A man is released from prison after serving ten years for murdering an elderly woman. He quickly begins to feel the compulsion to kill again. After failing to murder a cab driver, he flees and discovers a secluded rural home, where a young woman lives with her sick mother and disabled brother. He then begins to take out his sadistic pleasures on them, attempting to hold them hostage, while thinking of his troubled childhood with his abusive mother and grandmother...

1983 Austrian film directed by Gerald Kargl

Running away on the highway, Maria is alone in her roaring SUV. Behind her, fire and a case full of money. In front of her, the hopeless vastness of the motorway. Only a day before she was a caring mother, a loving wife, a responsible daughter. Today she has gone rogue.

A young boy tries to cope with rural life circa 1950s and his fantasies become a way to interpret events. After his father tells him stories of vampires, he becomes convinced that the widow up the road is a vampire, and tries to find ways of discouraging his brother from seeing her. He must deal with an abusive mother, a father with a charge of molestation, a band of youths creating havoc, and an unforgiving environment in general.

It's Aggeliki's eleventh birthday, and a well-organised party is held in her honour. All the ingredients of a usual birthday gathering are here: a scrumptious sugar-glazed cake, cheerful music, and the warm embrace of a doting grandfather. However, is any of this real, or is this an elaborate facade? Little by little, as a devastating act of despair unfolds before Aggeliki's shocked family, wolves and lambs alike gradually find themselves lured into an elaborate web of hideous secrets, deceptive appearances, and a frantic downward spiral of lies. In the end, as the sinners' blood-curdling evildoings kept behind closed doors unravel, one can't help but plunge into the depths of the human soul, and the unfathomable secrets within.

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