Alas! The first near-masterpiece I've seen from Fassbinder, and boy is this one sick and twisted, not to mention surprisingly tender. Already this feels light years ahead of his previous work, a technical marvel conceived and executed with a striking amount of control and exquisite design. Fassbinder's brand of spaghetti western is subversive and disturbing as hell. I mean seriously, who includes vampires in this genre to get at deep, uncomfortable truths about distinctly American forms of racism? Who tethers homoeroticism and bestiality to the myth of the cowboy in order to showcase familial affection? Above all, who's using the iconography of the Western (bar Jodorowsky) to explore issues related to gender identity, incest, gay parasites, prostitution, sadomasochism, and gold-digging nymphomaniacs? 

Fassbinder is doing some serious boundary pushing here, taking our perceived norms about western mythology and turning them inside out in order to make us rethink our assumptions contained in the genre. He uses the politicization and eventual liberation of a black slave as a launching point to get borderline surreal at times. The image I keep coming back to again and again? The vampiric undead assembled among the Nicholson clan. These are vampires of an emotional, not supernatural, order. Years of hatred and racist inculcation has turned their skin a greenish, bluish color, a trope of the Western that Fassbinder wants us to reexamine as an emblem of moral and spiritual decay. It's an utterly haunting use of makeup and design. Brings us expressionistically close to the emotional illness of the Nicholson clan. This is what racism and classism would look like if these hideous traits were clear, visible markers of a person's appearance.

WHITY is also a class act in suspense. The film has this ravishingly slow-burn quality to it that allows Fassbinder to ratchet up the tension with each bizarre plot revelation that unfolds. There were moments where I was simply stunned by what I was seeing. It leaves you feeling preyed upon almost. What begins as a dysfunctional family, deathbed money scheme turns into a perverted loyalty test that always keeps you guessing till its apocalyptically violent finale. You can't predict where Fassbinder is going, and even if you do, you don't really have the words to explain how you got there in the end. Just a truly engrossing piece of Western iconoclasm unlike anything I've seen committed to this genre.

Fassbinder Ranked