ALBINO (1976)
Article 3748 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-6-2011
Posting Date: 11-18-2011
Directed by Jurgen Goslar
Featuring Christopher Lee, James Faulkner, Horst Frank
Country: West Germany / UK / South Africa / Zimbabwe
What it is: Revenge story

When an albino terrorist rapes and kills his fiancee, a police officer takes the law into his own hands and sets out to avenge the deed. However, his actions put him at odds with his own police force, and as he hunts the albino, the law is hunting for him…

The movie has your basic revenge story setup, and I usually find these movies to be fairly predictable in their manipulation techniques; just make the villain heinous enough, and the audience will automatically want the hero to take any action necessary to bring him to justice. Fortunately, the movie is well acted, and it adds a few other layers of complexity; the African setting and the political complications add a bit more meat to the bones of the story. The movie has some messages as well, but as always, it’s easier to send messages in works of fiction where you can stack the cards any way you want to. Still, that doesn’t mean the movie doesn’t have its uses, even if much of the mechanics of what happens is standard issue plotting. What the movie is not is a horror movie. Nonetheless, it is often mistaken for one, probably due to the fact that Christopher Lee (who plays a secondary role) is given top billing, and other than the fact that there’s a bit of talk about the albino terrorist being a witch doctor of sorts, there is no fantastic content to speak of. So, despite the areas of interest, for the purposes of this survey of fantastic films, it should be considered as another false alarm.