My wishlist: Dear Santa, 10 things I would like to see come out in 2025

1. A Slit in my Dress - The illustrated biography of Ingrid Steeger

I am not necessarily a fan of Ingrid Steeger but her appearance and willingness to go all in was one of the remarkable popular culture phenomenoms of Germany in the 70ies. 

Easily the biggest star to come out of the Schulmädchen-Report series, she also starred in BDSM loops, Edgar Wallace Krimis, had affairs with some of the biggest players in the media industry and became a national icon as "Gaby" in the long running "Klimbim" series (which was the most anarchic thing ever to be shown on german TV). 

Her lead role in "Me, a Groupie", EC Dietrich's sleazefest about the drug- and girl-abusing music scene is legendary.

Although not well-off in the later years she stubbornly refused to be part of TVs star-at-the-end-of-their-lifecycle-shredding system consisting of humiliating dance-shows, jungle-challanges and voyeuristic container life. They don't make 'em like that anymore.

A yes, in case you do not know what I'm talking about...

There is this tremendously fascinating book about Brigitte Lahaye in France and that should be the benchmark.

2. Delirio Polsello - The definitive book on Renato Polselli. 

He is my favourite italian director. Audacious, mind-opening, daring and basically failing for pursuing his vision: The liberation of the audience's perception. When Jess Franco and all the others were only titillating our senses, promising more than delivered, he went all the way. His lesser known movies are dangerous to watch.

 The last INDICATOR release made it bluntly apparent: We need a thoroughly investigated book on him, with interviews with his relatives, friends, actors. Otherwise it's just the same old story: On the Indicator 4K release of Riti Neri we had the same sparse information given to us three times: In the booklet, in the documentary and in the audiocommentary by two totally unprepared brits who - well - had just read the booklet and watched the documentary. Thank you. I do not need that.

Maybe  David Flint and Kim Newman will read this and feel offended. I felt offended by their total lack of dedication. I know, there is a FULL Rita Calderoni interview on the movie on youtube, that was just ignored (in the booklet, in the documentary of course by the commentators). I mean, it is in italian, so it cannot be be important, right?. I consider that to be culturally condescending. Sorry. There are technical abilities to translate youtube videos, or just ask some random Italian here in one of the facebook groups to translate. 

                 - And of course HD-scans of his basically unavailable works. The prints are out there, I've                     seen one in a cinema .... lately.

3. All the Colors of the Dark - A revised and extended edtion by Tim Lucas

I missed out the first time, I had a mortage going on the house etc. This time I am willing and free to invest in an updated version of the book, but not willing to pay the ridiculous prices for the old one on the used-book auctions. Furthermore, all the information has already  popped up in the internet and Tim basically gave away the PDF-file for a while. Tim, if you're reading this, count me in  at EVERY 3-digit price.

4. The Peter Thomas Tribute Orchestra live Krimi Screening Tour 2025

Everybody's doing it. I just saw Hans Zimmer doing it. What I would give to have an authentic jazz orchestra performing "Witcher" live, with the best sequences projected in the back.

5. Raumpatrouille Orion relaunch

Friedrich Dürrenmatt's wife 
Charlotte Kerr being far too
dominant as General van Dyke (sic!).

Out of the Krimi-B-Picture sphere came the german SF TV series "Space Patrol Orion". Immensly popular in Germany and France, the 6 episodes of unhinged teutonic future predictions (complete with a quasi-Gestapo secret Police) and starring beloved Krimi-actors like Schönherr, Völz and Pflug (and of course General Lydia van Dyke (ugh!!!) - Charlotte Kerr being every man's uniform fetish dream).

There were preproductions at BAVARIA studios last year after their successful "Das Boot"-TV-relaunch but troubled multinational TV-producer SKY pulled the plug out of all german productions this year.

What a shame.

6. Krimi! The Magazine

A dedicated magazine to middle-european crime movie culture, throughly researched with new perspectives in each issues. 

Eye-opening new information and complete background stories about the movies, the actors, directors and the business. 

Just like my blog here... 

maybe I will grant me a wish...

 Anyone with me??

7. Legislation that prohibits the exploitation of an artist's work by whoever inherits the rights if deemed so by the artist in his last will

Two incidents made me furious. The exploitation of Steve Ditko by his heirs and the publication of novels by Franz Kafka.

Ditko's last big drawing before leaving
Marvel. He really was free.

Both had explicitly deemed that specific parts of their work should not be sold or published. Then some nephew comes in and finds out that he now can become rich and "important" because his uncle (Ditko) has sacrificed EVERYTHING in his life because he did not want to become rich and important. 

If Ditko would have wanted it, he would have liquidated the 7-figure-sum cheque that Sony sent him for Spider-Man. But he did not. He despised every notion of this. He died a happy but poor man. Stan Lee died a completely unhappy and rich man, but then he had sold his soul. 

No one has the right to sell the soul of somebody else just because he's a distant relative.... or a publishing house and editor who can make good money out of a novel that Franz Kafka had expressively ordered to be "destroyed unread". Of course they all read it, they did not destroy it and now they publish it, because the "cultural treasure is too big". FU, this is just about fame and money. No it's just about money.

