Der Mann nebenan (1991) Reviews

• Excellent thriller

  melsen2002-05-12

  Don't believe the bad reviews you may read about this film, this is a fine movie about a killer. The look of the film is very bleak which helps to set the atmosphere, Donaggio's score is good, and the cast is brilliant. Perkins' character spies on the people around him and he has a thing for mannequins, and his spending time with them is pretty creepy. Perkins seems to have been typecast as the weirdo towards the end of his career, but he does a very fine job as the mysterious man here never overacting once. German actor Bohm is one of the best of his generation in Germany, and I don't know if he was dubbed in this movie (I only have the German version where he does his own voice) but I know for a fact that he speaks very good English in real life. Ward of course is the daughter of British actor Simon. This is one of those rare thrillers where you really get under the skin of the characters. Take Perkins' character for instance, he's obviously a poor lonely soul in pain and you feel for him. If YOU feel this is a slow and boring movie you're probably right, and quite welcome to go and watch something more suitable instead, like "Con Air".

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• Anthony Perkins pays the rent...and what's wrong with that?

  raegan_butcher2007-02-18

  Toward the end of his tragically short life, after being blacklisted by scumbag cowards in Hollywood because of his HIV positive status, Anthony Perkins had to pay the rent somehow and so, being offered nothing but a steady stream of PSYCHO rip-offs and twitchy lunatic roles(which he'd been turning down for years) he finally relented and took jobs like "Edge of Sanity" and "A Demon in My View" to try to put a little money in the bank for his wife and kids before he shuffled off this mortal coil. "A Demon in My View" unlike "Edge of Sanity"( which is awful garbage) is a decent film and not a bad note for Perkins to go out on at all; the film is a faithful adaptation of Ruth Rendell's novel about a man who , let's face it, has a lot of similarities to a certain Motel keeper from somewhere out west; a predilection for killing people would be the biggest, I suppose, but hanging out with inanimate objects (in this case department store mannequins)and forming deep emotional attachments to them is another; I imagine Perkins could do stuff like this in his sleep and its to his credit that he resists going the full-tilt Klaus Kinski route (think CRAWLSPACE)and makes his character a shade more interesting than the usual Norman Bates clone.

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• A Demon in My View

  Scarecrow-882007-05-29

  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.

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• Old school Tony Perkins thriller

  zzz052007-02-26

  Poor Tony Perkins, ever since Psycho he's doomed to play these parts. Anyway, this is another in the same vein, pretty well done; as imported into the US it seems so Veddy Veddy English with a slightly jarring Teutonic touch popping up from time to time. I found parts of it hard to keep track of, but maybe that's me. I actually watched it a second time and was able to keep track of it all then. Kind of a Hitchcockian sensibility to the denouement; justice gets done, sort of, but not in a straightforward manner by any means. Appealing as the female lead is, he part is pretty minimal considering her position in the credits.

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• Obscure, latter day Perkins horror

  jcaraway32010-06-14

  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.

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