Suck My Dick, an Oskar Roehler Film

During the press screening of Suck My Dick you heard giggles and gackles coming only from the women in the audience ­ nary a twitter of masculine laughter. The men at the screening were apparently on the defensive, perhaps embarrassingly so. For Oskar Roehler’s merry, wicked, provocative farce is about a famous writer who, overnight, loses his penis. Now all he has in its place is a hole! No, this is not a dirty-mouth film, nor is it nasty, vulgar, salacious in the rude Fescennine sense. You see only the derrière of the »poor« castrated poet when he drops his pants and, in utter despair, shows his ex-wife what has happened - nothing is left of his «proud masculinity»! How does the woman react? Her face shows that things are not so bad.

       Oskar Roehler’s film is about the worst fear-fantasy that bestselling writer Dr. Jekyll could possibly experience. Hyde, his alter ego and hero of his novel, has broken right out of his head and, in the course of the story, robs the proud author of everything that has meaning in his life: fame, masculinity, his hair and teeth. In short, we are watching an absurd, grotesque tale of male woes. Dr. Jekyll first seeks help from Dorian, a famous psychiatrist, »played« with finesse by the well-known, charismatic Wolfgang Joop. The scenes at the psychiatrist’s office are absurd, comic, outlandish, enough to split your sides with laughter. Indeed, we can feel just how much Edgar Selge, one of Germany’s best actors, is enjoying himself as Dr. Jekyll, the »member-less« poet. And with what delight fashion-designer Wolfgang Joop also delivers his lines with deadpan gravity. If a scene comparison can be made, then that »Lothar Lambert touch« in his Berlin Underground films. As for Hyde, the alter ego lifted from the novelist’s imagination, he now exists in real life and soon possesses all that the writer has lost. But here’s the twist: while Dr. Jekyll, the Dichter-ohne-Dick, gradually comes to terms with his situation, Hyde, played with comic verve by Ralf Richter, begins to suffer upon realizing that he is now doomed to focus entirely on his penis.

       This hilarious satire also features a supporting cast of top actors, among them Katja Flint as Jeanny, the seductive femme fatale, and Hannelore Elsner and Vadim Glowna from Oskar Roehler’s awarded Die Unberührbare (No Place to Go).

Dorothea Moritz