Die Totenschmecker (1979)

In a rural area of the Tyrolean Alps, Felix and Kurt are two brothers and sons of a large-scale farmer who still runs the farm in his old age. The farmer’s third son is Franz, who is plainly intellectually disabled. As the firstborn, Felix can hope to inherit the farm one day, while Kurt, who is unattached, has no prospects at all. He works at a sawmill. Felix and Rosa, the maid, have an illegitimate daughter, Anna, who is nearly grown and is usually called Annerl. Rosa repeatedly tries to persuade the old farmer to hand the farm over to her Felix ahead of time, since he is already 50 years old, after all, but he vehemently refuses. Walking home from school along a forest path, Anna sings a prejudiced little taunting song about “thieving Gypsies,” who are lazy and unkempt, and promptly encounters one of them. He is the charming young Joschi, playing the violin in the middle of nowhere. Fascinated by the boy, who recites poetry, she follows him to his people, camped in a caravan and tents. In a scene full of clichés, they are sitting around a campfire, playing violin and guitar, eating and drinking. It is late, and already dark, by the time Maria gets home, safely accompanied by Joschi. While Annerl quickly sneaks off to see her old, gravely ill grandmother, avoiding an argument with her father, the farm family is at that very moment railing against the “Gypsy rabble” roaming the area. That same evening, the intellectually disabled Franz sneaks around the house, peers through the window into Annerl’s dimly lit room, and watches her get ready for bed. Franz then enters the girl’s bedroom while she is lying in bed. Anna is still wide awake, however, and starts screaming. Within seconds, the farm family is gathered around Annerl’s bed and learns of Franz’s attempted advances. The old farmer and his other two sons rush to the cowshed and beat Franz up. The next morning, two Gypsy women set off for the farmhouse to ask for some milk and eggs. At first they find no one there, so they walk around the property looking for one of the farmers. While one asks the farmer’s wife for milk, the other goes into the barn looking for eggs and discovers Franz, beaten and locked in a stall. She screams in fright, finding Franz’s wild stare and behavior threatening. The farmers rush over to the woman who screamed and see that Franz has apparently strangled the stranger and is carrying her body outside. The other Gypsy woman shouts, “You’ve killed her!” and runs off to alert the police. The old farmer orders Felix to chase after her and stop her. A struggle breaks out, and the woman fights back fiercely. Finally, in a rage, Felix kills her by smashing her head against a stone several times. To make matters worse, the grandmother appears, dressed all in black and extremely devout, and cries, “I curse you.” Rosa takes the old woman to bed, where she lies down to die. Meanwhile, Anna and Joschi get to know each other better, and there is a spark between them. One of the travelers has gone looking for the two missing women, but the maid Rosa insults him as a “dirty Gypsy.” From Rosa’s feigned indignation, he correctly concludes that she must be lying when she claims that neither woman came to the farm. The leader of the Gypsy group orders two of the men to search thoroughly for the two women killed by the farmers’ sons. The old farmer suspects that the Gypsies will not let the matter rest and makes a fatal decision: “We have no choice: them or us,” he says, calling for all the Gypsies in the vicinity to be killed. Just then, Anna arrives and cries, “Grandmother’s dying—quick, get the priest!” While the grandmother waits in vain for the priest and the last rites, the two Gypsy men appear and the old farmer shoots them both with his rifle. Anna rushes over and calls, “Grandmother’s dead!” She sees the old farmer and her father Felix loading the four murdered men’s and women’s bodies onto a horse-drawn wagon and screams in horror. Kurt finally returns from his job at the sawmill and sees the terrible deeds his father and brothers have committed. They drive to the lakeside, where the Gypsies have set up camp. After Kurt refuses to shoot what is presumably the last member of the group, the Gypsy leader, his brother Felix commits this further act of murder. Joschi, hiding behind a tree, witnesses it. The old farmer and his sons then clear the small camp, put the five group members’ bodies in the caravan, and sink it in the lake. Since Joschi had already grabbed his violin case and is playing in the distance, the farmer-murderers realize that one of the Gypsies who could testify to their murderous actions must have escaped. The murderous farm family sits around the table and discusses how to catch the last Gypsy. At the grandmother’s funeral, Felix briefly spots the escaped Joschi. Anna, who is also there, cannot get the images of the murdered Gypsy women out of her mind and calls her relatives “Murderers!” Given this precarious situation, the farmers decide to retrieve the bodies from the lake and hide them again so they can burn them. Meanwhile, Rosa is sent to the village to find out whether anyone knows anything about the Gypsy boy. On the way, Franz lies in wait for her, pounces on her, and rapes and strangles the maid. At dusk, the caravan is hauled out of the lake again. They intend to burn the bodies inside it, but the old farmer suffers severe burns. In the distance, Joschi can be seen and heard playing Gypsy melodies on his violin on a mountain ridge. The old man is taken to a hospital. Felix is now obsessed with catching the last witness to his murders and climbs the rock face beside a gorge, where he thinks Joschi is hiding. In a nightmare, Anna sees the boy, pursued by her father, tumble down the steep rocks. She wakes up deathly pale in the presence of Kurt, who has been told by Felix to look after her. Outside in the dark woods, the still-roaming, deranged Franz finds Joschi’s violin and takes it. Felix returns to the farm, and it seems Anna’s nightmare has come true, since he claims to have killed and buried the last Gypsy witness. While the two farmer brothers celebrate their crimes in a drinking binge, Rosa’s body is found. Kurt and Felix quarrel as they drink. Felix, already looking forward to becoming the new master of the farm as the eldest son, is reminded by his brother that he could just as well run the farm, especially since he has not murdered any of the Gypsies. Felix is not wrong to suspect that Kurt is trying to blackmail him. Kurt gets nowhere, however; he goes out into the dark night and tries to drive away. Felix rightly suspects that his brother is going to the police to report him, so he shoots at the moving car and wounds Kurt, who nevertheless manages to get out of the vehicle. In the dark barn, the farmer brothers—“Cain and Abel”—have their showdown, in which the younger brother kills the older one with a pitchfork. Kurt, who has been shot, then also succumbs to his injuries. An ambulance arrives, carrying Franz, who has apparently been picked up in the woods. He has Joschi’s violin with him. The police officer who is also there asks Anna where her father is. She asks only about Joschi, the Gypsy. But the officer knows nothing about any Gypsies in the area; they have not seen any there. He says, “Gypsies are like birds; they don’t stay in one place for long.” “Joschi always used to say that, too,” Annerl replies.