Goethe-Institut Chicago

This Halloween, the Goethe-Institut and the German Film Office bring you a selection of vampire films curated by Deutsche Kinemathek as part of their “Wild, Weird, Bloody. German Genre Films of the 70s” retrospective at the 2025 Berlinale. Presented as part of AMONG FRIENDS – UNTER FREUNDEN, a campaign of the Goethe-Institut USA to celebrate and strengthen transatlantic friendship.

Vampires and mortals are welcome to join us at the Goethe-Institut Chicago on October 29 for a special double bill of Franz Josef Gottlieb's LADY DRACULA (1978), followed by Ulli Lommel’s TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES (1973).

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SCHEDULE
5:00pm: Doors Open
5:15pm: LADY DRACULA Screening
6:45pm: Intermission
7:00pm: TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES Screening

Franz Josef Gottlieb, Lady Dracula
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.

Lady Dracula
Dir. Franz Josef Gottlieb
West Germany, 1978
with Redis Reda (Screenplay), Evelyne Kraft, Brad Harris, Theo Lingen, Eddi Arent, Stephen Boyd, Christine Buchegger, Walter Giller, Klaus Höhne, Roberto Blanco, Marion Kracht

Ulli Lommel, Tenderness of the Wolves
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

Tenderness of the Wolves
Dir. Ulli Lommel
West Germany, 1973
82 min.
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

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This gripping drama, based on personal experiences of screenwriter Angel Wagenstein, is set during a chapter of the Holocaust in the Balkans that sheds light on the experience of Sephardic Jews. It was awarded the Special Grand Jury Prize at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival.

Stationed in a secluded Bulgarian village in 1943, Walter—a German Wehrmacht sergeant and artist—lives in almost idyllic distance from the war. Then a transit camp is set up for Jews arriving from Greece. When Ruth, one of internees, asks Walter to help a pregnant woman, the two form an unlikely bond.

This film is presented in collaboration with Doc Films and the DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst.

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After a breakdown, Rita returns to her childhood village in 1961. As she recovers, she remembers the past two years: her love for the chemist Manfred, ten years her senior; how his enthusiasm about his new chemical process turned to bitter disappointment in the face of official rejection; how he escaped to West Berlin a few weeks before the Wall was built and hoped that she would follow him.

Divided Heaven is based on Christa Wolf's internationally renowned novel, which was criticized in the GDR for questioning the construction of the Wall. Produced during a brief cultural thaw in the early 1960s, this film was strongly influenced by the French Nouvelle Vague.

Free and open to the public, please register in advance via Eventbrite and bring a state-issued photo ID for check-in.

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Gregor is a young soldier entering Germany with the victorious Soviet troops at the end of WWII. But he is also the child of left-wing Germans who fled from Hitler and spent the war in the Soviet Union. As a result, his return to Germany is ambivalent; he finds he is a stranger in his own land.

As they enter Germany, Gregor begins to realize that he is different from all his comrades in arms, for this defeated land is his home country, and the Germans he meets are his compatriots. He is a victor, but also one of the vanquished. He attempts to understand the Germans he meets along his way, but he is a 19-year-old: inquisitive, occasionally uncomprehending and repeatedly dismayed by the atrocities and lies he encounters.

This film will be introduced by Danny Pinto, joint PhD candidate in the Departments of Germanic Studies and Cinema and Media Studies, and accompanied by a post-screening lecture. It is presented in collaboration with Doc Films and the DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst.