A Virus Knows No Morals

Director Rosa vonPraunheim, an outspoken gay advocate (and, despite that first name, certifiably male), uses nonprofessional actors in this story of a debilitating effects the AIDS epidemic has on a mythical country called Germany. VonPraunheim himself plays the owner of a gay sauna, whose only concern vis-a-vis AIDS is that it will probably put him out of business. Things get personal when both the owner and his lover contact the disease. From this point on, things become as surreal as possible, with a newspaper editor printing phony AIDS information to sell papers, a looney female scientist conducting experiments amongst the African gorillas (one of whom rapes her), a bisexual nurse deliberately infecting all her patients so that everyone will suffer, and the government rounding up AIDS victims and herding them into remote colonies.