This was something of a find, and isn’t even listed by the Internet Movie Database in Nastassja’s filmography. I stumbled across the first hint of it while browsing a picture archive, my attention being drawn by the picture above. It and the other, related pictures, showed Kinski with Rudi Carrell, a Dutch-born entertainer who found great success hosting variety programs and game shows in Germany, from the sixties through the nineties. The Rudi Carrell Show was the most well-known, but the picture caption referenced another show of his, Am laudenden Band, which ran for 51 two-hour episodes from 1974 through to 1979.

This combined aspects of both variety and game show. The latter angle pitted four couples, each family members from different generations, against each others, over several rounds of competition, in things like observation, as well as trying to emulate the skills of professionals, e.g. a painter. The eventual winner sat in a chair while a variety of objects passed in front of them on a conveyor belt – hence the title of the show. They then had 30 seconds to remember as many items as they could, and whatever they recalled, they got to keep. [If this sounds more than slightly familiar to British readers, popular seventies series The Generation Game was also based on the same Dutch show that inspired this, Eén van de Eight]

Nastasssja wasn’t actually the first member of the Kinski clan to appear on the show, as father Klaus had appeared on the 11th edition, in March 1975. On New Year’s Eve 1977, in program #35, Nastassja followed suit, playing a mermaid in one of the skits that alternated with the game-show components. Miraculously, someone had uploaded the entire episode to Youtube, which I’ve embedded below for your viewing pleasure. The sketch starts at around one hour, 32 minutes in, with Kinski showing up a couple of minutes later, after castaway Carrell wishes for a woman as he falls asleep. She sings/lip-syncs a song about her life, which begins, somewhat unnecessarily, “I’m half woman, and I’m half fish.” But it has to be said, if I wished for a woman and Kinski showed up, I’d be happy to take the rough – or perhaps, more appropriately, the scaly – with the smooth…