Zinksärge für die Goldjungen (1973)

Hamburg, at the beginning of the 1970s. Otto Westermann and his gang control gambling and prostitution in the Hanseatic city. He also makes a lucrative business out of protection rackets. Westermann faces competition from a Mafia godfather who arrives in Hamburg harbor aboard the Queen Elizabeth. He is Luca Messina, an Italian-American crime boss from Chicago, accompanied by several of his men, his daughter Sylvia, his mother, and his mistress Kate. The gangster boss swears: “I don’t want to make a guest appearance in this city; I want to take it over!” Messina and Westermann soon come into serious conflict. Messina and his men deliberately interfere in Westermann’s businesses, threatening him and pushing him out; he even demands 40 percent of Westermann’s income from his illegal enterprises and threatens him with deadly violence. A full-scale gang war breaks out. As the two crime bosses’ thugs and killers kill one another off, a romance develops between Westermann’s eldest son, Erik, and Sylvia Messina. Messina’s thugs beat Erik’s younger brother Karl to death. Erik and Sylvia put themselves in extreme danger as they try to bring the two sides to their senses. But it is already too late: in a major showdown, the two gangs wipe each other out, and the crime bosses engage in a deadly motorboat race in Hamburg harbor.