Taxi Zum Klo (18)

Starring: Frank Ripploh, Bernd Broaderup

If Fassbinder had ever made a sex comedy, it might have looked a bit like this West German cult classic from 1980.

"Taxi to the John" concerns Frank, who's not your average schoolteacher: he marks homework while sitting in a public lav, regularly picks up men, and enjoys a fair bit of cocaine and kinky sex. His live-in relationship with Bernd begins to founder once the latter makes clear his preference for monogamy and a move to the country: Frank, free-spirited and promiscuous, isn't going to leave Berlin any time soon. The sexual candour is pretty startling, this being a pre-AIDS gay scene, though the only close-up we might have been spared is Frank's trip to the clinic for a delicate examination ("Nurse, give me the proctoscope"). What impresses is the portrayal of Frank's ability to be many things at once – a well-liked teacher, a selfish lover, an energetic partygoer and, in the end, a perverse sort of revolutionary. You can understand how it became cult.