Tenderness of the Wolves 1999 Horror Movie Review

Based on the same true story that inspired Fritz Lang’s M, Ulli Lommel’s Tenderness of the Wolves takes an unsettling look at the life of murderer, black marketeer, and police informant Fritz Haarman, a pedophile who used his position to sweep the train stations and pick up young runaway boys. Living in the depression of post-WWI Germany, Haarman lured the boys to his attic apartment with the promise of a warm meal and bed, only to emerge alone the next morning with secondhand clothes and black market “pork.” Lommel melds images from M and F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu with the elegant camerawork, evocative sets, and tableaux-style direction associated with the films of New German cinema auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who produced the film and appears in a small role. Screenwriter/star Kurt Raab suggests Peter Lorre by way of the vampire Nosferatu with his shaved head, child-like smile and hunched walk, an insidiously beguiling boy-man who strangles his innocent young victims and feasts on their blood. The film is handsomely photographed and well performed by a cast made up of Fassbinder’s regular troupe, but becomes muddled toward the middle, tangling the many threads before finally winding them together in a bold, baroque climax. Though lacking in the rich irony of Fassbinder’s works, it’s a striking, often startling film dominated by Raab’s unsettling performance. —Sean Axmaker