User Reviews

Watching the movie at Frightfest where it generally played better than my vote is displaying, it feels weird talking about it. Shot-wise, that is framing and lighting and everything technical is really exceptional. Especially considering this is only a first time effort (and for the "budget" it was made).

But actually understanding the performances (language-wise) and getting that there are quite a few flaws in the acting department takes a bit out of the fun. You also have to have a keen sense of the absurd to really enjoy it. It doesn't hurt if you are not too judgmental either considering the homo-erotic undertones (actually you can say they are not so subtle) in the movie. Something that helps the movie, but due to the "performances" also kind of lets it down (if you have an issue with the ... issue it'll be a letdown either way). Just watching it and getting the essence from the subtitles might be helpful enjoying this more of course. Which many celebrities at Frightfest did. Also the director is a very nice and humble person. And with a festival success like that, he'll be able to do something grander

I had no preconceived ideas going into this movie but was pleasantly surprised by the plot, which was unique and kept me interested until the end.

It's well made with a low budget and despite not really being a horror, it was a strange (in a good way) dark fantasy.

Well worth a watch.

I watch movies for my lifetime and i saw the biggest crap and really good ones, to masterpieces of filmmaking. Of course, taste is an individual thing. Sometimes, or mostly, you stumble over great things, something you did not expect. Like in this movie's case. Little village gay policeman has to catch a wolf, striving around the village. He "feeds" the wolf anonymously, to keep the creature away from town. Soon he mets a bizarre "homeless person", dressed like the killer from the 1st Silence of the lambs movie. There is a deeper meaning to this, because the policeman is gay, and the homeless one represents his sexual fantasy. I really do not want to say much about the plot, because the movie left me speechless several times. Damn, this is a good one. It is to me on the same level of coolness, like "Tears of kali", even beyond that. The movie runs nearly 80 minutes, get your copy and waste your time for the good. A super 7 out of 10.

I had difficulties in the beginning with this flick. I didn't get it and it took a while before the action do comes in. It isn't a straight horror it's more of a psychological flick about who one crazy person, the samurai, can get into the mind of a cop.

Slowly the cop will get involved into the actions of the samurai and towards the end you will know what will happen to both of them. I can't say that this is for everybody out there because it do has an homo-erotic feeling over it and it even has male nudity with an erection so some will be offended by that too. The gore attached towards the story isn't shown in a normal way, It has an arty way of showing it. So again on that part some will turn it off but I must say that the first minutes I was thinking to turn it off but somehow I kept watching and clocking in at 75 minutes it worked out fine.

Gore 1/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5

I saw this film at the Imagine (sf/horror/fantasy) filmfestival Amsterdam 2014. The title may attract the wrong audience, but that is the only problem I have with this movie. It focuses on the Samurai sword that is carried all the time by the transvestite, who is the primary trigger of all events following. He and local policeman Jakob are the obvious main characters that carry the story from start to finish. But the sword is far from the lead weapon, due to very prominent roles of confusion, surprise and deviant behavior to augment the proceedings. The latter three story elements make it difficult to tell much about the story, fearing literally spoiling all the inherent fun of this movie.

Nice are some interwoven plots. A perfect example is the motor gang, seemingly appearing in the beginning as a side issue. This group unexpectedly gets an important role later on, when grouping around the transvestite in an obvious attempt to mock him. Little do they know what disaster is before them. There is a second interwoven plot around Jakob's mother, but I better confine myself to hinting that it is useful to keep an eye on her too.

All in all, very good entertainment full of unexpected events, perfectly capable to keep our attention throughout. In the Q&A we learned that it is "just" a master thesis project, still more reason to admire the end result. This film ended 23rd (out of 43) for the audience award, with average score 7.20.

Der Samurai (2015) is a German film that I recently watched on Shudder. The storyline involves a cross dressing young man who has been given the daunting task of becoming a samurai and using his sword to embark on a killing spree is a small German town. A straightedge police officer tracks him down and looks to understand and stop the samurai.

This movie is written and directed by Till Kleinert (episodes of Girl Cave) in his directorial debut and stars Michel Diercks (Mission of Honor), Pit Bukowski (The Bunker), Uwe Preuss (In the Face of Crime) and Michael Fritz Schumacher (Valkyrie).

