Spetters
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Genre: LGBT, World cinema, Teen, Biker Film, Drama
Year: 1980
Country: Netherlands
Language: Dutch Language
Starring: Renée Soutendijk, Toon Agterberg, Maarten Spanjer, Rutger Hauer, Jeroen Krabbé, Hans van Tongeren, Saskia Ten Batenburg, Peter Tuinman, Yvonne Valkenburg, Marianne Boyer
Spetters is a Dutch film released in 1980 directed by Paul Verhoeven.
Spetters led to many protests about the caricatured manner in which Verhoeven portrayed gays, Christians, the police, and the press. Although Verhoeven made one more film in the Netherlands, the response to Spetters led him to leave for Hollywood. Despite the large amount of controversy surrounding it, the film proved to be a box office hit with 1,124,162 admissions in the Netherlands alone.
The careers of Maarten Spanjer and Renee Soutendijk were launched by this film, but it did not do much for the other young lead actors. Hans van Tongeren committed suicide in 1982.
The film was a small success in the United States but it did help the launching of the careers of Verhoeven and the actors Jeroen Krabbé, Rutger Hauer and Soutendijk in Hollywood.
The film, which is violent and sexually graphic, is a high-speed coming of age story which centers on three young men dreaming of an escape from their provincial surroundings by means of a motocross career: young motocross racing champion Rien (Hans van Tongeren (nl)), another racer who thinks he has the goods, Hans (Maarten Spanjer (nl)), and the son of a Bible thumping
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