Already Schlingensief's debut feature film, the surreal, absurd experimental "Tunguska – Die Kisten sind da!" ("Tunguska – The Crates Are Delivered!", 1984) was well received by critics. Growing up in the shadow of the New German Cinema, Schlingensief was deeply influenced by the likes of Rainer Werner Fassbinder—many members of whose stock company of actors such as Udo Kier, Margit Carstensen, Irm Hermann or Volker Spengler became regulars in Schlingensief's films—or Alexander Kluge, with whom he collaborated on numerous occasions. To said period of film, Schlingensief delivered both a heartfelt homage as well as the final coup de grâce with "The 120 Days of Bottrop"—starring Helmut Berger, playing an inept director's effort to remake Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom" (1975)—in much the same way he dealt with German avant-garde cinema 15 years earlier with his first feature film "Tunguska – The Crates Are Delivered" starring . Drawing parallels to the work of British filmmaker Derek Jarman, "Egomania – Island without Hope" (1986) starred Kier and Tilda Swinton. Other influences include Luis Buñuel, Werner Schroeter or Herbert Achternbusch—and Schlingensief's filmic works have been compared to just as wide a range of filmmakers, from Jean-Luc Godard to Russ Meyer.