Genghis Cohn (Antony Sher) is a Jewish night-club comedian playing the European cabaret circuit in the 1930s. Enter Adolph Hitler. Exit Genghis Cohn, whoise act finally dies in front of a Nazi firing squad commanded by Sturmbannfuhrer Otto Schatz (Robert Lindsay). Sixteen years later in the small town of Licht in Baviera, Schatz leads a successful and peaceful life as Commissioner of Police. One romantic, moonlight night Genghis Cohn returns to haunt Schatz, and take his black, ironic revenge. At the same time the town of Licht is struck by a series of macabre sex-murders. They appears motiveless. Schatz and the police are left literally clueless. Mass-murders... And Schatz himself is undergoing a sinister change. He is gesturing more, shrugging more, and occasionally, when he sighs, an unguarded “Oy!” slips out. He wakes in the night with an uncontrollable craving for chopped liver and geflite fish. His superiors begin to wonder if their Commissioner in Licht may not be a Jew, and a homicidal one at that. With racism on the rise here, as elsewhere, Genghis Cohn is a timely black comedy, a mixed marriage between “The Dybbuk” and “Blithe Spirit” that provocatively suggest the only true justice for Nazis everywhere. Diana Rigg plays the seductive widow, Baroness Frieda Von Strangel; John Wells, police srgeon Dr. Burkhardt; Frances de la Tour, The psychiatrist Dr. Helga Feuchtwanger; Robert Lang, The Police Chief; and Paul Brooke, the Minister of the Interior.
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