Alraune, later renamed Unnatural: The Fruit of Evil,[2] is a 1952 West German horror science fiction film, directed by Arthur Maria Rabenalt and starring Hildegard Knef and Erich von Stroheim.

[2] The plot involves a scientist (von Stroheim) who creates a woman (Knef) who is beautiful yet soulless, lacking any sense of morality.

Professor Jacob ten Brinken (Erich von Stroheim) loses his university teaching role due to his abnormal interest in studying artificial insemination.

[2] Medical student Frank Braun (Karlheinz Böhm) arrives at his uncle's estate, Jacob ten Brinken, to ask for a loan.

She suggests to ten Brinken to buy acres of land, but upon arriving they learn that the property includes a potentially valuable sulfur spring.

Alraune is convinced that she is nothing but "the bringer of destruction" as she is the direct result of a cruel experiment concocted by her ungodly father, heightened by the evil thoughts of her biological parents.

In an Interview given back in February 1989 he stated how his involvement begin with "Carlton was Stapenhorst, and then there was an Austrian producer who made his money primarily from petrol stations and was a very stubborn, mindless, peasant person.

Our task now was to dramatize the magically demonic element in the sex and horror material in a Catholic affirmative....It was really an ordeal, I think we wrote 16 versions of the script and changed it until the shoot.

[1] In 1957 Hal Roach Junior's, Distributors Corporation of America released Alraune, now renamed Unnatural: The Fruit of Evil, in an English dubbed version to arthouse and grindhouse theaters.

Alraune (1952) is the fifth adaptation of Ewers' book, the first being the 1918 silent version directed by Michael Curtiz which has long been believed to no longer exist in studio archives.

[8] In 1995 a character named "Professor Ten Brincken", in Kim Newman's vampire novel The Bloody Red Baron, is the 'mad scientist' who creates Alraune.

In a contemporary review, Variety noted that "in the early 1900s, when the H. H. Ewers novel Alraune cut a swatch in the German-language world [...] the very thought of artificial insemination of humans was mentionable only in whispers."

[3] In regards to von Stroheim's performance, Kirkus Reviews wrote, "A magisterial, crazily comprehensive biographical study of the original renegade director" while Times Literary Supplement wrote " A monument to the awful Good Old Days of an infant Hollywood"[9] Michael Den Boer writes that "Though this film has a Gothic Horror vibe, it's far-fetched premise ventures into the realm of science fiction.

Dennis Schwartz "It's a hokum sci-fi film that only resonates because Von Stroheim is at his Prussian best as a man possessed by his incestuous love for his foster daughter and arrogant about his superior intellect.

Von Stroheim's a treat to watch, but it's still a dull visual film that never made good use of its unusual premise and was never emotionally satisfying as a drama.