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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
German Angst (Blu-ray) (2015)

German Angst (Blu-ray) (2015)

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Released 18-Nov-2015

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Horror Theatrical Trailer
Trailer-x 4 for other Accent releases
Rating Rated R
Year Of Production 2015
Running Time 106:46
RSDL / Flipper Dual Layered Cast & Crew
Start Up Ads Then Menu
Region Coding 2,4 Directed By Jörg Buttgereit
Michal Kosakowski
Andreas Marschall
Studio
Distributor
Accent Film Entertainment Starring Lola Gave
Axel Holst
Matthan Harris
Annika Strauss
Andreas Pape
Kristina Kostiv
Milton Welsh
Desiree Giorgetti
Rudiger Kulbrodt

Case Standard Blu-ray
RPI ? Music Musica Pesante
Schlafes Bruder


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None German DTS HD Master Audio 5.1
German Dolby Digital 5.1
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
16x9 Enhanced
Video Format 1080i
Original Aspect Ratio 2.35:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles English Smoking Yes
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

     German Angst is an anthology of three horror stories from three different directors with some common elements such as death, brutality, control, torture, blood, self-mutilation and what is real. The three stories are Final Girl by writer / director Jorg Buttgereit, Make a Wish from director Michal Kosakowski and Alraune by writer / director Andreas Marschall.

     Final Girl, the shortest of the three stories, starts with a young woman (Lola Gave) waking up, talking about her guinea pigs and having breakfast. Then she selects a pair a secateurs from her kitchen drawer and walks into a room where a man (Axel Holst) is bound, gagged and blindfolded on the bed. The woman then castrates the man with the secateurs and later returns with an electronic knife to cut off his head. But how much of this is real and how much in her imagination?

     In Make a Wish Jacek and Kasia (Matthan Harris, Annika Strauss), a young deaf- mute couple in love, break into an abandoned building. There Jacek shows Kasia a strange medallion that had been his grandmother’s and starts to tell her the story of the massacre of grandmother’s family in Poland in 1943 by the SS and his grandmother’s miraculous, or even supernatural, deliverance. Before Jacek can finish his story they are interrupted by a group of hooligans led by Jens (Andreas Pape) who attack and brutally torture, at length, Jacek and Kasia when they discover they have Polish names. Can the medallion affect another miracle?

     The final story is Alraune. When his girlfriend Maya (Desiree Giorgetti) walks out on him, photographer Eden (Milton Welsh) starts to surf porn internet sites. He strikes up a conversation with a woman and they agree to meet at a club. There instead Eden meets sexy dancer Kira (Kristina Kostiv); things are heating up nicely when she walks out on him. Eden follows Kira to another, very exclusive, members only club run by Petrus (Rudiger Kulbrodt. Eden is determined to join the club; Petrus promises him the ultimate sexual experience by using a drug make from the root of the Mandragora plant. The rules are that Eden has to be blindfolded, and never look, and that the club membership cannot be rescinded. Eden becomes hooked by the drug despite the side effects and obsessed by Kira, but when Maya returns one night Eden starts to tell her the story. But there are still a few twists to go.

     German Angst has some very brutal, graphic and cringe-worthy moments featuring mutilation, torture and self-mutilation that more than justify the film’s “R” rating. The Blu-ray cover promises “three tales of love, sex and death in Berlin” which in my view does not really describe the anthology: there is very little love and only a bit of sex, although death is certainly present. These stories are brutal and confrontational filmmaking and if there is a constant strand, other than blood, gore and torture, I think it is more about control, alienation and reality, added to some mysticism. But each to their own I guess.

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Transfer Quality

Video

     German Angst is presented in the original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, in 1080i using the MPEG-4 AVC code.

     Although the three stories are shot by the same DP, Sven Jakob-Engelmann, each has a very different look. Final Girl is very arty and soft focus with dull colours an indistinct detail except for the close-ups of guinea pig noses or Lola Gave’s eyes and face. Make a Wish has two time frames. The Polish 1943 scenes are shot to look like old, faded film stock with washed out colours and some marks and artefacts. The modern German segment has bright exterior colours but a fair degree of obvious ghosting. Interiors are artefact free, blacks and shadow detail good. Alraune has natural colours and detail is fine during exteriors at night. However there are a number of club scenes and hallucinatory sequences where the lighting and detail is deliberately all over the place. Both Make a Wish and Alraune have sections which evince that digital yellowish look under lights.

     There are white English subtitles for the German dialogue which can be removed for German speakers. They were error free, but did shimmer on a number of occasions due to the 1080i.

Video Ratings Summary
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     The audio is German DTS-HD MA 5.1 although in both Make a Wish and Alraune there is more sections of English than German.

     Dialogue was easy to understand except for the club scene in Alraune where the voiceover was drowned by the music. Final Girl was front oriented, with only a single person in the room although the rears and the subwoofer cranked up the noise for the flashbacks. Make a Wish was more balanced, with engines, music, shots and screams in the surrounds, the subwoofer adding depth and rumble to the tortures. Alraune was the most aggressive, with music and voices in the club dance scenes and the hallucinatory sequences all around the sound stage, all well supported by the subwoofer.

     The score by Musica Pesante, with some added music by Schlafes Bruder, was diverse, fitting into the different stories with everything from heavy metal to a single piano.

     There are no lip synchronisation issues.

Audio Ratings Summary
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

Trailers (7:21)

     Trailers for We Are Still Here, Heaven Knows What, Q and Irreversible play on start-up. These trailers can also be selected from the menu, plus a trailer for German Angst (1:47).

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

     The only listing of German Angst on Amazon is a Region B German Blu-ray. The feature is English friendly and this release includes a behind the scenes featurette but I cannot find any details of it so cannot say if it is worthwhile or if it has English subtitles.

Summary

     German Angst is brutal and graphic, so it is certainly not for everyone. But I must say it is even handed with scenes of both male and female genitalia mutilation that will make both sexes cringe. The stories are varied and if there is a constant strand it is about control, alienation and reality, plus some mysticism. Fans of the genre will certainly find German Angst of interest.

     The video and audio are fine; trailers are the only extras.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ray Nyland (the bio is the thing)
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Review Equipment
DVDSony BDP-S580, using HDMI output
DisplayLG 55inch HD LCD. This display device has not been calibrated. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 1080p.
Audio DecoderNAD T737. This audio decoder/receiver has not been calibrated.
AmplificationNAD T737
SpeakersStudio Acoustics 5.1

Other Reviews NONE