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The catalyst behind Ulli Lommel's perverse horror masterpiece might be writer-actor-art director Kurt Raab. He's almost too convincing as Fritz Haarmann, an infamous real-life serial killer of young men who masks his abominable activities behind a snitch relationship with the police. He's an obscene cross between Peter Lorre's child-murderer and the ghoul Nosferatu. Tenderness of the Wolves Region B Blu-ray + Pal DVD Arrow Video (UK) 1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 80 min. / Die Zärtlichkeit der Wölfe / Street Date November 2, 2015 / £12.99 Starring Kurt Raab, Jeff Roden, Margit Carstensen, Ingrid Caven, Wolfgang Schenck, Brigitte Mira, Rainer Hauer, Barbara Bertram, Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Cinematography Jürgen Jürges Production Design Kurt Raab Makeup Elfie Kruse Editing Thea Eymèsz Original Music Peter Raben Written by Kurt Raab Produced by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michael Fengler Directed by Ulli Lommel

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Movie horrors can't compete with real life any more, in an overcrowded, often hostile world that seems to encourage terrible crimes.

Kurt Raab, the hero of 1970's Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (screening as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center's "Fassbinder: Romantic Anarchist" retrospective), enjoys what Pritchett would have called a life of "congenial monotony" — though it hardly seems to afford him much happiness.

For roughly 80 minutes, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Michael Fengler plunge us headlong into the sprawling vanilla blankness of Kurt's daily routine, where at both work and at home he is permitted to occupy only the corner of the frame.

Kurt is a man who has long since receded into the background of his own existence: Whether pottering about the house he shares with his socialite wife (Lilith Ungerer) or toiling listlessly in an office where nobody pays him much mind, he...