Revenge of the Stolen Stars

Synopsis

A young man named Gene McBride inherits a large plantation and a mine of rubies on an island south of the China Sea. Gene moves there with his beloved Kelly to search the Six Stars, a famous collection of rubies. However, soon enough the couple find out that they will have to live with the ghost of Donald McBride, the original plantation owner and Gene's uncle, as well as confronting a curse.

Cast

Production

Director Ulli Lommel was unsure about casting Klaus Kinski, but he met him and Kinski was very nice, according to Lommel. But when the filming started, Kinski was very hard to work with. He complained about the lights and microphones, so eventually they had only few soft lights and very small microphones in the Kinski scenes, which is the reason why the sound quality changes much in different shots.

Kinski also didn't want to sit on a chair when camera crew was about to shoot from different angle, so continuity wasn't possible. Because of that Lommel decided to change Kinski's character to a ghost, which was a brilliant idea in Kinski's opinion.

Kinski drank heavily and at one point practically forced the entire crew to shoot almost thirty consecutive hours, so they could finally wrap Kinski's scenes and be done with his involvement. Kinski was so happy with the director that two days later he approached Lommel to show his appreciation, telling him that he had a great time while they worked together, and praising his directing style, to which Lommel politely thanked. Kinski also said that he wouldn't work in the future with anyone else than Lommel, but Lommel's half-soothing and half-ironical answer was "thank you Klaus, that's kind of you".