New in the cinema
“The Haunting Under the Ferris Wheel”: Reanimated GDR horror classic
David Bennent (l) as Rumpelstiltskin, Moritz Führmann as a giant and Anna Schudt as a witch in a scene from the film “The Haunting Under the Ferris Wheel”. photo
© Felix Abraham/MIDEU Films GmbH/dpa
Between pony farts, scary stream snakes and ghost train characters brought to life, this new edition of a GDR children’s series always finds an entertaining tone.
The seven-part children’s series became a cult on GDR television: “Spuk unterm Ferris Wheel”. Now a new edition of the series is being released as a feature film in cinemas, with a new story, new actors, new special effects. But again it’s about the three kids Cookie, Umbo and Tammi. They have to save an amusement park from ruin. And The three lively ghosts, who previously lived out their existence as wooden figures in a funhouse, are there again.
The new version was directed by Thomas Stuber, who previously attracted attention with the melodrama “In the Gangs”, the boxer film “Herbert” and the television film “Kruso”. Peter Kurth and Sophie Lutz also play.
A pleasantly old-fashioned film
Tammi (strong: Elisabeth Bellé), with her cell phone obsession (“collecting likes”), doesn’t really fit into this pleasantly old-fashioned film at first. And yet she is the one who gets the most screen time: Tammi actually wanted to go to Formentera with her mom and had already promised her followers some photos. But now she has to go to her grandfather’s funeral with her mother (Sophie Lutz): Jackel (Kurth), after whom the 40-year-old Rummel is named, was an old-school impresario – but the relationship with his two daughters was not the best. It’s no wonder that his grandchildren don’t want to go to the funeral either. In addition, there is not even good cell phone reception in the amusement park. But the old fairground stalls come to life when a thunderstorm brings bizarre ghost train characters to life: witch, giant and Rumpelstiltskin. Maybe the three scary characters can even help poor Tammi and her cousins Umbo and Cookie to revitalize the fairground.
“Soon,” says the film’s trailer, which is well worth seeing, “it will soon be scary – and funny.” And the advertising film actually doesn’t lie one bit. “The Haunting Under the Ferris Wheel”, released for ages 6 and up, oscillates in a pleasantly casual way between funny (the pony farting with pleasure), scary (the electricity snake that Tammi has to deal with), and over-the-top (naked police officers in the middle city) and completely bizarre moments.
David Bennent as Rumpelstiltskin
In addition, the nonchalant 90-minute film has a nostalgia that is certainly touching: there is the driving, suggestively puckering music, which is sometimes even reminiscent of legendary compositions by horror legend John Carpenter. There are the three scary characters: the witch, Rumpelstiltskin and the giant, whose costumes have nothing new at all: here a top hat, there the eye patch, there a red-glowing finger like in ET. It’s all fun and comes with attention to detail.
What’s more, the title song has what it takes to be a hit: “Life goes in circles,” it says. And you actually feel a bit dizzy after this varied and turbulent ride on the titular Ferris wheel.
A small, but nice surprise is that David Bennent appears in the film: the mime, born in Lausanne in 1966, plays Rumpelstiltskin. Bennent became known in the legendary role of Oskar Matzerath in Volker Schlöndorff’s film adaptation of Günter Grass’ “Tin Drum”. The adaptation was launched in 1979. And that was exactly the year in which the template for this film premiered on GDR television: On New Year’s Day 1979, the first episode “Haunted Under the Ferris Wheel” was shown there (original episodes can be found online). . The entertaining new edition, 45 years later, is a worthy reminder of this.