Rodrigo Amaro I'd really wish to remember the last film I've seen that not only had me on the edge of my seat but also left me twisting my senses, nervous and disturbed all the way yet it allowed to compensate me with a different perspective without being extremely critical of what I was seeing. In all of its strange ways and crushing parts, "Angst" felt like an open door of which I had to enter, despite having seen similar experiences before time and again, but this one had some form of urgency and virtuosity that seemed different, offered unusual insights and made me see further to an already worn out exposed theme: the mind of a psychopath. Gerald Kargl's film is a tremendous effort that requires a certain coldness from the viewer in order to comprehend (or at least try) what goes on inside the devious and sickening acts of a cold-blooded murderer and his desperate needs to obtain satisfaction and pleasure with killing other people. Without Hollywood's stylized fashion and popular stars which always appeals to audiences, the European "Angst" feels like a vividly real experience that is hard to wash away from your mind. Everything's told from the perspective of the psychopath (brilliantly played by Erwin Leder, he was in "Das Boot"), from the moment he's released from prison after doing some time for his attempt to kill his mother, and from then on we already know that this sick man wasn't reformed while in there. He can't wait for his chance to commit more murders and that what's his journey is all about. Observing potential victims on a diner and trying his way with a taxi driver doesn't help him at first glance. Too difficult and he gets himself scared quite easily, almost as if were a beginner (the more he narrates about his past is that we realize that he's actually new to this "business" since he reveals failure after failure, and ideas he wanted to do but never accomplished). During one of those panic moments he finds a house, breaks into it and wait for his possible new victims - to his luck he finds them: an old lady, her daughter and her invalid brother. The rest isn't worth mentioning. "Angst" succeeds where all similar flicks fails because it isn't about just someone who randomly kills people and there's authorities trying to get him. Above all, this is a psychological view to a deranged state of mind, carefully elaborated by Mr. Kargl with his planned sequences filmed with a body-cam tied to the lead actor, spinning out of control and in several directions while the paranoid killer is on the loose, running away from scenarios he could easily get away if he managed to control himself or when his mind is echoing memories from the past. Most of the movie consists of those shots (brilliantly filmed and edited), edgy and dizzy but with a purpose; and Leder is a courageous and patient actor who understood exactly the frame of mind his character was going through. His character doesn't pity anyone, all he needs its the immediate relief while stabbing, torturing and killing people. The way he moves, the intensity on his eyes and acts, it's a complete feeling of delusion, insanity and at a deep level, true happiness (when he reaches his ultimate sadistic goal). But the screenplay doesn't make him much of of a bright guy as we tend to watch in many similar movies. Surely, he could fool the prison's psychiatrists with his fake dream stories but once he's out, the desperation takes over and he makes one sloppy mistake after another and you start to wonder why this guy isn't so clever like most psycho folks are. At least, this is what we hear and read in several sources that those dangerous minds are far more clever than the average joe. The egocentrism, the nihilism, the hatred, the contempt...it's all there - even the charm, evidenced at the diner sequences where he flirts with two pretty girls. He's not so cute but there's an appeal to him that some would fall for him with no problem. But it lacks a higher intelligence for this man. It's not like he's trying to commit the perfect crime, obviously, but for someone who's avoiding getting back to jail, he's too careless, not typical for serial killers. However, perhaps that's the real focus of the movie with this character: he's so inside his world and worried about doing what he needs, that he forgets about everything else, it's a whole new level of mentality. The obsession takes over, he goes along regardless of consequences and then it's all about improvising to what comes next. The experience is not for the faint of heart. It's brutal, dark, real, violent and extremely tense film but one that gives you the opportunity to see with precision and detail through variations of a disturbed personality, which makes of "Angst" a unique thrilling experiment. It's a shocking pity that the director made only this film after dealing with many budget obstacles during its making. He vowed to never return to filmmaking again, and it's a shame because Mr. Kargl had an incredible eye and talent for the job. Anyway, this is a shining moment for an one-hit wonder. 9/10

george.schmidt ANGST (1983) ** Bizarre take on the psychopath on the loose horror flick from German filmmaker Gerald Kargl (this his one and only film ever produced leaves one wonder What Could Have Been?) that has a documentarian feel 'based on a true story' involving a recently released lunatic from prison (creepy as hell Erwin Leder who suggests the bastard child of Mick Jagger & Brian Jones!) whose insatiable, desperate need to kill again leads him onto an isolated house and terrorizing the denizens - a family that echoes his …leading to some disturbing moments of unease with a few bloody moments that feel agonizingly one beat too long. The film only doesn't work in the relentless narrative and a character that is truly almost blackly comically inept in the unskilled or planned crimes he perpetuates. Remarkable cinematography by screenwriter Zbignew Rybcynski who also edited with interesting composition, skewed angles and POVs that take some genuine risk.

