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Spare Parts
This review sounds like a retard talking!
1979
Review: June 21, 2009
Director: Rainer Erler
Starring: Jutta Speidel, Wolf Roth, Herbert Herrmann, Charlotte Kerr, Tedi Altice
You bet.
THE SETUP:
Couple is on their honeymoon when the man is kidnapped and the woman left in the middle of nowhere.
DISCUSSION:
This is from my new 50 Drive-In Movie Classics collection, and had gotten fairly decent reviews from most that had seen it. It’s also a German film, originally named Fleisch [Flesh], which takes place in the US and has been dubbed into English.
We first see our heroine, the blonde, vivacious Monica, disrupting a recording session of her musician husband because she can’t wait to get going for their wedding. Then we have the credits, during which we hear this gentle folk song “How much is anyone worth?” that asks a bunch of questions about the value of human life. And we find out that Rainer Erler is not just the writer, producer and director of this, but wrote the novel it is adapted from as well. Anyway, we rejoin Monica and her husband Mike at their wedding, where they engage in 18th century-style courtly dances with their friends. Then suddenly they’re on their honeymoon in New Mexico.
New Mexico? Do newlywed German’s really want a fabulous honeymoon in this tiny dusty town they end up in? I guess. They drive around, looking at a bunch of motels in town, each rejected by Mike as being too expensive. He wants to stay at this roadside motel a bit out of town, the Honeymoon Inn, where two can stay and get free coffee [woo hoo!] for a mere $7.50 a night! The crazy lady proprietress is a loon in a floral-print caftan, and insists on making a fresh pot of coffee and bringing it right back to these charming German tourists. They want to just get her out so they can get down to the hot scrumping. Mike has been annoyingly cheap thus far, gently disregarding everything his new wife says, and turning the TV on and plonking himself down as soon as they arrive. I don’t really have much hope for this marriage. The owner comes back with their coffee, and Mike takes to it immediately. Mmm, late-afternoon coffee! There’s nothing like coffee breath to drive your new bride wild.
The owner finally leaves and goes to make an ominous phone call. The couple finally gets down to their lovemaking, intercut with images of an ambulance speeding through the desert. The couple is feeling all young and wild and free, so they climb out the window and run through the desert. Then the ambulance pulls up out of nowhere, the guys drug Mike and throw him in the back! Monica escapes by throwing herself to the ground and hiding amongst the bushes. Finally she gets back to the motel, where the owner now pretends never to have seen her before. She shows her into her room, but none of their stuff is there and the room looks like it’s been closed up for weeks. Monica convinces the owner to call the cops, but when they arrive—it’s the ambulance again! She runs off into the desert, with no money and wearing only a T shirt and panties.
Monica gets a truck to pull over and gets inside. The trucker, Bill, gives her coffee [fuck off with the coffee, already!] and a blanket, and offers to call the police. “Man,” he comments in amazement, “a foreigner!” He listens to her predicament and sums it up with “That sure is one crock of shit!” He believes her, he just thinks the whole situation she finds herself in is akin to finding oneself in a crock of shit. Which I suppose is fairly accurate.
So Bill takes her to a truck stop where she meets the good country people of America, and we hear a hummed reprise of “How Much Is Anyone Worth?” Then he takes her back to the trailer he rents in rotating shifts with other truckers, and tells her to get busy doing the dishes! That’s right, baby, there’s no free rescues around here. There should be a horror movie about a conspiracy like this, but with the whole purpose of getting the victims to clean houses.
SPOILERS > > >
So Bill has taken a liking to Monica, and they decide that the only thing they can do is pose as two other newlyweds and check into the motel again. Again the owner makes a fresh pot of coffee, and makes a phone call. Bill pours the coffee out, and soon enough the ambulance arrives. Bill springs into action with the help of some of his other trucker buddies, killing one of the drivers and making the other take his clothes off, then locking him in the freezer until he talks. Here’s the shocking truth: They kidnap people at $2,000 a head for… ORGAN HARVESTING! Then the two of them are dugged and put on a plane and flown… somewhere!
They land, and Monica escapes, leaving Bill behind after a cursory attempt to wake him. Not very nice, after all he’s done for her, especially considering he had no reason to help her at all, but you know, some people are ungrateful. Turns out she’s in New York! She takes the elevated subway into Manhattan and ends up in Central Park, where people are happily biking, oblivious to the organ harvesting operation in their midst! She gets taken in by a cop, where she breaks down to him, saying “I can’t go on! I Can’t Go On! I CAN’T GO ON!” Sweetness, we heard you the first time. She gives her whole story, which comprises a 30-page statement [let’s pare it down to the major points, eh? People have things to do]. The detective in charge can’t believe it, because if this operation did run “it must work like a Swiss watch,” and we all know he has every reason to doubt basic American competence and quality control. He says “I could close this case right now—because your story sounds like a retard talking.”
Then this female doctor they saw before in New Mexico arrives, and Monica freaks, but she’s actually good, she’s just been undercover. She got into the business to save her own son, and her involvement just spiraled from there. Monica insists that they go to the hospital, where the doctor pulls rank on everyone, they get Mike out, then Monica insists that they go back to get Bill [ah, loyalty at last]. They get Bill, and this leads to a chase on the Triborough Bridge [yeah, RFK bridge, whatever]! Eventually they get away, somehow end up back in New Mexico, where they bid a jaunty goodbye to Bill and he reconnects with his trucker buds. We have a more upbeat version of “How Much Is Anyone Worth?” over the credits.
< < < SPOILERS END
It was pretty good! The best part is probably the freaky situation where Monica suddenly finds herself in the middle of nowhere in a strange country with no one to trust, no money, and only wearing a T shirt. Lucky she stumbles upon a good, stalwart American man like Bill! I wouldn’t mind stumbling upon one of those myself. The movie does a good job of establishing a scary, gripping situation, then paying it off with an explanation that is sufficiently creepy. It’s kind of a proto-Hostel in that way. Monica is running and freaked out for the whole thing, which does a good job of keeping the energy up. The ending may be a bit perfunctory, but by then you don’t care. Plus the movie has enough cheesy/funny elements, like Bill making Monica do the dishes or the cop saying Monica’s talking like a retard that supply amusement even when the story itself is losing juice.
So yeah, if you want to watch an obscure German horror movie, or you have the 50 Drive-In Movie Classics set and are trying to navigate which one to watch, this is a pretty good selection.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Sure! It’s scary and amusing.
