The Golden Glove

The life’s work of Fritz, a revolting and deformed drunk from Hamburg's San Pauli neighborhood, is the murder of local prostitutes. He hides their bodies in the walls of his attic apartment where the smell of the rotting flesh blends in with that of bachelorhood and the fumes from the Greek restaurant on the ground floor. The case of serial killer Fritz Honka shocked the whole of Germany in the mid-1970s and inspired Fatih Akin to make a film that is a counterpoint to most serial murder thrillers. Instead of a methodical investigation, it offers only chaos, muck, stink, and the virtually haptic experience of Fritz Honka's “hell kitchen”. With an elegance unique to him alone, Akin has created a monstrous artifact that puts the viewer’s resilience to a hard test and undermines the cult of mystery created around serial killings.