Three From The Grave:
German Vampire Films

Just in time for Halloween, the Goethe-Institut and the German Film Office, in partnership with the Gardena Cinema, Screamfest Horror Film Festival LA, and the German Currents Film Festival, have exhumed a selection of rarely screened German vampire films curated by Deutsche Kinemathek as part of their “Wild, Weird, Bloody. German Genre Films of the 70s” retrospective at the 2025 Berlinale. 

Brave souls, the undead, and vampires alike are welcome to join us at the Gardena Cinema on October 25 for a triple feature of Hans W. Geißendörfer’s JONATHAN (1970) , followed by Ulli Lommel’s TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES (1973), and closing with Franz Josef Gottlieb's LADY DRACULA (1977).  

Triple feature tickets (good for all three films) $33.85
Individual film tickets $14.84
 

SCHEDULE - Saturday, Oct. 25th

6:00 pm | JOHNATHAN 
8:00 pm | TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES 
9:45 pm | LADY DRACULA

JOHNATHAN
Dir. Hans W. Geißendörfer, West Germany, 1970, 97 min., Digital Projection, in German with English subtitles
With Jürgen Jung, Hans-Dieter Jendreyko, Paul Albert Krumm, Hertha von Walther, Oskar von Schab, Ilona Grübel, Sophie Strehlow, Gaby Herbst, Arthur Brauss

A political parable of Germany’s 1960s protest movement, Jonathan is set in an undefined past, when a vampire count ruled a small city and its surrounding lands. The bloodlusty count and his followers target the young, so a group of students plans a revolution, choosing Jonathan as their leader. He ventures to the castle on a reconnaissance mission, but his journey is disrupted by violent obstacles—an amuse-bouche compared to the bloody excesses that await him in the count’s abode. With its gory long takes by cameraman Robby Müller and images composed like genre paintings, Hans W. Geißendörfer’s portrayal of the vampire ruling class and its demise earned him a German Film Award for Best New Director.

“the first anti-Fascist film of its kind … the most beautiful-looking vampire film I have seen”—Roger Greenspun, The New York Times, 06/16/1973
“Let yourself be entranced by the entire atmosphere of this loose Dracula adaptation, which unfolds like a dense 14th century Flemish triptych. You will lose some blood, but only enough to lust for more.”—Spectacle Theater


TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES | DIE ZÄRTLICHKEIT DER WÖLFE
Dir. Ulli Lommel, West Germany, 1973, 82 min.,  Digital Projection, in German with English subtitles
With Kurt Raab, Jeff Roden, Margit Carstensen, Ingrid Caven, Wolfgang Schenck, Brigitte Mira, Rainer Hauer, Barbara Bertram, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Heinrich Giskes, El Hedi ben Salem

A Fassbinder-produced reimagining of the story of Fritz Haarmann, the serial killer whose crimes inspired Fritz Lang’s 1931 classic M. In a post-war German city, Haarmann, a seasoned criminal, is recruited as a police informant. He uses the cover this position affords him to prey on young boys, luring them into his garret before killing them with a bite to the neck and turning their bodies into sausages. Everyone in town loves Haarmann’s meats, from black marketeers to the police inspector, but the tide turns when a nosy neighbor starts putting two and two together. Based on a script by Kurt Raab who also stars as Haarmann and featuring performances from many Fassbinder regulars—including a memorable cameo by the man himself—, Tenderness of the Wolves cares less about historical accuracy than about setting the scene for, in Fassbinder’s words, “a thriller with lots of blood … a combination of Fritz Lang’s M and Hitchcock’s Psycho.”

“Like Fassbinder’s own work, the movie has a haunting banality. It’s about insignificant creeps, and it invests them with a depressing universality.”—Rogert Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, 9/22/1976
“It’s at once a loose homage to M and a damning of pre-WWII cinema for its inability to sound the alarms against pervasive, fascist movements.”—Clayton Dillard, Slant, 11/4/2015

LADY DRACULA
Dir. Franz Josef Gottlieb, West Germany, 1978,  79 min.,  Digital Projection, in German with English subtitles
with Redis Reda (Screenplay), Evelyne Kraft, Brad Harris, Theo Lingen, Eddi Arent, Stephen Boyd, Christine Buchegger, Walter Giller, Klaus Höhne, Roberto Blanco, Marion Kracht

In 1876, a young pupil at a Royal boarding school dies from a bite by Count Dracula. In 1976, the countess’s coffin is uncovered at a building site in Vienna. It ends up in the hands of an antiques dealer, who becomes the first victim of the newly risen vampire, who finds work as a mortuary cosmetologist. As more people fall victim to the vampire, it arouses the suspicions of a police detective who begins to court the attractive blonde, while wondering about her allergy to garlic and crucifixes …
In the tradition of Grand Guignol, this 1970s rip-off is a lively mix of horror, thriller and bawdy jokes. But the self-confident title figure, who is a relatively chaste character in comparison to the erotic vampires in the films of Jean Rollin or Harry Kümel, is immune to any shenanigans.

Presented as part of AMONG FRIENDS – UNTER FREUNDEN, a campaign of the Goethe-Institut USA to celebrate and strengthen transatlantic friendship. 

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