Biikenbrennen - Der Fluch des Meeres (1999)

In the opening credits, a night watchman makes his rounds in a small museum on the coast. Beside a displayed ship’s hull of an unknown type from the 16th century—which, according to a plaque, supposedly sank in the mouth of the Elbe around 1590—a ghostly stranger slits the night watchman’s throat. The displayed shipwreck vanishes from its stand without a trace. In 1998, late at night, three children dressed as pirates approach a house in the fictional North Sea coastal village of Ottenkoog, carrying lanterns. They ring the doorbell to ask for a treat, singing a song whose words are: “Wavlew comes tonight with his men across the sea. Wavlew has brought death. He will not give our own back to us. The child taken from us alone shall be the ransom for all the treasures…” The house, outside which a stack of firewood has been piled, formerly belonged to a man named Claas Petersen. It was only recently bought by Marc Fölster, a software developer, businessman and widower from Hamburg. He moved from the big city to the North Sea coast, to the fictional village of Ottenkoog, with his daughter Johanna, who suffers from asthma. The salty air is supposed to bring her relief. Generously, Fölster gives the children, who represent a kind of carol-singing procession to him, a 50-mark banknote, which they accept, dismayed and at a loss. Their main interest was in small gifts, toys, sweets and the like, as village elder Hans-Heinrich Hansen explains when he enters the house after the children. He explains the nature of this procession of young children to the skeptical city-dweller and takes the opportunity to ask the newcomer to Ottenkoog, Fölster, to let them hold the Biike-burning on his property. It has been an unbroken tradition for 410 years and is extremely important to the villagers. Fölster arrogantly and brusquely refuses, pointing out that he has lawfully acquired the property and that, to him, the risk of the fire endangering his house outweighs obscure traditions. Hansen persists, but Fölster throws him out of the house. A little later, Hansen meets the attractive marine biologist Dr. Tanja Speichert. She is in Ottenkoog for research and has come across inexplicable anomalies at sea, whose data she wants to send to her university. During the transfer, her computer and its peripheral devices fail. She therefore asks Fölster if she can use his computer. The people of Ottenkoog gather in the village church and express their indignation at Fölster’s refusal to approve the Biike-burning. Hansen tries in vain to calm them down. That evening, Dr. Speichert visits Marc Fölster to transfer more data. While she and Fölster’s daughter are sitting at the table, a broken-off branch smashes the kitchen window. Both the fire in the fireplace and the candle on the table suddenly go out. As Fölster steps outside to look at the broken branch, he sees a shadowy figure on the night-time beach. The eerie stranger knocks him unconscious, then breaks into Fölster’s house and abducts Johanna. When Fölster returns inside, he finds an antique dagger stuck in the tabletop, with a message carved into the wood: “All hav to me – De lev to de – De lad top filt” (“All possessions for me – your life for you – the chest filled to the top”). Fölster attributes the abduction to the Ottenkoogers’ desire for revenge over his ban on that year’s Biike-burning. He suspects old Hansen is behind it and confronts him. In his boundless arrogance, he insults the people of Ottenkoog, calling them backward, “brain-dead natives.” Growing skeptical and still pondering the phenomenon of the candle suddenly going out, Fölster turns to the local museum to learn more about the background to the traditions Hansen had alluded to. There, in old records in which the village’s name is still spelled Ohdenkrog, he finds the story of the pirate Wavlew, who raided coastal villages and abducted children. He demanded that his chest be filled to the brim in exchange for their return. Although the villagers always stood together and gave all their possessions to ransom the one child taken from among them, the ruthless pirate often broke his word, throwing the abducted children overboard instead and letting them drown. The chronicle displayed in the museum belongs to Hansen. More convinced than ever that Hansen is behind the plot to abduct his daughter, Fölster attacks him and nearly kills him. Dr. Speichert knocks the highly aggressive Fölster down with a