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Trash cineastes Rütten and Kalkofe: »You Can't Stop the #SchleFaZ!«
Photo: Jens Kalaene / dpa
From "Attack of the Giant Claw" to "Vampirella": TV satirists Oliver Kalkofe, 58, and Peter Rütten, 61, have been delighting a loyal fan base for more than ten years with a series of exquisite trash films. Now the channel Tele 5 is letting the trash festival »The Worst Films of All Time« (»#SchleFaZ«) expire at the end of the year. This was announced by the media company Warner Bros. Discovery Germany on Monday in Munich.
"After eleven extremely successful years (...) it is now unfortunately time to say goodbye at the height of success. We are understandably saddened and yet grateful for the many moments of creative madness that we were able to create during this time," Kalkofe and Rütten emphasized in a joint statement. Our wonderful fans are promised: The neat battleship #SchleFaZ will not sink in spite of everything, but will look for a new home port and continue to sail around the world of bad films live on stage. You can't stop the #SchleFaZ!«
The station managers thanked the two entertainers and their team: "Their passion, their verve, their meticulousness and love for the format have made #SchleFaZ what it is today: a real TV cult," Marion Rathmann, head of programming at Warner Bros. Discovery Germany, is quoted as saying in the press release.
Nine more times in the last season, the trash cineastes bring the most beautiful works into the living room. This Friday (22 p.m.), for example, everything revolves around the Argentine fantasy film »In the Realm of the Amazons« (1986) with Mindi Miller and Penelope Reed.
The last official autumn season will run until 27 October, by which time there will have been a total of 5 films on Tele 160. According to the broadcaster, four more "lovingly dissected trash film truffles" will follow in Advent. Finally, on New Year's Eve 2023, the duo wants to celebrate the series once again with a "special programming from over ten years #SchleFaZ trash film hell", as it was called.
»The Worst Films of All Time« is produced in Berlin. Kalkofe and Rütten were figureheads of Tele 5 under station boss Kai Blasberg, among other things with programs such as "Kalkofes Mattscheibe" or "Rütten's Bullshit Universe". Blasberg left the station in 2020 after its takeover by Discovery Germany. "#SchleFaZ" was a last remnant of this phase.
Tele 5 will "in the future increasingly access the holdings of the unique Warner film library with its mixture of legendary classics, top blockbusters and first-class series," according to the press release from Warner Bros. Discovery Germany.
feb/dpa