Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final acting role casts him as an alcoholic police lieutenant—clad in a leopard-skin suit, no less—who is tasked with foiling a bomb threat in West Germany’s near future. Adapted from
Per Wahlöö’s 1964 dystopian novel
Murder on the 31st Floor,
Wolf Gremm’s
Kamikaze 89 imagines a totalitarian society ruled by a corporation called The Combine, which controls the media and suppresses all murmurs of dissent or unhappiness. Featuring legendary spaghetti western icon
Franco Nero, and
Brigitte Mira in her last collaboration with Fassbinder,
Kamikaze 89, like the concurrent
Blade Runner, paints a daunting vision of the near future, albeit one that is a madcap romp through the West Berlin punk scene. With a soundtrack by Tangerine Dream’s
Edgar Froese.
Germany, 1982, 106 minutes
Directed by Wolf Gremm
With Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Günther Kaufmann, Boy Gobert
Kamikaze 89 is presented in collaboration with Film Movement.
Back
