Jimmy Powell

A serial killer who calls himself "The Laughing Corpse" dresses up in a skeleton costume and kills his victims with a poison-filled scorpion-shaped ring.

When the government cuts the quota of musical programs permitted on television, teenagers Mark and Cherry lead others youngsters in forming their own political party.

Three sequences are linked together in this short film by Straub; the first sequence is a long tracking shot from a car of prostitutes plying their trade on the night-time streets of Germany; the second is a staged play, cut down to 10 minutes by Straub and photographed in a single take; the final sequence covers the marriage of James and Lilith, and Lilith’s subsequent execution of her pimp, played by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. "The film is a look entirely at Western decadence" - Jean-Marie Straub.