The al­ter­na­tive to a tor­rent or YouTube is to get up ear­ly on sun­day, cross a bor­der and watch a movie in Orig­i­nal­fas­sung in a na­tive the­ater. I found the UFA-Palast cin­e­ma right next to Dues­sel­dorf Hbf, and Hotzen­plotz start­ed about 5 min­utes af­ter I ar­rived there, to­tal­ly un­planned. I don't know if Hotzen­plotz was in my sub­con­sious­ness in some way or the theme and set­ting is so gener­ic Cen­tral-Euro­pean that it just seemed like it was, but stuff like that just works. Take good vs. evil and throw in in­gre­di­ents like scary birds, a ring, a dark for­est, a wiz­ard with a wand, hob­bit-like boys with hats, a cas­tle with a tricky door, gold, herbs, tele­por­ta­tion, poly­mor­phism, Bar­bara Schoeneberg­er, Piet Klocke and it locks onto some cul­tur­al or maybe even ge­net­ic her­itage that makes sto­ries like this so pow­er­ful. Sleepy Hol­low also has that cul­tur­al ob­vi­ous­ness to it, but I'm not that Amer­i­can to dig it that deep, and sagas like Star Wars and and the Ring Tril­o­gy also get a bit in that di­rec­tion but in the end those are just over the top and get Space­balled. Hotzen­plotz is a clas­sic, no ques­tion about it. It just ap­pears to be miss­ing it's in­flu­ence in Nethack...