Frankfurt Kaiserstraße (1981)

Frankfurt Kaiserstraße: Directed by Roger Fritz. With Michaela Karger, Dave Balko, Hanno Pöschl, Ute Zielinski. Girl goes to the bright lights of Frankfurt when her boyfriend goes into the army; the seamy side of life is not as attractive as she expected.

“This is one of the weirdest movies I have ever seen.nYou know something strange is on the screen when you hear the opening score of this movie which is done in part by some German band I have never heard of called Autobahn. It sounds like bad 70s disco with possibly German lyrics which vary from being screamed like Bonnie Tyler to Kate Bush style twee musings.nHowever oddly enough the soundtrack fits well with whats on the screen.nI learned a number of things about Germany from this movie. They really do enjoy a good moustache, especially when worn with a sleeveless T-Shirt. Lots of Germans have red hair, probably more than in Ireland and that fashion is about 10 years behind. This looks like a late 70s disco movie.nThe story itself seems more suited to a TV soap than a movie. Its basically a young couple intent on u0026quot;freedomu0026quot; who move to the city to get away from parental supervision. The boy joins the army while the girl moves in with a gay drag queen uncle and his lover. The other narrative going on is a low level gangster story which at times reminded me of the Pusher movies. But its simply not that well done. The gangsters in this movie look like Miami Vice on a budget, plenty of mullet haircuts, cheap chains and badly fitting cheap suits.nThere isnu0026#39;t anyone in the movie you will particularly care about and the action is pretty low level, at stages the love story looks like one of those photo stories with captions that used to appear in girls magazines, intent on giving girls the u0026quot;correctu0026#39; message about what boys are after.nThere is however a decent payoff at the end though.nOh and another thing I learned about Germans, they take their clothes off alot and the men are all angry alot the time, plus their bullies are all very short. Remind you of anyone?nFrankfurt, coming to a Rifftrax near you soon. Hopefully.”