Das Buch des Lasters

After spending an evening with questionable company, two young women are trafficked to brothels abroad.

Winterstürme is a 1924 German silent film directed by Otto Rippert.

In this apparently lost film, a beautiful dancer's sexual allure is used by an evil cripple to entice men to their deaths. Falling in love with one of the potential victims, she is told by the cripple that he will set her free if her lover, actually a murderer himself, survives and escapes a bizarre labyrinthe which runs beneath the cripple's house.

For a long time the homunculus had to hide from his pursuers. But now he mingles with humanity again and sows discord, strife and murder. One day, when he meets an orphaned girl, he takes her to the shepherd Rudolf's parents. His goal is to pair the two together in order to breed a new human race from them. To this end, he kidnaps her to a deserted island. But the plan fails because Rudolf tries to kill the homunculus after learning his true identity. In revenge, the homunculus destroys the entire island, including the young couple. His hitherto loyal companion Edgar Rodin is so horrified by this deed that he renounces the homunculus and threatens him with death.

The homunculus and his companion Edgar Rodin make an invention that would allow the hateful homunculus to destroy the world. But first he wants to find out about love. When he observes how young Anna is rejected by her parents, he takes care of her and asks her parents for forgiveness - without success. He brings her to her seducer, who also rejects the girl. The homunculus then takes revenge by ruining the man financially and throwing Anna at his feet. But she still loves the villain and asks Homunculus for mercy. The homunculus cannot understand this feeling of love - he wants to try it out on himself. He puts a young woman who loves him to the hardest test, but she will do anything for him, sacrificing her fiancé and her parents. Only when he reveals his artificial nature to her, she leaves him. This experience confirms the homunculus in his intention to destroy mankind.

Suddenly appearing in Florence, a seductress causes Cesare, the city's ruler, and his son to both fall madly in love with her. The son, killing his father before an order to torture the woman can be carried out, then turns the city's churches into dens of sexual debauchery. Acts of wild abandon continue unabated until the arrival of Death, who brings with her a horrible plague to loose upon the city.

Part of the artificial-creature series encompassing Der Golem (1914 and 1920), Alraune (1918, 1928, 1930) and Metropolis (1926), 'Homunculus' was the most popular serial in Germany during World War I even influencing the dress of fashionable Berlin. Foenss, a Danish star, is the perfect creature manufactured in a laboratory by Kuehne. Having discovered his origins, that he has no 'soul' and is incapable of love, he revenges himself on mankind, instigating revolutions and becoming a monstrous but beautiful tyrant, relentlessly pursued by his creator-father who seeks to rectify his mistake.

The dancer Lena Schmidt wins ten thousand mark at the lottery. With the money she leaves for a fashionable resort. Lena meets there the penniless painter Gustav Lindner, who is looking for a rich wife.

Just a few months after the sinking of the Titanic, director Mime Misu recreated the shipwreck in Berlin and the surrounding area. Tinted scenes and creative special effects escalate the drama until the sinking of the ship, which was staged using a model on a lake near Königs Wusterhausen.

A group of scientists, led by a Professor Ortmann, produce a living human child using scientific processes - a "homunculus." This creature is human in every way, except that he cannot experience love.

A group of scientists, led by a Professor Ortmann, produce a living human child using scientific processes - a "homunculus." This creature is human in every way, except that he cannot experience love.