Self-exiled in Germany due to tax issues in Sweden, Bergman joined with American producer Dino de Laurentiis for this atypical period piece set amidst the decadence and paranoia of 1923 Berlin, when Nazism was on the rise. David Carradine stars as a traveling Jewish American circus artist caught among the alcoholics, the whores, the madmen, and the fascists; his chance encounter with an old acquaintance—now a medical professor of sinister means—presages the evil to come. As chaotic and vulgar as the director’s classic work is controlled and tasteful, The Serpent’s Egg is an unapologetically gothic Grand Guignol, Bergman style.