Ein Virus kennt keine Moral

Comedy about AIDS. That's right--a comedy. Nowadays this probably wouldn't bother anyone, seeing as AIDS is no longer the death sentence it was, but in 1985 this was considered sick and tasteless. I caught it at a small art theatre in Boston back in 1986. The audience was wall to wall gay guys. Nobody laughed during it but nobody seemed real upset by it either. It was just too...strange. There are some incredibly depressing scenes involving a gay couple where one discovers he has AIDS and then we cut to a bunch of guys in drag singing songs! It was an uneasy mix of drama and comedy with the accent on comedy. The only good thing I got out of the movie was information about AIDS. There was a local AIDS activist group right outside the theatre. They supported the film and were handing out pamphlets to people that explained what HIV and AIDS were. Remember--the government ignored it completely back then until it became an epidemic. So it attempted something in 1985 that was unthinkable. Sadly I don't think it succeeded.

This, at the time, was a pioneering film. The always innovative and irreverent Rosa von Praunheim broke the ice on satirizing AIDS. This was later done by several other independent directors from Canada and the USA, also imitating the parody musical format which von Praunheim created. This film is still the most important of its genre. Von Praunheim was severely ostracized for poking fun at such a subject. But he insisted that given how the world had ignored AIDS up to then (1985; it took the Rock Hudson death to shake the US then), satire was necessary. He was right. Whatever would cause the most raucous would bring the most attention to AIDS. And it worked. So, don't expect a landmark film. But it is a film that perhaps highlights von Praunheim's career as a gay activist, not as a film maker.