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Satan's Brew is a film that belongs on the garbage dump of our civilisation, in which the most revelatory things about our society can be found...There is nothing edifying about Satan's Brew. The film is repellent and unpleasant in every respect, without a single conciliatory scene. – Christian Braad Thomsen

One of Fassbinder's rare attempts at comedy, the vulgarity and brutishness of Satan's Brew managed to repel even some of his admirers. The film takes its inspiration from the Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, far from the melodramas that had brought Fassbinder international renown. Satan's Brew signalled a new phase in his career, which found him embracing a camp aesthetic and disbanding his faithful acting troupe (though the cast here is still populated by Fassbinder mainstays Ingrid Caven, Margit Carstensen and Kurt Raab, in the lead role). Raab plays Walter Kranz, an anarchist poet suffering from writer's block and badly in need of money. After accidentally plagiarising a poem from the 19th Century gay poet Stefan George, Walter convinces himself that he is the reincarnation of George. Although it is an indictment of artistic narcissism, the film also identifies with its sadomasochistic protagonist, making for a bleak comic opera.

R18+ | High level sex scenes