Director – Wolf Gremm, Screenplay – Wolf Gremm & Robert Katz, Based on the Novel Murder on the 31st Floor (1966) by Per Wahloo, Photography – Xaver Schwarzenberger, Music – Edgar Froese & Tangerine Dream, Special Effects – Gunther Schaidt & Lothar Tropp. Production Company – Regina Ziegler Filmproduktion/Trio Film GmbH/Oase Film Filmproduktions GmbH/ZDF.
Cast
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Inspector Jansen), Gunther Kaufmann (MK Anton), Boy Gobert (Konzernchef/CEO), Arnold Marquis (Polizeipräsident/Police Chief), Jorg Helm (Vice-President), Nicole Heesters (Barbara), Brigitte Mara (Personaldirektorin/Personnel Director), Richy Muller (Neffe), Petra Jokisch (Elena Farr)
Plot
The year 1989 where Germany has united into a republic under the control of the dictatorial combine, which has eliminated most social ills. Police inspector Jansen is called in when a note reporting a bomb threat is received at combine headquarters. In investigating, Jansen learns about the building’s mysterious 31st floor, which seems unable to be accessed by any regular means.
The greatest footnote that Kamikaze 1989 has in overviews is in being generally referred to as “the SF film that stars Rainer Werner Fassbinder as a detective.” Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-82) had gained a considerable reputation as a director in the so-called New German Cinema of the 1970s. Fassbinder was incredibly prolific, putting out 44 films within a thirteen-year period. These include acclaimed works such as The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), the tv series Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), Lola (1981) and Veronika Voss (1982). Fassbinder ventured into genre material only once as director with the tv mini-series World on a Wire (1973), which is considered one of the first works about Virtual Reality. The only other venture Fassbinder made into genre material was as producer and an actor in Ulli Lommel’s directing debut The Tenderness of the Wolves (1973) based on the life of German serial killer Fritz Haarmann.
In Kamikaze 1989, Fassbinder serves in an acting only role under his friend Wolf Gremm, while the role of his character’s partner is played by Fassbinder’s sometimes lover and frequent star Gunther Kaufmann. A month before the release of the film, Fassbinder was at Gremm’s apartment and went to sleep, never to wake up due to taking a fatal overdose of cocaine and barbiturates. He was only 37 years old. The film is adapted from Murder on the 31st Floor (1966), a novel by Swedish crime writer Per Wahloo, whose work was also adapted as The Laughing Policeman (1973).
One interesting thing is how Kamikaze 1989, which was released in 1982, predicts a unified Germany in 1989. This ends up being fairly on the nose – the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and reunification of the two Germanys occurred in 1990. Where the film is slightly off is in seeing this as a dictatorship – at least that is what the opening credits call it, although we see no evidence of such throughout, and mostly what we get is the country united under a quasi-benevolent conglomerate.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder as Inspector Jansen
The film makes a reasonable stab at creating a distinctive future. There are interesting little touches – buildings and interiors decked out in neon frontage; people wearing a lot of New Wave fashions; there are six-wheeled vehicles and Gunther Kaufmann drives around in a motor tricycle; Jorg Helm even has a Superman phone on his desk. Perhaps the most intriguing touch is how Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s detective carries around what looks like a handheld videophone that is about the size of a hardback book. Fassbinder cuts a flamboyant figure as the individualistic police inspector – outfitted in a leopard skin suit, orange shirt and drawstring tie in just about every scene we see him, while walking through the film with an insolent expression. Even his police car comes with a leopard skin interior.
Kamikaze 1989 premiered on July 16, 1982 and Blade Runner (1982) appeared three weeks earlier on June 25, 1982. The films are made too close together for it to be said that Kamikaze 1989 drew influence from Blade Runner, but what could be said is that it designs seem to instinctively look forward to the places where Blade Runner landed in terms of its depiction of a lived-in future world, something that would subsequently be called Cyberpunk.
Where Kamikaze 1989 fails to work is less in terms of its science-fiction aspects but when it tries to act as a Police Procedural. Neither Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s lazy detective nor the detective story holds you to the film. There is the bomb threat plot called at the start of the film and Fassbinder then spends the rest of the film is a long, rambling off-the-book investigation into it is not exactly clear what, something to do with people that may be connected to the case. Things seem to tie back to the mysterious 31st floor but when this is eventually entered into at the end … nothing happens and the big mystery prove a total washout.
