Review of Over My Dead Body

"Nur über meine Leiche" or "Over My Dead Body" is a German 100-minute movie from 1995, so this one is already over 20 years old. The director and one of the writers is Rainer Matsutani and this was his first full feature film and this one is also today still among his most known. The cast includes many names that will be well known to German audiences such as Ohrt, Riemann, Folkerts, Otto, Brendler and Bergmann. But these names also make it obvious that there is no great range involved here as these people score more through charisma other than acting talent. As for the story, it was extremely bizarre from start to finish. The talk with the devil early on is still fine, but when zombie-like creatures, talking turkeys and more are introduced to the audience, it is all over the place really. This is the story of a man who has to redeem himself for what he did to women and a murderous ex-wife is not really helping matters. It was not a really bad film by any means and better than most of the other stuff Riemann did around that time, but it's baffling how she wins a German Film Award for this and how the movie in general scored so many awards. Is it different yes? But it's really extremely strange than extremely entertaining. As a whole, these absurdities make it also difficult to appreciate the more serious moments of the film and it was almost a deal breaker that the film has so many extremes and sadly it's a negative deal breaker. You can't really blame the actors for the fact that I give this one a thumbs-down, but honestly I also never felt as if they were really elevating Matsutani's weak material here. Mediocre at best, I think you should not see this one.