Obsessions

Obsessions (Bezeten-Het Gat in de Muur) (1969)

Runtime: 90 minutes

Directed by: Pim de la Parra

Starring: Alexandra Stewart, Dieter Geissler, Tom van Beek, Donald Jones, Elisabeth Verslyus

From: Dieter Geissler Filmproduktion/Scorpio Film Productions

Where’s Inde Navarrette?

Actually, last night I discovered that this film was on the Eternal Family platform. The thought crossed my mind, “Why does this Dutch/West German movie sound familiar?” then after Google I realized why. This film was shot in English; I believe this only occurred because he was in Amsterdam for Who’s That Knocking at my Door, but one of the co-writers was… SCORSESE, no lie. He helped translate the script to English, as I only learned after viewing this motion picture.

His involvement makes it funnier that this was a cross between a Hitchcockian tale (wait ‘till you hear who provided the score) and late 60’s Euro-sleaze, complete with an onslaught of naked women. A dude named Nils studying for his doctorate-we don’t see him do much of that-discovers a peephole in his apartment. He plays Peeping Tom, happily spying on his neighbor having sex w/ multiple women to the point that he doesn’t hide this from his girl Marina, despite her rating high on the attractive scale, at least in my eyes. Nils is an unrepentant horndog, as the movie is happy to make clear. As he deals with a case involving tied-up women & LSD, Marina is a reporter investigating a case of a murdered man purported to be in the United States Army.

Even by my standards, the pacing could be incredibly methodical at times; that point noted, I was still entertained by this sleazy tale-I wasn’t too surprised these filmmakers would later release REALLY sleazy pictures in the 70’s, most infamously 1971’s softcore Blue Movie. The mysteries were enough to keep me captivated—are the two cases connected? I enjoyed the period décor and all but a huge asset: the score from… Bernard Herrmann. 

As an aside, I was amused that there was a minor character best described as DUTCH CHAPPELL ROAN; even better, there’s a more important character best described as GERMAN PETER BOYLE. 

Obsessions won’t be for everyone, & not just due to the slow plot progression. However, I was amused; Scorsese’s involvement was why I watched but wasn’t the reason why I had a fine time. It was a relief that the focus proved to be on Marina rather than horndog Nils. Alexandra Stewart thankfully delivered the best performance. One of the best moments of the first half of 2026 was discovering the Eternal Family platform (via an Instagram ad, of all things) as several interesting films have already been watched via Eternal the past 4 months plus.