A gritty, color case history of a bourgeois office worker who “without warning” goes berserk, killing his wife, child, and neighbor before hanging himself. Herr R. predates Fassbinder's Sirk-influenced period and almost seems to reflect an influence of Andy Warhol's cinema in its low-key, incessant, seemingly improvised, quietly brilliant dialogues. But the thread that drew Fassbinder to Sirk-the relentless disrobing of the Emperor Normality to reveal, and only then show compassion for, an individual divided against his own nature-already runs through this more distanced early work. Fassbinder spends the film's listless energies rendering the title question rhetorical. Irm Hermann as a chattering, ski-crazy neighbor is the straw that breaks the schlemiel's back, but until Herr R. does it, in the living room with a candlestick, the question is, “Why doesn't Herr R. run amok?” Kurt Raab, antiteater actor and art director of many of Fassbinder's films, stars.