Dead Woman from Beverly Hills

Young, cheeky and experimental. With “Die Tote von Beverly Hills” (English title “Dead Woman from Beverly Hills“) Michael Pfleghar turned German cinema upside down in Cannes in 1964. The film will be released on 26 July 2019 for the first time as a digitally restored HD version on DVD and VoD.

For Heidelinde Weis the memories of the shooting of “Die Tote von Beverly Hills” are still a lot of fun. In the booklet of the DVD to the now digitally restored HD version, the now 79-year-old tells us that she was cast by Michael Pfleghar “to the horror of all the film-mighty” for the rule of Lu at short notice, even though she herself found that she had no discernible special appeal to men whom she was supposed to turn their heads in rows in the film. After its release, the film was lifted up into the sky and partly shredded. But one thing is still clear to Heidelinde Weis: “The director was years ahead of his time.”

On 26 July 2019, UCM.ONE and moviemax will release “Die Tote von Beverly Hills” (English title: “Dead Woman from Beverly Hills“), a piece of German cinema history in a digitally restored HD version on DVD and VOD. The film was invited to Cannes in 1964 as an official German contribution and won the Bambi as “most artistically valuable film” in 1965. A production that was made without much money. The cinema debut of Germany’s greatest show director Michael Pfleghar (“Lieben Sie Show”, “Wünsch Dir was”, “Klimbim”, “Zwei heavenische Töchter” and others).

The story comes from a novella by the then master of comedy Curt Goetz. It was shot with a budget of 1.2 million German Marks  in October and November 1963 in Beverly Hills, partly hidden, without filming permits. Legend has it that the then 29-year-old producer Hansjürgen Pohland only had a letter of recommendation from the then mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt. Heidelinde Weis writes in her memories for the DVD that she drove through Beverly Hills “with giant cars without a driver’s license”.

“Die Tote  von Beverly Beverly Hills” plays with all the facets of cinema. With clichés, with logic and surreal dreams. Sometimes in colour, sometimes in cinemascope, sometimes in black and white. The male image of the time was turned upside down. Somewhat stupid guys with a “crazy look” who are brought under control by a self-confident young woman without will.

Summary of the film

A man named C.G. (Klausjürgen Wussow) finds the naked body of 17-year-old Lu (Heidelinde Weis) in the woods of Beverly Hills. Her diary shows that she wasn’t at all a young innocent woman, but a nymphomaniac. The work is a record of erotic adventures. Among her lovers were an opera singer, a rich painter, an examining magistrate, an altar boy and an emigrated Czech archaeologist. But is there also the name of the murderer? The detective Ben (Wolfgang Neuss) follows all traces. These finally lead him to Las Vegas, where the Tiddy Sisters are on stage every evening…

Press comments

Der Spiegel (1964): “On the Hollywood boulevard of Beverly Hills, cars were jammed: in the middle of an intersection stood a roughly carved black coffin. Suddenly the coffin lid rose, a narrow, white hand came out and waved – at the roadside a camera began to whirr. When the recording was finished, the coffin carried by the intersection and the traffic was fast again, a passer-by approached the film people: “Are you communists?”

Thorsten Krämer in “Verführer im System!” calls the film “one of the strangest star vehicles the German film has ever seen, in which the Kessler twins of all people turn out to be cruel murderers.”

Ekkehard Knarrer (Jumpcut Magazine): “In addition to the joy of playing with the original, there is the pleasure of dissolving all sense structures. Logic never comes up for discussion during the investigation of the criminal case, which is quite actually the case (the murderers are, as one would hardly expect otherwise: the Kessler twins). Figures are conjured out of the hat and back again. Abstruse ideas and delicious, sometimes simply through and through stupid dialogue lines alternate, a highlight is the wedding of the heroine with an archaeologist, who proves his love in typical Zuckerscher (“Die nackte Kanone”) increase logic last as a driver of a giant excavator: “Rudolf digs everything up for me”.”

“The fear of death is unreasonable, because as long as we live, it is not yet there, and when it finally comes, we are already gone,” says Curt Goetz, Spiritus rector of the German pre-war humor. And he has written a lot in his life, including the erotic novel “Die Tote von Beverly Hills,” which Michael Pfleghar filmed in 1964.