To be perfectly honest, I really don’t think My Neighbor Adolf would have even been on our radar if we hadn’t discovered it was that last movie starring the late great Udo Kier.  The openly gay German actor starred in over 200 films and worked with some of the finest indie filmmakers, such as Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey as well as Lars von Trier.  He was known to gay audiences for his supporting role in “My Own Private Idaho,” featuring River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves…….. but our favorite will always be Todd Stephens’ Swan Song.

My Neighbor Adolf is set in 1960 in the deserted countryside of Colombia in a ramshackle old house which is home to a cantankerous Polish Holocaust survivor,  Polsky (played by David Hayman).  He spends his solitary days doing crosswords and growing his black roses  …. and trying to urinate.  His peace is shattered when the ruined mansion house next door is suddenly bought and is occupied by an old bearded gentleman  (Udo Kier) who calls himself Mr Herzog, and his noisy Alsatian dog,  who goes to great lengths to keep his private life very private. This backfires, however, when Polsky gets into his head an idea that this very secretive man with a heavy German accent is, in fact, the ex-Führer on the lam.

Polsky turns into a full-time snoop with his long lens camera, capturing all the comings and goings of his neighbor and compares his findings with all the detailed information in a Hitler biography he has just bought.  He is totally convinced that he is Hitler in hiding, but when he catches the bus into town, he fails miserably to convince the Israeli Embassy.   

But then, over time, the two men begin to slowly thaw over their mutual love of chess, and a restrained friendship blossoms but as this unwinds, we cannot worry about where this can end.

Although this will not rank as one of Kier’s roles, watching it is like being able to say goodbye to an old friend.  He will be missed.   8/10