#Karlheinz Bohm

[orpheuslookingback]

Watching 1 horror movie everyday in October 31/31

Peeping Tom (1960), dir. Michael Powell

[schlock-luster-video]

On July 14, 1961, Peeping Tom debuted in Japan.

[notesonfilm1]

Fox and His Friends/ Faustrecht der Freiheit (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany, 1985)

A film that frightened me when I first saw it as a teenager. Richard’s only now seen it. Does it hold up? Made at a time when there was a real dearth of representation, this is a daring work, as queer as a film can be, on many levels. The problem is not homosexuality but bourgeois exploitation, including by gay men. Why hasn’t Fassbinder been canonised by all the young queer boys? We speculate on…

[letterboxd-loggd]

Effi Briest (Fontane Effi Briest) (1974) Rainer Werner Fassbinder

January 7th 2023

[barbarabymarta]

Barbara Kwiatkowska-Lass & Karlheinz Bohm during the filming of "Rififi in Tokyo"

[scary-movies-on-netflix]

PEEPING TOM (1960)

This is considered a classic, the first “slasher” movie.  It’s about Mark, who lives in London but has a vague eastern European accent.  As a child his psychologist father used him as a subject for various experiments regarding fear, and Mark was both filmed and audio recorded constantly.  Mark’s father wrote renowned books based on that “research.”  Mark is now a stunted man.  During the day he works as a “focus puller” at a movie studio.  His side-gig is taking nudie photographs for a magazine shop (a “newsagent”).  He lives in the same house where he grew up, which he inherited.  He runs it as a boarding house.  His own flat includes a huge darkroom, where he develops and watches his films…of him killing women!

Victim 1: The movie starts with Mark somehow hiding his huge camera under his coat and picking up a prostitute.  She takes him home, and he kills her! 

Victim 2: After work one night, at the movie studio, he arranges to film some test footage for an actress, Vivian.  He presents as confident and charming.  He tells her to act out a horror role, and he approaches her with his tripod, which has a spike in one of its legs!  He kills Vivian and stuffs her body in a trunk, which is discovered the next day!

Victim 3: Meanwhile, Mark has met Helen, who lives with her blind mother on the first floor of the boarding house.  She is attracted to Mark, and they go to dinner to talk about how he can take photographs for her to-be-published children’s book.  It goes well, and she pecks him with a kiss.  Mark goes upstairs, where Helen’s blind mother is waiting for him.  They have a strange conversation, and Mark extends the tripod-spike at her, but he does not kill her.  So she is not actually a victim.  Anyway, she can tell that he’s deeply disturbed and tells him to get help, for Helen’s sake.

Victim 4: The police are investigating Vivian’s death and begin to suspect Mark.  A detective trails him after he leaves work.  Mark goes to the newsagent to take some more nudie photographs of a model, and he kills her!  Her body is soon discovered, and the police realize that Mark was the killer (because a detective was waiting for him outside when it happened).

Victim 5: Meanwhile, Helen goes to Mark’s flat to drop off a copy of her manuscript.  Curious, she starts watching one of his films, and we witness her face as horror slowly descends upon her features.  Then Mark arrives!  Helen demands to know if the film is real.  Mark points his camera at her.  He has attached a mirror so that his victims can see themselves dying, and he extends the tripod-spike at her, but he pulls away because he promised Helen’s mother that he would never photograph her.  Then the police arrive!  Mark impales himself upon his own spike as numerous cameras go off to document his death.  The end.

The “serial killer study” is a well-established trope now, with titles such as “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991), “American Psycho” (2000), and even the autobiographical “My Friend Dahmer” (2017).  The trope is also well-regarded; “The Silence of the Lambs” is one of the best movies ever, transcending the genre.  This movie, “Peeping Tom,” is a standout as one of the first of its kind, and it actually delivers an interesting and nuanced portrait of the killer.  “Mark” (Karlheinz Bohm) delivers a fine performance, going from mild to charming to anguished, though the latter sometimes veered a bit too much into melodrama for my liking.  One of his co-stars, however, offers a chilling and completely emotionless performance: his camera.  Mark can barely stand to be without it.  It tracks his victims and cruelly shows them their death-faces.  As the police close in on Mark, they see him above, filming through a shattered window.  One cop says, “It’s only a camera.”  Another replies, “Only?”

[michelangelo-sky]

WIP first lines

Got tagged by the amazing @cypanache for this one, def a good question for an early morning… I have 2 WIPs - one actively worked on, and honestly I have no idea how I ended up writing it in the first place, another one is a bit of a thought rather than a real story at this point. Now, fair warning - they are first lines of next chapters written now, by the time of positing they may well end up somewhere in the middle or even at the end. 1. Both Sides Now - Thrawn / Leia, but can read as an & now, I guess…

“Tell me, Senator, what’s better than a hero?”

“A fallen hero.”  

“Perhaps. But in most cases… a dead hero, for he or she can then become a symbol and a banner for revenge, helps that he would never compete for power or cause trouble, too.”

2. Mirror images (RPF, Romy Schneider and Karlheinz Bohm, don’t ask why, possibly the first disillusionment when a childhood fairytale I grew up watching had a very sad ending in real life)

Every time she comes here, she feels a pull, the taste of missed opportunities and crashed hopes bitter on her tongue, calling for a smoke or a drink – something, anything to wash away the feeling. Every Christmas at home feels like a reckoning: a distorted, merciless mirror to her life or what has become of it. The contrast of a girl she once was and the woman she became too jarring to bear, making the urge to close her eyes and run away again almost unbearable.  

It’s easy to forget, in her day to day life, to erase that Romy from the memory, but every time she comes home, the girl also comes back with a vengeance. Like a light cutting her eyes after a pinch black night, it brings no relief, just a desire to seek a comforting refuge of darkness, sleep, alcohol and make pretend.

[sundaynightfilms]

Romy Schneider as Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Sissi (1955), and Sissi: The Young Empress (1956)

[notdavidfincher]

Sissi (1955) dir. Ernst Marischka, cinematography by Bruno Mondi

[whosthatknocking]

Peeping Tom (1960), dir. Michael Powell

[gatutor]

Karlheinz Bohm-Dolores Hart “Tres azafatas” (Come fly with me) 1963, de Henry Levin.

[idasessions]

Movie for Friday.

[schlock-luster-video]

On April 7, 1960, Peeping Tom premiered in London, England.

Here's some new Karlheinz Bohm art to celebrate!

[tylermkw]

Peeping Tom (1960)

[clemsfilmdiary]

Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven / Mutter Küsters' Fahrt zum Himmel  (1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

5/11/19

[barbarabymarta]

Barbara Kwiatkowska-Lass and her husband Karlheinz Böhm during their summer vacation at the Cote d'Azur in France in August 1974. Photo by Horst Ossinger