Douglas Sirk's most outspoken and visually baroque work was responsible for his discovery by European critics in the late fifties. With garish jukebox colors and gutsy, psycho-sexual symbolism, Sirk delineates the last days of the Hadley oil dynasty as it declines into sterility and death. In this classically camp precursor to "Dallas," Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall are the ostensible stars as two upstanding outsiders who become catalysts for the Hadley madness. But it was Dorothy Malone and Robert Stack who took the kudos for their performances as the Hadley siblings, Marylee and Kyle, who have become twisted beyond all normality from reaching for a forbidden love. They writhe through their empty world of wealth like figures from a German Expressionist poster come to life. She embodies the fifties shorthand for female starvation-nymphomania-while he is the alcoholic, impotent playboy, an Absurdist's hero in a bright yellow sportscar. Fassbinder has written, "For Douglas Sirk, madness is a kind of hope, I think."