SYNOPSICS
Hostage (1983) is a English,German movie. Frank Shields has directed this movie. Kerry Mack,Ralph Schicha,Gabriella Barraket,Judy Nunn are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1983. Hostage (1983) is considered one of the best Biography,Drama,Thriller movie in India and around the world.
Horrific true tale set in the late 70's Australia about Christine Lewis, a naive 16 year old who in 1974 meets a handsome German immigrant called Walter Maresch working as a carny, and they quickly fall in love. However, his secret sadistic side quickly begins to reveal itself and he manages to strong-arm her into marriage. Things get progressively worse even after they have a baby, but her nightmare truly begins when he reveals to her that he is actually a fanatical member of the banned Nazi Party and forces her to move with him to West Germany, where the neo-Nazi group he belongs to operates. As his abusive behavior worsens and his neo-Nazi activities turn violent, she's forced to choose between her life - and his.
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Hostage (1983) Reviews
Above-average 'true-life' exploitation
Well, this one's certainly disappeared almost without trace (my local rental outlet appears to be preparing to box or dump its huge collection of VHS, this one presumably among them, and I'd say it's not bloody likely to ever see the light of day again on a DVD release), and although it's nothing like a masterpiece, 'Hostage' is an intriguing and gripping example of the 'woman-in-peril' genre, this time based on an allegedly true story of the young Australian Christine Maresch and her immigrant husband Walter. When we first meet her, she's hitching down the highway, apparently having fled a violent home life. Ending up a carnival worker, she meets a German man who would probably make a great husband - if only Christine actually wanted to have a family...but Walter knows just what to do to trap his object of desire! Even if it's all true as told, it's still exploitation (the abundance of bare-breasted moments from lovely lead Kerry Mack, a real Michelle Williams look-alike, give the game away), and Leonard Maltin's complaint of it being 'disjointed' and 'repetitive'? Guilty as charged - but it's also stylish enough to be eye-catching, yet straightforward enough to be powerful. Frank Shields, the director and co-writer, knows what will hit an audience on a gut level and seize their attention: domestic abuse and terror, children caught in the middle, Nazis (!) and more - but he lets the film go almost totally off-the-rails during an inexplicable scene in the middle section, one which not only trades in offensive depictions of vicious and depraved Turks, but sends a geyser of blood from a villain's slashed throat raining down on our put-upon heroine and her daughter (as if everything else she had to deal with wasn't enough!) It's so excessive and unnecessary I didn't really know whether I wanted to laugh, cry or throw up...but the biggest problem is a vague feeling of emptiness that creeps in as the film's action just stops, and we are filled in as to the fate of this tragic family (accompanied by photos of the real Christine and daughter). It's an appropriately chilling curtain call (especially with that 80s score; I'm a sucker for a sequencer, sue me!) but has the film, messy and slightly sleazy yet ambitious and brave/foolish, really earned the respect of its audience that the true-life association seems to demand? I'm not entirely sure, and I'm probably not going to watch it again in an attempt to find out - but I give it the mark of an effective and above-average film of its type. See it before all copies are locked away and left to rot!
Real life Hell trip
Sadly, or tragically this was a real life tale, that paints a horrifying picture of what a young girl, endured when meeting a seemingly polite and handsome carnival worker, Walter Maresch (Ralph Schicha). He turns out to be an all Hitler brainwashed psychopath, and at the end while being a disturbed witness, and feeling so much sympathy for the poor suffering real life victim, played very well by hottie Kerry Mack, the actress much better looking than the real Christine (they always are) in it's 92 minute duration. Like her, we really feel like we've been put through the ringer. Hostage is a very tightly written real life tale. From it's opening, where Christine is being belted supposedly by her stepfather, she takes to the road, and that's where, the opening of her soon to endure begins. I found Schicha, a little stiff in his performance, but he is quite threatening and has his moments. We see where the forced marriage led to, then her pregnancy, then the entrapment over in Germany. The movie doesn't hold back on shock, including some pretty bloody moments, and you can call it's exploitation, but this is marvelously entertaining and important film, where the story really honed in on what this poor lass endured, a lot of physical beating, while also, near the end, getting speared in the back. It's a tightly told tale, and that's what I loved about this. The movie uses all the important parts of this real life horror, and we get through a lot in those 92 minutes. It's a very cut to the chase movie, but of course the real horror, is it's a factual told hell. Obviously an underrated movie too. Judy Nunn aka: Home and Away's Isla, is fantastic, a real hoot Christine's Mum, where you savor her scenes. Unmissable, the real hostage, will be you, the viewer when you watch this.
