Ulrich Lommel, born December 21, 1944, in Zielenzig (today Sulecin, Poland), as the son of the comedian and actor Ludwig Manfred Lommel (1891 to 1962) and the brother of the actress Ruth Lommel (born 1918). He made his stage debut at the age of four alongside his father. In 1961, he made his first performance at Renaissance Theater.

After his first roles in TV and movie productions, for instance, in Rudolf Thome's "Detektive", Rainer Werner Fassbinder gave him the role of the gangster Bruno Straub in "Liebe ist kälter als der Tod" ("Love Is Colder Than Death"). Henceforth, Lommel was part of Fassbinder's permanent creative staff and also took over jobs as cinematographer besides his acting duties.

In 1969, Lommel set up the production company Atlantis-Film in Munich that participated in the production of Fassbinder's film "Whity". Lommel made his debut as a director with the film "Haytabo", but he did not attract any attention until he finished the horror trash film "Die Zärtlichkeit der Wölfe" ("Tenderness of the Wolves"), produced by Fassbinder, with Kurt Raab in the leading role. In his next films, Lommel also dealt with mainly speculative stories, for instance, in the thriller "Wachtmeister Kahn" or in the sleazy sex fantasy "Der zweite Frühling" ("Second Spring").

After Lommel had invented a potentially scandalous story about Adolf Hitler's (played by Kurt Raab) obsession for Marlene Dietrich (Margit Carstensen) in his film "Adolf und Marlene" ("Adolf and Marlene"), he relocated to the United States at the end of the 1970s to continue his career in the film business. In the US, he became known as a director of numerous low-budget genre films.

Lommel did not finish a movie in Germany for more than 20 years until he filmed "Daniel, der Zauberer" ("Daniel the Wizard"), a semi-documentary farce about the eccentric teenage star Daniel Küblböck. However, the film flopped with movie goers and critics alike.

During the following years, Lommel wrote and directed a string of low-budget and exploitation films set in the horror and thriller genre. Some of them are based on classic gothic tales, including an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" (USA 2006) and "The Tomb" (USA 2007), which is derived from a story by H. P. Lovecraft. Yet mostly, Lommel used infamous real-life crimes as an inspiration for his films, as in "Uli Lommel's Zodiac Killer" (USA 2005), "Black Dahlia" (USA 2006), "Son of Sam" (USA 2008), "D.C. Sniper" (USA 2010) and "Manson Family Cult" (USA 2012). Lommel also occasionally moonlighted as an actor in some of these productions.

In 2014, he eventually returned to Germany to direct the documentary "Der Goldene Pokal - Die Reise vom 4. Stern", which follows Germany's national football team on its way to winning the 2014 FIFA World Championship.

In 2015, Lommel published the book "Factory Made" about his collaboration with Andy Warhol in the 1970s. He also worked on a documentary film on the subject. On December 2, 2017 he died after a heart attack.