"Satansbraten" or "Satan's Brew" is a West German 105-minute movie from 1976, so this one has its 40th anniversary this year. It is a German-language movie by the prolific filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, but the star here is lead actor Kurt Raab. And there are more people in the cast who regularly work with Fassbinder, such as Carstensen, Mira, Lommel and Caven. I must say I personally found this film was quite a positive surprise. I am not the very greatest fan of a large part of Fassbinder's works, but the way he unleashes here makes it worth seeing. This movie is very obscene, very much in-your-face and most of all extremely absurd. I believe this is best seeing from a comedy perspective. The drama was there too, but what worked the most for me were the funny parts. And there is some humour especially in the first half, that was downright amazing. Sadly, the film got slightly worse in the second half and too absurd even for my liking. But this was just because Fassbinder lost it a bit with the script, not Raab's fault. He shines from start to finish and I am sure this film would have been considerably worse with most other actors in the lead. So yeah, I would not say this is a really great film from start to finish, but it has a couple great moments and I also really liked Helen Vita. When her screen time got sacrificed a bit in favor of Carstensen, the quality declined. But it stays good enough to let me recommend it. Thumbs up.
Review of Satan's Brew
