Characters resemble Village People rejects
The entire cast of the film looks as though they're auditioning for membership in the Village People: half-naked sailors, tanktop clad black pimps, and a policeman who wears nothing except a leather vest and a hat saying "Police."
I'm sure that Fassbinder was trying to be "artsy" with these costumes (and the phallic images), with all the pretenses of being "surrealistic" and "dreamlike", but the whole thing just came across as ridiculously campy instead (which is something that can't be said of Genet's novel).