Amoklauf

The film's unnamed protagonist flashes back to or fantasizes about murdering a female cyclist and is then shown pessimistically contemplating human nature while watching an episode of The Price Is Right. After observing a pair of yuppies vivisect a fish at the restaurant he works at as a waiter, the man returns to his barren apartment, where he further ponders humanity, this time while watching Mondo films. The waiter burns a photograph of his mother and flashes back to killing his father while the man was watching The Price Is Right.

The next day, the waiter masturbates and gets drunk but is interrupted by his neighbor, whom he stabs; he returns to drinking and pleasuring himself as the woman bleeds to death next to him. After flashing back to witnessing a possible death in a washroom, the man proceeds to a park, where he shoots at least eight people, staggering off after one of the victims stabs him with a pocketknife.

Shot on purposefully degraded 35 mm film, Amoklauf was personally financed by Boll with the 50,000 Deutsche Marks he had remaining in his business account after the dissolution of his partnership with Frank Lustig, whom he previously collaborated with on his earlier features, German Fried Movie and Barschel – Mord in Genf. Fearing Amoklauf could be his final film, Boll made it "as if I were saying goodbye" and thus gave it a melancholic tone, music that would "represent the end of a life" and a central theme discussing "the capabilities of what humans can do."^[1]

Amoklauf premiered in Berlin, to some walkouts, and was subsequently screened at film festivals throughout Germany and Paris.^[1] It was released on DVD in 2005 by Eurovideo and Screen Power Home Entertainment.^[5]