Directed by: Oliver Schwehm
Stars: Christian Anders, Ben Becker, Uwe Boll, Jörg Buttgereit, Mechthild Großmann, Kai Novak, Gertrud Sonnenburg, René Weller
Language: German | Subtitles: English
Country: Germany | Imdb Info
Also known as: Cinema Perverso – Die wunderbare und kaputte Welt des Bahnhofskinos, Cinema Perverso: The Wonderful and Twisted World of Railroad Cinemas
Description: Before home video, before streaming, and long before the internet made everything instantly available, West Germany’s “Bahnhofskinos” — the smoky train-station cinemas tucked between platforms and ticket booths — were the last refuge of the curious, the lonely, and the perverse.
This stylish and affectionate documentary by Oliver Schwehm dives into that forgotten world, where trash, erotica, spaghetti westerns, kung fu knock-offs, and sleazy horror played endlessly for travelers killing time between trains. Through interviews with cult directors like Uwe Boll and Jörg Buttgereit, and with colorful montages of grindhouse classics like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Cannibal Holocaust, the film reconstructs an era when exploitation cinema wasn’t just entertainment — it was a cultural underground.
With no drive-ins or grindhouses, Germany’s railway theaters became temples of cinematic sin — showing films 24 hours a day, on loops so constant that people could walk in halfway through and stay until the next train or the next scandalous scene. As the decades rolled on, these cinemas fell into decay, their reels shifting from pulp thrillers to hardcore porn before vanishing entirely by the mid-1980s.
Cinema Perverso celebrates not only the films themselves but the atmosphere — the smell of cigarettes, the hum of projectors, the sense of danger and freedom that defined a lost era of analog rebellion. It’s a nostalgic, funny, and surprisingly touching portrait of cinema at its dirtiest and most democratic.
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