The Million Game

The Million Game (1970)

Das Millionenspiel

A candidate in a game show is hunted by three men. He will get a Million DMark, if he survives for a week; the hunters will get the money, if they can kill the candidate. The audience of the show is watching the transmissions of twenty camera teams filming the hunt. The showmaster appeals to the TV-viewers to help either the candidate or the hunters, whomever they want.

Date of release
1970-10-18
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (48)
Runtime
1h 36m
Genres
TV Movie, Science Fiction, Action
Director
Tom Toelle

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: The Prize of Peril

Das Millionenspiel is a 1970 West German action/sci-fi television film, directed by Tom Toelle and starring Jörg Pleva, Suzanne Roquette and Dieter Thomas Heck. It was aired by ARD (broadcaster) on 18 October 1970. Wolfgang Menge wrote the screenplay, adapting the short story "The Prize of Peril" by the American writer Robert Sheckley. Wolfgang Menge and Tom Toelle received the 1971 Prix Italia for best television movie.

Background

Intentionally "exaggerat[ing] the contemporary situation [in television] and project[ing] it into the future in order to illuminate the present", as Günter Rohrbach, then head of TV programming at WDR, said at the time, the film anticipated developments in the media, such as commercial television (which did not exist in West Germany until 1984), the drive for ratings, reality shows, the Big Brother effect, and constant interruptions by highly sex…

Menge used trimmed exterior shots and cleverly interspersed "documentaries" to heighten the authentic look and feel of the show. Lotz is shown evading pursuit by dangerous and dramatic means such as jumping out of windows. When the film premiered on 18 October 1970 on ARD, some viewers thought they were watching a real manhunt.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended