Rainer Werner Fassbinder's films have always been notable for the natural and knowing way with which homosexuality is introduced, but Fox and His Friends is the first Fassbinder in which it is made the central subject. A lower-class carnival entertainer professionally known as Fox the Talking Head strikes it rich, after a life of hard knocks, by winning the lottery. His new-found wealth attracts an elegant bourgeois lover, who proceeds to vamp Fox as thorougly and unthinkingly as Lola-Lola or Theda Bara. This ill-fated romance between “the capitalist and the lottery queen” makes for one of Fassbinder's most skillfully wrought films, expertly evoking a brittle, upper-class gay milieu where, as one character puts it, “God's dressed up like Marlene Dietrich, holding his nose.”

“The first serious, explicit but non-sensational movie about homosexuality to be shown in this country.” -David Denby, The New York Times