Savage Attraction

The German-Australian Savage Attraction was originally released as Hostage: The Christine Maresch Story. Kerry Mack portrays the real-life Christine, whose youth and idealism is cut short when she is strong-armed into a marriage with a neo-Nazi (Ralph Shicha). Even though this takes place in the 1970s, Christine is treated no better by her craftily sadistic husband than she would have been at the height of National Socialist domination in the 1940s. The film tends to make the same points over and over, but the fact-based story has enough in-built drama to sustain interest. Savage Attraction is a grimly suspenseful tale of obsession, possession and desperation: an R rating was definitely called for, and duly applied.