| 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!" |