A young man, Kid (Marquard Bohm – Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The American Soldier, Karl May a.o.) stumbles through the Mexican Sierra, shot and half bled to death, carrying a suitcase containing the loot from a bank robbery.
Passing out from heat and blood loss, he is found by Charles Dump (Mario Adorf – The Tin Drum, Manhunt), a former gold miner living on the outskirts of ghost town “Deadlock” with his daughter (Klick discovery Mascha Elm-Rabben, later to appear in Schroeter’s Bomberpilot and Salome or Fassbinder’s World on a Wire).
As Dump realizes what’s in the suitcase, he tries to come up with a plan to get rid of its owner.
As they are joined by Kid’s partner in crime, the sadistic killer Sunshine (Anthony Dawson – Dial M for Murder, Dr. No a.o.), the conflict triangle is perfect. Soon it’s everyone for himself in a violent endgame under the glistening sun where only one can walk away with the suitcase.
Filmed literally days after the Six-Day War in a valley cornered by the Israeli and Jordanian armies still bristling with weapons, the intensity of the shoot translated directly onto the film; a tour de force in no man’s land, Deadlock is a dark, nihilistic tale of greed, corruption and codes of honor. A chamber play of Beckettian proportions, it is also a psychedelic Western as gritty as they come.
The film’s outspoken admirors ranging from Alejandro Jodorowsky to Steven Spielberg to Quentin Tarantino, Deadlock never loses pace and moves along with an intensity not to be found again in German film. —Filmgalerie 451
Roland Klick, born July 4, 1939, in Hof, started to study dramatics and German studies but left university before his graduation to start a career in the film business. In 1962/63, he worked as a cinematographer for Rolf Schünzel’s documentary film “München – Tagebuch eines Studenten” at Deutsches Institut für Film und Fernsehen. Klick then finished his first short films and the 50-minute long feature film “Jimmy Orpheus” (1966) before he made his full-length feature film debut with the drama “Bübchen” (“Little Vampire”) in 1968.
Despite its controversial subject – “Bübchen” tells the story of a ten-year old boy who kills his sister and hides her dead body –, actress Renate Roland won a German film award for her performance, while Klick himself was celebrated by colleagues and critics as one of most promising young directors of German cinema.
Klick’s next film, the thriller “Deadlock” (1970) starring Mario Adorf that was filmed in Israel, was made in a completely different… read more