christopher-underwood A full star rating, for me, usually indicates a film I would gladly sit down and watch again, straight away. Not this one. Not this mean disgusting, horrific, disturbing, involving and believable film from Gerald Kargl. If the refusal of distributors to show this upon release had been overcome, what mighty movies might, this clearly most talented man have brought us? Well, I suppose the influence is clear to see in much more recent and overwrought horror, but surely nothing so impressive as this. From start to finish, helped by a haunting score and free flowing cinematography, not afraid to mix intense POV shots with overhead and hand-held. Blistering and uncompromising film making helped much by a sensational central performance from Erwin Leder and also by the clever use of voice over where we learn what this guy has done before and how much pleasure it gives him and then what he hopes to do with these very people he is dragging around. A very tough film that is out there on its own. Grubby and hard to like but a genuine and sincere masterpiece.

chaos-rampant Word on the street is this is a super intense, gruelling, claustrophobic serial killer film. They're not lying. But it's important to get to note why, especially in this case: why this type of violence enthralls so much? And I mean apart from any particular on-screen nastiness. More virulent films have been made, much nastier. Why this fascinates is a completely different beast than say, something like Hostel. It's the easiest thing to make us cringe and shy away, but to fervently want to keep watching?The popular opinion is this works so well exactly because of how contained and straight-forward. There are no distractions from the concentrated moment we first encounter: a inmate giving himself a shave on his day of parole. There are no allusions to anything else but private madness and nothing to escape to for comfort or respite, except perhaps sheer exhaustion. This man is going to go on a crime spree again as soon as he's out of prison, we can tell this much. We can tell it's going to unravel the way we secretly hope it does.Well, this is fine and makes some sense. But doesn't adequately explain to my mind. No, why this works so viscerally - and ties in with other interests of mine in film - I believe has all to do with the cinematic eye.Now most films operate on the assumption that you want to experience a world as real as possible. Every advance in cinematic technology - sound, color, the recent fad of 3D - is a step in that direction. We want to escape more vividly and more urgently than ever. And what most films do to abet that escape is to let loose a few threads of story and place, hopefully open enough if we are in caring hands, that we can be trusted to attach ourselves from own experience. The tighter the weave of the threads from that point on, the closer we are lassoed to the cinematic world. Editing and camera are assigned invisible ways; they have to work without us getting to notice.The Soviets changed all that very early in the game. Here a very world was assembled by the eye. There was no story, it was all a matter of calligraphic (dynamic overlapping) watching. Welles, and less famously Sternberg before him, unpacked these notions by letting it fall on the eye of the camera to join fragments together.(this particular eye was first conceived by the Buddhist but that's another story altogether).Now this is rumored to be the DP's project working under an alias, a Polish man who knows the camera. The opening shot exhibits masterful knowledge of Welles; a crane shot that establishes location by joining together many different planes of perspective. It would have been a film to watch with just this mode, that others like Argento and DePalma exercised in adventurous flourishes of spatial exploration.It's actually a little more elaborate than that. We have two eyes instead of the one. The first is the killer's eye, tightly screwed and always at eye-level as he prowls around. Interior monologue plays out in voice-over, itself taken from the diaries of an actual killer, and meant to recast everything as internal space: victims are an invalid, an old woman and her daughter, each one mapping to a person that deeply wounded in the past as we find out. So we have exceedingly tormented soul spilled out and contorting physical space, very much like Zulawski practiced. Another Pole, another piece of the puzzle.The second eye you will notice is always mounted on a crane and pulled upwards in steep ascends. A bird's eye far removed from human madness, which is the Buddhist eye of woodblock prints. To the film's credit, and this is a lot of its power for me, it remains abstract enough that we may use this perspective as we are inclined: is it a godless and uncaring or a merciful eye, pulling us from the carnage or skipping to the next?