Deadlock

Roland Klick's rough mixture of gangster ballad and neo-western: after a bank robbery, bandits Sunshine (Anthony Dawson) and Kid (Marquard Bohm) flee to the ghost town of Deadlock in the Mexican Sierra. The only inhabitants are Charles Dump (Mario Adorf), the supervisor of the abandoned mining settlement, his daughter Jessy and the prostitute Corinna. Dump, who takes in the seriously injured Kid and nurses him back to health, tries relentlessly to find out where the loot is hidden... but then Kid's accomplice Sunshine turns up, whose malicious nature contradicts his eloquent name... Acoustically and visually captivating, dramaturgically consistent to the end, this movie will stay with you forever. Deadlock is the name of a door lock that can only be opened from one side. The setting of the film is such a trap from which there is no escape. Following classic dramaturgy, the demolished gangsters' suitcases of money move from one to the other, supported by the sheer Beckettian inability of the gallows birds to kill their respective owners. Mario Adorf as a touchingly clumsy jinx, Anthony Dawson as an ageing killer and Marquard Bohm, "Schwabing's understatement monster", as a wounded gangster, prowl around the prey like cats around the bush to the psychedelic soundtrack of avant-garde rock band Can. "Effectively and emotionally staged adventure drama that illustrates the classic genre dramaturgies of the western and the gangster film with an almost psychedelic aesthetic." (Encyclopedia of International Film)