Convinced that his wife and daughter will be elsewhere, Gerhard takes his longtime mistress Irene Cartis — a French hairdresser — on a weekend tryst to the family's country house.

The Christ family's rural estate is run by a sinister housekeeper named Kast and her sexually ambiguous son, Gabriel.

While Kast, a cruel and cranky old woman, is irritated by her employer's visit, her son Gabriel, a pretentious aspiring writer, is hoping to exploit Gerhard's connections to get his work published.

He is interrupted by the arrival of Angela — who secretly planned this encounter out of hate for her parents' lack of affection — along with Traunitz and a small army of grotesque dolls.

The stage is set for a night of suspenseful revelation when Angela suggests playing Chinese Roulette, a psychological guessing game, over dinner.

The film ends in mystery as a second shot is heard in the darkened house, but the identity of the shooter and the victim is left to the viewer's imagination.

[1] The location for the country house where the story takes place was actually a small castle at Stöckach in Unterfranken that belonged to Fassbinder's cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus.

[1] The cast is centred around actors from Fassbinder's regular troupe: Margit Carstensen, Brigitte Mira, Volker Spengler and Ulli Lommel.

[1] The bitter disabled daughter is played by Andrea Schober, whom Fassbinder cast earlier in The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972), again as the witness of her parents' infidelities.