Deathline (1996)

Brilliant and touching

Best movie ever!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

"Der kalte Finger" or "Deathline" is a German 1.5-hour movie from 1996, so this one is already over 20 years old and it was written and directed by Ralf Huettner, who is still making films today. He got help with the script from Andy T. hoetzel with whom he collaborated on several occasions and Dominic Raacke, who also plays a central character in this film. The protagonist, however, is played by Groschenka Stevens working her day job at a hospital while at nights making big money as a phone sex operator. but things get heavy when her most dedicated caller could possibly be a killer. And now he may be after her. A lot of this film is about guessing who the caller is. There are so many men in this movie, in her life, some seemingly threatening, others apparently harmless, but things are rarely the way they seem to be right? This is one of not many ups to these 90 minutes as otherwise, it is fairly weak. The film actually aspires to be an edge-of-seat thriller, but keeps coming short in basically every regard, from basically every perspective. It's not just the script that feels deeply flawed, it is also the actors that go frequently way over the top in a pretty hammy and cringeworthy way here. 4 stars out of 10 is definitely still on the generous side. I think there were moments when this film was unintentionally funny and this is also why I think that from a guilty pleasure perspective, you can at least make the runtime slightly worth it that it is not completely wasted. The very final scene with the caller reappearing is the best example for that. I actually expected this to be a slight hintg at a potential sequel, but no it never happened. Rightfully so I guess. I am still surprised how many fairly known names are in here. Rois, Rudolph, Raacke and even the young Moritz Bleibtreu plays a supporting character. I guess Huettner was a bit of a filmmaker already back then that people wanted to work with long before "Vincent will Meer". Anyway, this movie we have here is trying so hard to be an erotic thriller, but eventually, it comes truly short and feels more like grandma's suspenders and support stockings parallel-wise and I find it very hard to find any real reason why you would want to check this one out. At least one that was clearly intended by the filmmakers and cast from this movie. It's definitely a thumbs-down for me and there are moments when the film hits failure territory. But overall, it is just bad. Skip it.