mooring spike. Fölster is advised to approach the local von Bütow, who is familiar with the village’s history and whose ancestors have held the office of dike reeve for centuries. Fölster had already noticed his stately residence. Together with Dr. Speichert, he visits the extremely old von Bütow, who is in a wheelchair. Von Bütow identifies the knife Fölster found in his tabletop as a 16th-century dagger. He explains more of the background to the Wavlew legend. It emerges that the only thing that kept the cursed souls of Wavlew and his pirates from setting foot on land and continuing their misdeeds after death was Claas Petersen’s fire. Fölster’s refusal had once again paved the way ashore for the spirit of the dead Wavlew. Von Bütow explains the fireplace and candle going out as the result of Wavlew’s “soul-coldness,” which extinguishes every fire—except, that is, Claas Petersen’s. Von Bütow tells Fölster that Wavlew has returned because he was cheated out of the money extorted from the villagers in 1586. The villagers had brought all their possessions to Claas Petersen, whose daughter Maria Luise was the last to be abducted by Wavlew. But before Petersen could hand over the chest, it disappeared. No one knows where the chest or the treasure inside it is now. Fölster must mobilize all his possessions if he loves his daughter. He instructs his bank to deliver his wealth to him in gold bars. Together with Dr. Speichert and Hansen, Fölster heads out to sea. They encounter Wavlew’s ghost ship. Fölster can just make out his daughter’s cries for help and runs to the foredeck. As he turns around, he sees Wavlew stab old Hansen in the cabin behind the steering wheel. As he is dying, Hansen makes Fölster promise not to leave him at sea. At Hansen’s house, Fölster discovers a book containing pictures of von Bütow from different periods. Fölster conjectures that they depict one and the same person over the centuries, especially since the church register records von Bütow’s birth but not his death. Fölster notices that von Bütow is sitting in every picture. It dawns on him that von Bütow must have stolen the chest filled for Petersen after he moved to Ohdenkrog, and financed his grand estate with its contents. Fölster seeks out von Bütow and confronts him. He pulls von Bütow out of his wheelchair. As soon as von Bütow’s feet touch the floor, the floor beneath him begins to liquefy. During their argument, von Bütow shoots at Fölster, who then shoves him out of his wheelchair. Von Bütow immediately sinks into the liquefied floor, which solidifies again behind him. The former pirate resurfaces in the North Sea directly in front of the bow of his captain Wavlew’s pirate ship. He tries to swim away, but the undead pirate catches up with him. In an effort to help Fölster, Dr. Speichert summons the villagers to the church. While Fölster stands helplessly before the chest, which has been found again in von Bütow’s cellar, and hysterically declares that he cannot even cover the bottom of it, the villagers arrive and bring him their possessions. Together, they manage to fill the chest to the brim. Deeply ashamed, Fölster recognizes the solidarity of the Ottenkoogers, whom only a few days earlier he had denounced as degenerate and incestuous. Fölster takes a cutter out into the harbor at night and gives the chest to the sea. It heads of its own accord toward the ghost ship beside him. When the ship seems about to leave without releasing Johanna, Fölster decides to ram it and set it alight, since, as he knows, Wavlew fears fire. But because of the ghost’s presence, Fölster is unable to start a fire himself, so Dr. Speichert fires a flare gun from shore and sets the diesel-soaked cutter ablaze. Johanna, who is being held prisoner in a cage attached to the mast of the pirate ship, sinks into the sea with the burning vessel. At the last moment, Fölster manages to open the cage underwater and free his daughter. As he does, Wavlew’s glowing spirit attacks him. Fölster manages to fend off the ghost with a thrust of the dagger. The ghost seems to dissolve and sink into the waves. Back home, Fölster puts his daughter to bed. When he enters his room, the ghost of the dead Hansen appears and asks him once more whether the Biike-burning may take place. A reformed Fölster agrees this time. In the final scene, we see the pirate ship displayed in the museum once again. After the night watchman passes it with his flashlight, a thin stream of water runs down the rudder.