User Reviews

Anthony Johnson(Uwe Bohm)doesn't know that the old tenant who lives on the top floor above him is the Kelbourne killer, a London strangler of several women on and off for 25 years. That tenant's name resembles his, Arthur Johnson(Anthony Perkins, still quite able to convey torment, agony, and insanity)and Anthony has no idea that this man is reading his letters from a married wife of a wealthy jealous husband. Having a secret contempt for their adultery, Arthur re-writes a fake letter to Anthony as if his lover wishes for their relationship to end. We also see what none of the other characters around him don't see..inside his tormented mind due to a overbearing mother strict on his being a neat, mannered person, grilled into him as a child to the point where women seemed nothing more than a possible threat which could explain his emotional impotence towards them..he also is quite repulsed at "loose" women, but if Arthur encounters other women alone on some dark, empty street corner at night, all gloves are off. Arthur's past childhood memories, not to mention his mother's burdensome forceful voice and barking face, often remind him of how he's supposed to behave. He's an emotional handicap..a crippled mess of a man who only shows appearances of normalcy. When he kills the wife of a tenant in the building he lives, a police investigation seems right at his doorstep. But, he gets really sloppy when Arthur attempts the strangulation of what he believes is a woman only to find that it's a skinny, long-haired male in a fur coat. That man retaliates with striking blows to Arthur's face leaving marks and bruising..even worse is that man has given a good identifiable sketch of his face meaning that the idea of his capture is a reasonable one. But, his life might even take another turn for the worse when the jealous husband of the wife who leaves him for Anthony mistakes him as the lover!

Okay psycho-drama with one of Perkins' final performances can not escape similarities to PSYCHO and Norman Bates especially considering the angle of a man traumatized by his monstrous upbringing and father-less childhood where his mother's influence emotionally damaged him. The film works best when we see the dementia setting in and those frightened faces of female victims Arthur claims continually haunt him, sneaking into reality as the guilt of his crimes slowly overwhelm him.

I've recently picked up an interesting little hobby where I check out thrift stores to see if they have any rare VHS movies that haven't made it to DVD. Well, I found this little movie tucked away on a shelf, and bought it for a grand total of 50 cents (and tax, of course.) I took it home and watched it, constantly afraid that the tape would break or the VCR would eat it. Luckily, the tape survived and I got to see the whole thing. Now, on to my thoughts about this film. Let me start out by saying this is very obscure. This is probably due to the fact that it doesn't fall into the horror category that the people who watched it expected, making it very disappointing to people who wanted to see a slice 'em and dice 'em slasher flick. This doesn't really even fall into the Hitchcock/Psycho suspense/mystery movie, so people who wanted to see an homage to "Psycho" would have probably been disappointed as well. So basically, the movie has no audience. It's also slow moving and filled with an unnecessary subplot about a man who lives by Perkins trying to get back together with a woman he was having an affair with. In the end, his character is only there to give the movie a protagonist, even though he doesn't save the day. The movie needed more Perkins and less of this guy, who sounds so very hilarious and awkward with his German accent that you just can't take him seriously. In the end (Big spoiler ahead!!!) Perkins is shot by the man who thought he was having an affair with his wife, even though it was actually the guy with the German accent. This is an original ending, but I was disappointed. I expected to see Perkins running through the streets being chased by the police...when instead this happens, the guy with the German accent and the redhead girl he was having an affair with look lovingly at each other, and the movie ends. Sorry for giving away the ending, but I don't really think there will be that many people reading this review anyway, so who cares? And furthermore, who cares about this movie? No one. The end.

"Der Mann nebenan" is a German German-language movie from 1991, so this means it has its 25th anniversary this year. The writer and director is Petra Haffter (still making films today) and it is certainly among her more known works. Here she adapted the novel by Ruth Rendell, who died last year and who was around the age of 60 when this was released in the early 1990s. The star here, however, is of course the lead actor, namely Oscar nominee Anthony Perkins from "Psycho", slightly under the age of 60 and not too far from his death unfortunately in one of his final performances. After his huge success and trademark movie, Perkins is known to have appeared in many films that may story-wise not do justice to his talent probably and, even if there were okay moments in this one, it still fits the category as well. Perkins' co-lead here is actor Uwe Bohm (still under the age of 30) from the very successful Bohm family and Uwe still appears in films today and manages awards recognition. Here he was pretty young playing a tenant that moves in a place next to Perkins' character and we find out Perkins is (once again) a psychopath killer who murders prostitutes this time. But as decent as Bohm may be of a character, his added very little to the movie. This story with the two having the same name adds very very little overall apart from one okay scene that is about who is the other Johnson. And the part with the letter and the (apparently) lost love is not really convincing either. I think Perkins is by far the best thing about the film and I wished it could have been (almost) entirely about him and his crimes, maybe about a suspecting police officer as well instead a neighbor who knows something is wrong, but has his own story that just felt extremely out of place. This wasn't Bohm's fault though of course. He is much better than he is allowed to show us here. So like I already said, if there is any reason to see it, it is for the Oscar nominee in here as Perkins certainly elevates the material here, but everything around him just isn't working out and this also applies to Perkins' final scene which may have a lot of irony to it, but eventually it did not feel realistic sadly. There was much more potential here with a better script and I don't recommend seeing this film the way it turned out eventually.