“Gods of the Plague (Fassbinder's third film) has profited from more exact movie experiences than the films of the other young directors who learned from American movies.... Fassbinder's gangster-film doesn't happen on the level of black limousines, bursts of machine-gun fire, blinking blondes and detective brilliance; it uses more lower-class people and shoplifters; ‘little' girls who do all that for love the great glamour ladies never did; small crooks with the same loneliness, the same lost future and mysterious cult of the moment as their colleagues with bodyguards. Fassbinder's ‘Gods of the Plague' - that pathos doesn't fit them at all - don't imitate; they are quite authentic movie characters, but still movie clichés reduced to smallest denomination....” --Wolfgang Limmer, “Fassbinder” (Goethe House)