People suck. 

In a big way. 

Most of the time.

8. Recognition of Karin Dor as the ultimate Scream Queen of the 1960s

She assisted aliens in taking over the world

She loved Dracula

She resurrected Frankenstein's Monster and the Mummy

She fought the Werewolf

She tortured and loved James Bond

She was the OG razor-blade giallo slasher/ripper killer

She fled from Dr. Mabuse

She was Odin's Daughter 

She was raped by the invisible man

She knew the last of the Mohicans

She survived the Strangler of Blackmoor Castle, the Forger, the Green Archer, the Sinister Monk and Dr. Fu Manchu

She did not survive Che Guevara

She was strapped under the swinging blade pendulum 

She was Winnetou's great love

She worked with Alfred Hichcock, Sean Connery, Christopher Lee, Lex Barker, Paul Naschy

Can someone please write a definitve biography on her aknowledging her work in the genre (that she never distanced herself from)...

And just to drive the point home. She was the highest drawing female actor in Germany in the 1960s - internationally:

source: Forum user KXL556

9. Nicholas Winding Refn's Remake of "Grapes of Death"

We all know about NWR's obsession with Dario Argento, but watching his latest TV-Series "Copenhagen Cowboy" it was obvious that you cannot get more Rollin than that today. It should only be fitting to remake "Grapes of Death", officially or unofficially.....Or maybe he should do a biopic on the director. The live and movies of Rollin are worth to be told. Complete with an illustrated Filmography by Steven Thrower and all his XXX-rated stuff in 4K og camera-negative scans. Please.

10. Rita Calderoni at the Buio Omega Birthday Party

If you know what I'm talking about, you know. If you don't ... well than it is exactly how it should be.

Approaching the Grindhouse Phenomenon - what exactly is a "Grindhouse"?

Yes, we all know the term and we think to know what it means. But basically, all we know is the term "Grindhouse-movie". This refers to those movies shown in shabby cinemas to an uninterested crowd of hobos, dealers, homeless, prostitutes, trenchcoat-men and adventure-seeking juveniles like me. 

But what exactly is a Grindhouse, and how does it differ from a Cinema. 

Well, let's dive into this:

With the advance of 35mm-prints, movie reels became big and heavy. Rolled up, they would be too clumsy to handle. So big and heavy that it was impossible to lift and project a full-length feature at once. It helped that movies were split up into acts, like theatrical plays. So basically the movie was split into 3 acts (prime movie) or 2 acts (B-movie) roughly of the length of 30min each (hence around 60min for B-Pictures and 90min for A-Pictures).

Two, I said!

Yes, you needed 2 of them!

Because of this, if you use only one projector, you have to stop the "transmission" and give the audience an "intermission" where the projectionist has to unload the first reel and to upload and fiddle in the next reel. If you use 2 projectors and aim them at the same screen you can switch between the two reels and if you were a good projectionist, hardly anyone would notice. To give signal to the projectionist, when to start the second projector, small triangles were cut out of a frame in the movie, showing up as a white triangle on the upper right side. Sometimes the ends of those reels were damaged, then usually a projectionist would burn a hole with a cigarette into the print in the appropriate frame (refer to John Carpenter's phenomenal "Cigarette Burns" for more info on that subject). 

Basically that meant that each 30 minutes, the projectionist had to be ready to change the reels, and in between he would do the rewinding of the first reel and so on. Basically, he was busy the whole film long.

Only the plates, not the projectors

The German Willi Burth then thought of two things, why not project the reels from the horizontal, and is there a way to run them all through one projector and do you need to rewind it? These are three things. I know. Well he came up with the "Platter System" that looks like this: 

Going horizontally of course means that the movie has to be brought into the vertical positon for projection wich of course would stress the material, esp the surface that held the colors/the image. Now you could project even bigger formats like 70mm.

The movies were still distributed to the cinemas in 3-7 reels, but by taping them together and using a complicated system of angular feeders a movie could be projected in a near-endless loop.

All the projectionist now had to do was to switch the thing on and off and switch the plates. And thus, the multiplexes were invented, where one projectionist could operat up to 4 platter-systems at once.

Of course this damaged the films, As the picture is just a chemical sunstance ON the Film, not IN it, it would wear off.. Taping the reel-endings together too. But still, we are not in a grindhouse. 

The grindhouse was one (or one room in multiplex) cinema where they showed one movie basically 24/7, where you could enter when you wanted and leave too. The movies played there were low on plot and technique but high of "entertainment": A middle aged man in trenchcoat would have his cinematic desires satisfied after 20-30 minutes, so every 20 minutes, there had to be a stimulus. 

The movie print absolutely did not like this kind of handling and wore off. Basically at the end of 2-3 weeks the print was unusable, which is why only the cheapest prints (at the end of their lifespan or cheap movies made especially for those movies) were shown.

And that, I might close, was a grindhouse. 

I am not familiar with the legal workings in other countries. In Germany however, it was illegal to show pornography in a cinema, but legal to show in a club. A club was defined through the amount that was spent on beverages and cigarrettes. So the work around was that with each ticket, beverages or cigarretes were sold which made up 51% of the bill, to be consumed inside the cinema.