Bavarian filmmaker and writer Herbert Achternbusch has never been shy about scandalizing the bourgeoisie. Achternbusch, who visited PFA and the Castro Theater in 1979 with his films, Bye Bye Bavaria and The Comanche, has been called by German critics “a Bavarian genius,” and “the wild man of New German Literature,” who “looks like Chaplin, makes faces like Keaton, and talks like Karl Valentin under Brecht's direction.” He has stated that his writing is “satire added to the very serious.” The seriousness underneath the burlesque of his latest film, Das Gespenst (The Ghost), was not lost on audiences in Germany, where its anti-clerical humor and its broad satire of middle-class notions of religion were greeted with controversy. Achternbusch himself stars as a Christ image who comes to life, leaving the crucifix on which he has languished neglected for countless years, in order to start a new life as the lover of the Mother Superior at a religious hospice. This is truly a match made in heaven, and Christ desires to keep it so by making himself useful around the hospice, attending to the guests as best he can. But for his real talent, transubstantiation, there is little use these days. Das Gespenst, for all the controversy it has engendered, is considered Achternbusch's most accessible film. It was shown at the Berlin, Munich, Toronto and Montreal 1983 film festivals.