“At the end of the film he just picks up a lampshade and bludgeons everyone in his house to death, and it's this awful despairing moment but it's kind of funny as well, like that's the most levity you can hope for in a Fassbinder film.”

Given he appears to have influenced everyone from Quentin Tarantino to Lars von Trier, we don't talk about Rainer Werner Fassbinder nearly enough.

Fassbinder died at the shockingly young age of 37, and yet his output was prodigious: forty feature films, two television series, multiple short films, stage plays, radio plays, and performances in numerous films, by both himself and others.

So who was this mysterious, workaholic figure of the German New Wave? Rebecca Harkins-Cross joins us for a discussion that will be of interest to both Fassbinder experts and those who have never heard of him before.

But before we dig into Fassbinder, we look back at some of the films of this past month, including Steven Spielberg and Melissa Mathison's adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic The BFG, the continuing adventures of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek Beyond, and Paul Feig's reboot of Ghostbusters. Our reactions to these films may surprise you.

For further reading, check out Fassbinder's own top ten films of all time to get an idea of which films and filmmakers influenced him.

And finally, we take our research very, very seriously on Hell Is For Hyphenates. It's not enough to simply watch the films, we now travel to the global locations where key works were filmed! A few months ago, Lee checked out the place that one of Fassbinder's best-known works was named for:

Outro music: “I Can’t Control Myself”, written by Reg Presley and performed by The Troggs, from Das Klein Chaos (1966)

Download or stream the episode from our website, listen via Stitcher Smart Radio, or subscribe on iTunes!

It’s okay, you’re not experiencing deja vu. Well, look, you might be, we can’t know what’s inside your head. But yes, we have announced Rebecca a couple of time in the past, and have been thwarted both times (one time by a legit volcano). But after checking on all the potential volcanos around the world, we felt confident that this would be the month we would have her on board!

Rebecca is the film editor at The Big Issue, the theatre critic for The Age, and writes regularly for The Lifted Brow. Her work has also appeared in The Saturday Paper, The Australian, Meanjin, The Lifted Brow, Crikey, Senses of Cinema, and numerous other. And we are very excited to have her on board.

So which prolific director has Rebecca picked?

None other than German New Wave director Rainer Werner Fassbinder!

Fassbinder is a bit of a legendary figure; prolific and influential, and yet still not really a household name, even in the households of many affirmed film fanatics.

Despite only living to 37, Fassbinder managed to make a whopping forty feature films, and that was in addition to his two television series, three short films, twenty-four stage plays, four radio plays, and plenty more. His output was prodigious, especially given he stopped around the age that so many get started.

If you're a fan of his work, this show should be right up your alley. If you've only seen a couple of his films, or even if you've never seen any, or even if you've never heard of him, then it'll be up your alley too: this episode will be a crash course in who Fassbinder was and what made him such an iconic filmmaker.

But what is it about Fassbinder and his films that appeals to Rebecca? Tune in on July 31 to find out!