Frank Ripploh’s attraction to the abject and the outré made him a sui generis deviant in a career which saw him befriend and collaborate with many of New German Cinema’s cynosures, among them Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Magdalena Montezuma, and Ulrike Ottinger. His most notable work remains "Taxi zum Klo", a hyper-libidinous and semi-autobiography odyssey through the bathrooms and back alleys of gay Berlin which became a lightning rod for conservative outrage when it was released in 1980. But Ripploh’s brio bursts from the screen even in the hands of other directors, showcased in the two films here: the seedy crime puzzler "Macumba", and Ottinger’s lesbian pirate epic "Madame X: An Absolute Ruler", in which Ripploh served as assistant director under his drag pseudonym "Peggy von Schnottgenburg".