A story about an idol-obsessed teen abandoning everything for a parasocial relationship sounds like peak 2026, doesn’t it? Well, on this week’s Art History Uncensored, we’ll be talking about Eckhart Schmidt’s 1982 film Der Fan, aka The Fan. It’s about a West German teenager doing just that for a famous singer, with catastrophic results.
Der Fan tells the story of Simone (Désirée Nosbusch), who is just crazy about the singer R (Bodo Staiger). She obsessively writes him letters, and when they aren’t responded to, she convinces herself that the mail carrier is stealing them. Fed up with a lack of letters and her own inability to take a hint, she hitchhikes to Munich to see him in person. The two meet outside of a studio, and it’s love lust at first sight.
R takes Simone to his friend’s apartment, where things get out of hand. While Simone thinks that all her dreams are coming true, she soon finds out why you don’t trust musicians or cowboys. Upon learning that R does not love her back, she kills him, freezes his body, then slowly cooks and eats it bit by bit. Once all the meat is gone, she grinds up the bones and scatters them outside the television studio.
Of course, R’s disappearance is headline news, but the teen decides to return home to her family. There she composes one final letter to R, where she says that she misses her period. (Writer’s note: does that mean that the fetus fed off its own dad? Because it took her a while to eat that entire body…)
Reception
While always considered more of an obscure gem, Der Fan’s dark subject matter didn’t sidestep controversy. Part of the reason the film felt so raw was the touches of reality that Schmidt included. For example, Staiger is the frontman of the real-life Neue Deutsche Welle group Rheingold. Nosbusch, despite only being 16 in the film, had already made a name for herself. She had been working at Radio Luxembourg for several years at that point and hosting ZDF Music-Box.
So not only did you have a real musician, you had him starring opposite a teen known for her love of music. Obviously, they are playing fictional characters in the film, at least we hope so, but those splashes of reality can blur lines with audiences in unexpected ways. Put that in with a drab setting like early ’80s West Germany, add a touch of cannibalism, and you’ve got yourself an incredibly bleak film.
The year prior, Nosbusch had a leading role in Wolf Gremm’s Nach Mitternacht, aka After Midnight, in which she did some nudity. She also appears nude in Der Fan, which is where most of the controversy stems from.
The Controversy
Nosbusch originally agreed to do nude and simulated sex scenes with Staiger, including “deflowering” her character. However, when stills of her nude were prematurely published, she unsuccessfully sued.
Because of this and her age, Der Fan wasn’t officially released in America at the time. Though there was an English-dubbed bootleg going under the name Trance. Some even speculated that Nosbusch sued to prevent the film from coming out at all. But this doesn’t really make sense because all of the hullabaloo around the lawsuit did a Streisand effect on the images she objected to being published too early.
While you’d expect that a film that involves cannibalism as a pretty big plot point would also get dinged for gore, this one didn’t. Despite her bludgeoning R, dismembering, and eating him, this hyperstylized film is surprisingly light on blood and gore. Choosing to lean more into the melodrama of parasocial relationships with celebrities. This also makes it a lot less toudry than it could have been. Something campy and exploitative is much easier to dismiss than something that clearly has artistic value and is trying to make a well-worn point.
Don’t Meet Your Idols
Der Fan makes a point that is almost as old as time, or at least it’s as old as the concept of celebrity. This film takes the notion of artists feeding off their fans’ validation and cranks it to 11. Except for this time, the “fan,” as R so dismissively calls Simone, decides to literally feed off him instead.
Through R’s music, Simone was convinced that she not only knew, but loved him. Here is the thing: while most good artists put their heart and soul into their work, it is not them. This is how you can have public figures who keep squeaky-clean images but are dirtbags in real life. It’s not like R ever wrote a song called “Take a Gal’s Virginity & Run,” probably because that’s an awful thing to do, let alone sing about.
You never truly know someone, let alone someone you’ve never even been in the same room with. The concept of an isolated teen reaching out, no matter how inappropriately, to an artist that they feel understands them is an incredibly relatable concept. Unfortunately, so is the idea of an adult using those feelings to manipulate her. Teens aren’t known for great decision-making; this is true, but how many adults do we see doing this as well? The digital age has produced a profound isolation in people along with a digital “creator economy.” That is the perfect breeding ground for parasocial relationships. There is no way that Schmidt in 1982 could have known how disturbingly relevant his film would still be today.
Coming To America
In 2015, Mondo Macabro was able to do an uncut DVD and Blu-ray release of the movie. Now it is set to hit cinemas for the first time in the US with a new 4K restoration. On Friday, August 28, Der Fan will screen at the Metrograph in New York City. Fun City Editions has restored the movie in 4K from its original 35mm camera negative. It is screened with its original stereo soundtrack for the first time since its initial German theatrical run in 1982.
The theater describes it as: “A hard, cool-to-the-touch, and utterly riveting slow-burn psychological thriller that, newly restored for its first ever US theatrical release, speaks to our age of parasocial obsession, featuring a sinister synth-pop soundtrack by Staiger’s own band, Rheingold, and a last act that’s finger-lickin’ good.“
You can grab tickets to that screening here.