Lackluster Direction Hampers Film
Hostage (1983) ** (out of 4) This movie is based on the true events of Christine Maresch (Kerry Mack) who ended up marrying a man named Walter (Ralph Schicha) and turn her life into a living hell. Before you know it they have a child but Walter turns out to be a Nazi sympathizer and before long he is abusing Christine and taking her on a crime spree that she didn't want. Before watching this film I had no idea about the true story behind it. Apparently it was very big new in Australia and it managed to produce a best-selling book as well as this movie, which goes under several titles including SAVAGE ATTRACTION. I must admit that the movie really let me down for a number of reasons but the biggest is the fact that you really never learned too much about either of the characters. I'm going to guess that the filmmakers felt most people would be familiar with the tale so they'd just show off the highlights of the couple's life together as well as the various violent ones. The entire film pretty much as Christine playing a victim to Walter who will either beat her, force her into robberies or threaten harm to their child. There's no question that this here is rather ugly story but I didn't think either character was fully developed and as the movie went on I had more questions than anything else. I thought both Mack and Schicha were good in their roles. Again, I thought the characters were as simple as a victim and a bully but both actors did a fine job. The screenplay felt like something you'd see on American television but I think the lackluster direction is what really killed the film. I say this because there's never any tension to anything you're watching and the deadly slow pace just really drags the film out and makes it feel much longer than it actually is.
Nazis, carnies and babies in an Aussie oddity
Never mind the ridiculous cover (at least of my old VHS tape) showing the heroine simpering like baby-doll jailbait on a bed in lingerie--this is an at least somewhat serious attempt to dramatize a purportedly true story, however loosely based it may be. Yet it does occasionally lurch into cheesy sexploitation, just one among many ways it can't seem to maintain any tone or focus at all. Kerry Mack's heroine starts out kinda white-trashy, and one feels for her callous dismissal of carny co-worker Ralph Schicha's earnest marriage proposal. Then suddenly she's the poor victim, pregnant and into marriage against her will--his life in danger, he refuses surgery unless she gets consents--and he's acting like an obsessed stalker in a horror movie. They move to his native Germany, where he reveals himself as a Nazi fanatic and forces her to perform a bank robbery with wig and machine gun like Patty Hearst. That's hardly the end of the extreme globe-trotting melodramatics, either. Mack is made to jump through too many emotional hoops, and the very handsome Schicha can't make sense of a character who's sweet and loyal one minute, then psycho and abusive the next. (On the plus side, the kid who plays their toddler daughter is adorable, and seems very relaxed around her "parents.") The movie just doesn't have the finesse to pull off such a complicated relationship in psychological terms, and stylistically it reels from sober drama to broad, lurid, sometimes choppily edited sequences. Despite its alleged factual basis in the experiences of a woman who endured some years tied to a delusional Nazi husband, the film's progress is too erratic to be credible. It awkwardly lands between drive-in fare and something more respectable. Still, it's too hectic to be dull.
Slightly Sleazy Aussie Outing is Ultimately Forgettable
This movie, supposedly based on a true story, tells the tale of Christine Maresch (Kerry Mack, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Michelle Williams,) a runaway from a broken home who, while working at the carnival, meets and falls for Walter (Ralph Schicha), a German ex-pat who is living on the lam in Australia, for reasons which will soon become painfully clear to Christine. Perhaps she should have seen it coming when Walter shot himself upon having his marriage proposal rejected, but for some reason Christine agrees to marry him after all, in the ICU at the hospital, where he is being treated for his aforementioned gunshot wound. They have a daughter, Amanda (Gabriella Barraket) together, but quicker than you can say "Mein Fuhrer," Walter turns into a controlling lunatic, and a neo-Nazi to boot. Christine finds out that she's again pregnant, and informs Walter that she is going to get an abortion. He convinces her not to, tricking her into believing that if she comes back to Germany with him, she will be able to get a top of the line abortion in one of Germany's clinics. Only after they arrive does he tell her that no, they can't get an abortion there, because Walter wants a male heir, presumably to teach how to be a nut case, just like his pops. In Germany, the higher- ups in the neo-Nazi food chain are not impressed with Walter's wife, and make her participate in a bank robbery to prove her loyalty. The robbery goes off well, but the bosses still won't be satisfied with her, so they head back for Oz, where things go from bad to worse, with Christine being held hostage in her own house, the subject of regular beatings and rape. Eventually, Walter makes her participate in another bank robbery, the loot from which he uses to buy a boat, to sail to Germany with. Once on the water, the climactic confrontation occurs, with not much excitement to be found anywhere. A brief postscript reveals that Walter ended up going to jail for 14 years, and Christine got 4 years probation. Even if this story is true (and I have my sneaking suspicions that there were, at the very least, major embellishments on the truth) it doesn't save it from being a total bore. There were only a couple of saving graces to be found; namely the attempted kidnapping scene in Turkey and the frequent display of Ms. Mack's breasts, which all in all really aren't enough to recommend this film very highly to anyone. This movie should stay buried in the jumbo junk heap of history.