Header image  
Fassbinder's Collection  
 
  home / fassbinder collection
 

Satan's Brew (Satansbraten)

 

  Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

West Germany 1976 / Drama / 100 min / Color /  Monaural / 1.33: 1 / NTSC /  In  German with Optional  English Subtitles

Kurt Raab, Helen Vita , Margit Carstensen ,Volker Spengler, Ingrid Caven, Marquard Bohm 

Almost certainly the wildest movie ever made by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Satan's Brew is as unhinged as some of the director's masterpieces are rigorously controlled. A kind of gross-out comedy on art and fame, Satan's Brew takes as its hero a celebrated poet, played by longtime RWF cohort Kurt Raab, whose resemblance to Peter Lorre is uncanny. In the first of the film's many affronts to good taste, the poet kills his wealthy mistress in an S&M game, thus prompting a financial crisis--he may even be forced to start writing again. The movie careens from one jaw-dropping oddity to the next, inspiring the suspicion that Mike Myers may have seen it before inventing his "Dieter" character. This depraved three-ring circus is not the way to be introduced to Fassbinder, but the director's fans will be amused. To quote the movie itself: "An epic from the sordid depths of humanity!"