Adolf and Marlene

Ulli Lommel (born 21 December 1944 in Zielenzig, Oststernberg, now Sulęcin, Lubuskie), is a German actor and director, noted for his many horror films, and for his career as an actor on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s films.

Lommel started his career as an actor in films in 1960’s. One of his earliest film roles was in Russ Meyer’s Fanny Hill. In 1969, he starred in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s directorial debut Love Is Colder Than Death. The cast as an ensemble won an award at the German Film Awards in 1970.

Fassbinder and Lommel worked together more than 20 times after 1967. Fassbinder also produced Lommel’s The Tenderness of Wolves, a drama about the murders of Fritz Haarmann, which was Lommel’s second film as director. It was nominated at the 23rd Berlin International Film Festival for the Golden Bear. Ulli Lommel participated in the documentary Fassbinder in Hollywood (2002).

Lommel moved to United States in 1977 and started working with Andy Warhol, who produced his films Cocaine Cowboys, and Blank Generation (1980). In 1980, Lommel directed The Boogeyman (1980) which became a hit and made the UK’s ‘Video Nasties’ list. After that, he went to make films like BrainWaves (1982), starring Tony Curtis and Vera Miles, The Devonsville Terror (1983) with Donald Pleasence, and Revenge of the Stolen Stars (1985) with Klaus Kinski.

Since the mid-1980s, he has directed several films, from drama to science fiction, but mostly horror. In recent years he has become notorious for a long line of direct-to-video movies based on the lives of serial killers, most of which have been critically panned. He is currently in pre-production for “Frankenstein in 3D”, which he will direct on a $7.5 million budget in Ingolstadt, the authentic German town near Munich where Mary Shelley placed her classic novel.. Although some have mixed views on the budget given the poor ratings of his past films, Lommel seems unconcerned by some of the hate mail and is set to direct “Frankenstein in 3D” which will surely live up to his previously set standards according to fans. —wikipedia