Kopfstand (1981) User Reviews

Better than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest!

[antoniatejedabarros · 10/10 · 10 September 2019]

This film is amazing. Better than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest! A bit depressing but awesome. Christoph Waltz's performance is stunning. He was so sexy when he was young! The cinematography is spectacular and all the cast is really brilliant. Do not miss it. A real gem. 10/10

Bleak insane asylum thriller

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 24 February 2015]

"Kopfstand" is a 1981 black -and-white film starring the very young Christoph Waltz long before his two-time Academy Award winning breakthrough in Hollywood. The director is Ernst Josef Lauscher who I have never heard of, maybe because he has not worked on a movie for over 10 years now. Waltz was in his early 20s here. Story-wise, it is about a young man, seemingly normal, who does not get along with his mother anymore and is, thus, send to an asylum. He clearly cannot cope with the brutal staff and the truly insane inmates (who try to kill their caretakers) and so his condition gets a lot worse quickly. The asylum makes him mad. he was perfectly fine before he got there. One example would be when he finds an inmate hung himself and calls for help, two male nurses come and only react to his screaming by taking him away with violent force while not caring about the suicide at all.

He gets pills, electro shocks etc. and it gets even worse when he tries to flee. You could maybe see this as a German, less entertaining approach to "Cuckoo's Nest" with a more uplifting ending. All in all, I was fairly underwhelmed and if you play to dive into Waltz' body of work before he became really famous, there may be better choices out there. Not recommended.