Das Buschgespenst (1986)

In the 19th century, deep poverty prevails in the border village of Hohenthal in the Saxon Ore Mountains. The men make their living as miners or weavers; some turn to poaching or smuggling goods across the border into Bohemia, known as “Pascherei.” One such gang is led by the notorious “Buschgespenst” (“Forest Ghost”), whose true identity is unknown. One winter day, a wealthy stranger, Franz Arndt, arrives in the village. He lodges with forester Wunderlich and becomes his friend. Arndt reveals that he was once a forester who, twenty years earlier, was convicted of setting fire to the forester’s house and murdering his son—a murder he did not commit. He escaped from prison and made his fortune in Alaska. Now he is searching for his wife, whose false testimony sent him to prison. Known as the charitable “Prince of Misery,” he helps those in need with donations of money. The wealthy Seidelmann merchant family consists of Mrs. Seidelmann, who always keeps her face veiled in public, and her son Fritz. Through a putting-out system, they have weavers produce cloth at home. In secret, the greedy and cunning Seidelmanns organize smuggling runs; Fritz is the Forest Ghost. Arndt recognizes the veiled woman as his treacherous wife. The poor weaver Eduard loves the weaver’s daughter Angelika, known as “Engelchen” (“Little Angel”), but Fritz is courting her too. He invites Angelika to a masked ball held by an exclusive gentlemen’s club. After Eduard carelessly signs a threatening letter as the Forest Ghost, the young weaver gets a costume for the ball. Away from the event, Fritz tries to force Angelika to submit to him, but Eduard stops him. A border guard lieutenant is shot dead by the Forest Ghost. With his friend Wunderlich’s help, Arndt searches for the killer. In doing so, he disguises himself as an old man, an old woman, a constable, and a forester. He manages to decipher the smugglers’ code. Posing as a Bohemian merchant who wants to commission a valuable smuggling shipment, he lays a trap for Fritz. Fritz, in turn, hatches a plot to make his rival Eduard look like a smuggler, and hands Eduard’s letter to the prosecutor, who has the weaver arrested as the supposed Forest Ghost. Angelika is also arrested as the “Forest Ghost’s lover.” This is where the first part of the film ends. In the second part, Eduard, and later Angelika as well, are freed from prison with Arndt’s help. Mrs. Seidelmann exploits the prosecutor’s infatuation with her to obtain the border guards’ deployment plans. Arndt discovers that, twenty years earlier, his wife and her accomplice, the gravedigger, had placed another child—one who had died just days before—in the old forester’s house in place of his son, so they could frame him for murder. He confronts his wife with what he has learned. She tries unsuccessfully to kill Arndt. Their son is still alive. He is Fritz—and he is also the Forest Ghost, a smuggler and a murderer. He has fallen into Arndt’s trap. The smugglers are caught in the act and arrested. However, Wunderlich cannot bring himself to shoot Arndt’s son, who escapes. They pursue Fritz through a mine tunnel. When he uses explosives to shake off his pursuers, the tunnel collapses, and Fritz is fatally injured. His mother poisons her accomplice, the gravedigger, and flees on a horse-drawn sleigh, but Arndt and Wunderlich pursue and catch up with her. She avoids arrest by shooting herself, but first—one last evil deed—she rigs a zither with explosives and a timer. Wunderlich manages to throw it away just in time, moments before it explodes.