This movie was wild and a unique addition to the horror genre. The wood scenes were creepy and very well executed. The characters were fascinating, unpredictable and original. There's solid kill scenes with great blood splatter and gore; although, I will warn there's a penis scene that was unnecessary 😂. The character's reactions to circumstances had me cracking up and weren't exactly realistic. I needed people more in shock by the shenanigans they were witnessing. The corpses looked authentic and were well created and the ending was hilarious, especially the final.

Overall, this was a fun watch and is worth your time. I would score this a 6/10 and recommend seeing once.

I just saw this film at the Frightfest London, and it is certainly one of best films in this year's selection. Very interesting characters and a story that is captivating but remains unclear and unresolved in just the right way. Pit Bukowski starring in the title role as the "samurai" is one of the most enigmatic movie villains I have seen in a while. The director said that "The Hitcher" is one of his main influences and this certainly shows. So if you want to see a horror film with a little more substance that the average "Slasher Flick" seek this one out. I am amazed that this was done in Germany. The mostly state-financed film scene there normally creates a lot of "worthy" films that focus on social relevance above everything else. This film definitely brights some fresh air into German filmmaking and I hope it makes it into international distribution.

The samurai of the title is a wild fellow, actor Pit Bukowski, who manages some odd jumps and even a nude scene complete with an erection, all with a maniacal smile on his face. It's not the kind of performance that is easy to watch or forget. The only American actors I can think of who have even approached this kind of crazed portrayal are the late Heath Ledger and the ubiquitous Woody Harrelson. Pit outdoes them both.

The Samurai is on a killing spree threatened by a local cop, Jakob, well played by Michel Diercks. There is a sort of half-baked subplot with a wolf that doesn't really gel, but the main thrust of this movie is the story of a small town German cop having to deal with a man dressed as a woman, wielding a sword. I have no idea what transvestites will think of all this, they may like it, I don't know, but I think the two leads and the director, Till Klienert, have an impressive future in front of them.

This movie would make a great one to show to adult friends prepared for some fairly campy horror and gore. It's definitely not for kids or for anyone not prepared for the short segment with male nudity near the end.

If David Lynch and Bruce LaBruce ever teamed up to make a film- well, for one thing, it would be completely insane and for another thing, it would be this film. In a small German town, police officer Jakob (Michel Diercks) tries to keep the peace even though no one takes him seriously. He lives with his ailing grandmother, and the crime rate is so low he keeps his gun in his desk back at the police station. He passes the time obsessing about a wolf that is prowling around the local woods, leaving it bags of raw meat and hoping it doesn't strike in the town itself. Someone sends a package to Jakob, requesting he deliver it to its rightful owner. Jakob gets a call telling him where to take the giant parcel, and finds himself in an abandoned house face to face with a scary looking man in a white summer dress (Pit Bukowski, who is made up to look eerily like Courtney Love in her 'Hole' days). The nameless man opens the package, pulls out a large Japanese sword, and then things get really weird. The titular character runs amok through the small town, awkwardly trashing and vandalizing everything with his new sword. He doesn't wield it like Uma Thurman in the "Kill Bill" films, he wants to do more damage than anything. Jakob follows along, unarmed, trying to stop the mayhem while also dealing with a lot of internal issues like his self-loathing sexuality. Lone wolf, or lonely wolf, subtext is everywhere, and soon the body count rises as Jakob tries to reason with the insane mass murderer, who seems to know Jakob better than Jakob knows himself.

Kleinert has written and directed a surreal vision I would compare favorably with Lynch, as well as "Coyote"'s Trevor Juenger. There is that required sense of unease the minute the film starts, you know things aren't going to go well, and Kleinert cranks the tension up early on. His film frame composition is nothing short of lovely, and his editing is perfect. Bukowski is creepy, Robert-Blake-in-"Lost-Highway"-creepy, carving out quite the silhouette in his dress and stringy blonde hair. Diercks doesn't overplay the small town cop, and he turns in a sympathetic performance. The film is short, so getting to know too much about other supporting characters is difficult but not really necessary. Conrad Oleak's music is spot on, with one techno riff that sounds like John Carpenter. There is a lot of gore here, and one shot of the nude samurai that guarantees an (NC-17) rating if this had been presented to the MPAA, but Kleinert doesn't hold anything back, and watching this film is a tense experience. "Der Samurai" is unexplainable, but it meets the criteria I have accidentally developed for a great film over the years- give me something I haven't seen before. If I have seen it before, do something different, show me some originality even in familiarity. Till Kleinert and his cast do just that.