A rare horror film from West Germany and Austria, the latter not a country known for huge numbers of genre films, Parapsycho – Spektrum der Angst is an obscure anthology film from director Peter Patzak, mainly a prolific director German television. Opening with a teletype printing out the basic credits before going on to quote from a Time magazine cover piece, The Psychics, first published in March 1974, the film is split into three uneven sections, each dealing with a different aspect of the paranormal.

First up comes Reinkarnation/Reincarnation in which Harry (Peter Neusser), like the protagonist of Jean Rollin’s Lèvres de sang/Lips of Blood, also released in 1975, is drawn to an old chateau by an image that triggers strange memories (in this case, a drawing he finds on the wall of a hotel telephone booth). Tracking down the building, he finds that it’s inhabited by a young woman, Greta (Marisa Mell) who seems to have been waiting for him. After spending the night together, he finds that she’s actually been dead for  25 years…

The over-use of Für Elise by Beethoven is grating, but otherwise this is a passable enough ghost story though it’s nothing we haven‘t seen before. It has the feel of a television episode (one could easily imagine it being adapted for the later Hammer House of Horror (1980) series for example) and Patzak teases what’s really going on quite effectively – he cuts away to what appear at first to be meaningless shots of a sleeping man and a doll as Harry and Greta (Mell is noticeably body-doubled during the sex scenes) make love, only for them to become vital clues moments later. The title is irrelevant though – it’s not a story about reincarnation at all but rather it’s a ghost story.

Next is Metempsychose which, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is a word meaning “to translate or transfer (as the soul) from one body to another.” A married college lecturer (William Berger) is having an affair with one of his students, (Mascha Gonska). When his wife (Signe Seidel) finds out she tries to kill herself, her husband and their daughter (Debbie Berger, William’s daughter) by crashing their car. The student subsequently kills herself, but her soul ends up in the daughter’s body.

The car crash is eccentrically shot but is effective enough for all that and the story, once again not terribly original, is passable enough but the atmosphere of dread and unease that Patzak generates is undermined by his decision to include genuine human autopsy footage which is both upsetting and unnecessary. It’s only brief but it’s enough to sour the rest of the film which is surely not the effect that Patzak was after.

Still reeling from the autopsy, we pass on to the longest story, Telepathie Hypnose /Telepathy Hypnosis, a decent variation on the mad artist story. Artist Mario (Mathieu Carrière) uses his telepathic powers to lure young women to his studio who then throw themselves from a window when he tires of them. His latest victim is newlywed Barbara (Alexandra Drewes) who abandons her new husband (Helmut Förnbacher) on their Viennese honeymoon and heads for Milan apparently on a whim. She met Mario some time earlier and it’s his psychic call that she seems to be answering.

With its impressive prog rock score from Manuel Rigoni and Richard Schönherz, and strong performances, this is the most interesting of the three stories though, like the other two, it’s not in the slightest bit original and a little lacking in any real substance. For all that, the autopsy aside (which seems to have precluded a British theatrical release), Parapsycho – Spektrum der Angst is not an unlikable film. Patzak conjures a clammy atmosphere of dread that he keeps undermining with questionable decisions, but which is palpable nonetheless, the performances are generally very good all round and if the stories have a second (or even third) hand feel to them, they’re not unlike creepy campfire tales that are familiar but still a lot of fun to hear again.

As well as the Time article, Patzak was influenced by production manager Georg M. Reuther who came to him and co-writer Geza von Radvanyi with the basic ideas for the three stories, himself inspired in part by a sensational appearance on German television by Uri Geller in January 1974 where he demonstrated his most famous “power,” the apparent ability to bend spoons with his mind and allegedly caused clocks in viewers living rooms to stop. It triggered a renewed interest in the supernatural and paranormal in Germany that Parapsycho happily capitalises on.

Parapsycho – Spektrum der Angst would prove to be Peter Patzak’s only horror film. He continued directing for the small screen at an impressive rate until 202 – he died in 2021 at the age of 76. It’s a shame he didn’t do more as, although it has its faults, Parapsycho – Spektrum der Angst is an atmospheric film that deserves to be better known than it is. Just be very aware of that autopsy footage that comes without warning and is likely to be too much for many.