spare should spend it watching this. Highly recommended.

This short movie is great! I've seen it at the Fantasy Filmfest. The whole audience laughed nearly till death. It is made like one of those clips about safety in factories, but there is a significant difference: The makers show what happens if the safety rules are not obeyed instead of just talking about it! So there are knifes sticking in heads or people cut in two halves by sharp metal plates.... and a lot of blood...... and the factory alarm rings on and on.... and the ambulance is very busy.....

We watched this on vocational school (logistics line) yesterday and everyone laughed like hell.

We were expecting a boring, typical 70-80's educational video with an old dusty narrator in the background, and that's how it pretty much started. Then, after few gory details what not to do, everyone's interest rose up and most of the class started laughing in tears.

Everything in this video matches up, the music, actors, the setting - every part just makes this a great educational video, which really makes you learn what not to do with a forklift.

I just wish all of 'em videos were like this.

Well, on one hand it's kind of sad that this has to be the closest thing to a cult movie us Germans have produced during the last decades, but then again, it *is* funny as hell and raises more attention about the dangers of fork-lifts then all the Jaws-movie combined ever did about the dangers of shark-bites.

Which is a good thing, I guess, since fork lifters are gruesome killing-machines disguised as everyday tools - especially the titular fork lifter shown in this film. Who would have thought?

Another interesting trivia about this movie is the narrator, Egon Hoegen: For decades, this guy narrated the educational TV-show "Der siebte Sinn" ("The seventh sense") about the safety and regulations of everyday public driving. So, most Germans are familiar with his distinct voice, which makes his dry remarks after each brutal accident even more hilarious. This is not the first time, Hoegen used his distinct voice for the sake of comedy; he also narrated the propaganda-pieces in the German dub of "Starship Troopers", giving them an even crazier, authoritative feel.

Given it's short length (about 10 minutes, including end credits), I really don't see a reason why you shouldn't give this film a chance. Maybe it will even receive a fan-dub one day, so English-speaking audiences will also benefit from the insightful informations provided here.

I guess you can watch it online somewhere, but there once also was a really, really nice DVD of this movie, which compensated the relative short length of the main feature by a sheer abundance of bonus-features, easter eggs and background-information. And it was cheap as hell! Try to get that one!