Event

THE GOLD OF LOVE

aka Das Gold der Liebe
dir. Eckhart Schmidt, 1983
West Germany, 86 min.

Schmidts follow up to DER FAN plays a bit like the same film detuned to a harsher register. The palatable pop of new wave superstar R is replaced by the raucous tremors of actual rock band D.A.F. (Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft), whom teen Alexandra Curtis (yes, half-sister of Jamie Lee) harbors an unhealthy obsession. While the horror of Der Fan came from its chillingly slow descent towards a maniacally bleak outcome, the follow-up pretty much starts in a post-punk underworld with no hope of escape tears of blood run down the protagonists face within the first half an hour, after she finds herself without any cash to gain entry to D.A.F.s show. The rest of the film chronicles her attempts to see the group at any possible cost, traversing a zonked-out, eternally nocturnal Vienna in the process.

Eckhart Schmidt is Spectacle royalty. His 1982 film DER FAN, a teen pop melodrama with a horrifying, drawn-out cannibalistic climax, has returned to the theater as a fan favorite again and again over the years. But Der Fan is not a one-off exploitation oddity; Schmidt is an unbelievably prolific filmmaker with wealth of cineastic knowledge to match. His work spans genres and mediums, but is perhaps at its best when focused on exploring and satirizing the stark divisions between art and commerce, which is what he does in his loose trilogy of surrealistic 80s bloodbaths of which DER FAN is the first installment.

The other two films in the series, while perhaps not as strikingly iconic as DER FAN, are similarly nightmare-inducing and incredible showcases of a filmmaker with a limitless imagination and a fondness for abrasively catchy soundtracks and bleak parables bathed in neon.