journal features

movie review - Killer Condom

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Vancouver, 2001.08.17

This is a low-budget German flick about a hard-boiled, homosexual detective's fight against a carnivorous condom. It is every bit as good as that sound, I assure you. Right from the opening scene - where a University professor on the make is attempting to 'pass' a student at a sh*tty hotel, only to have his penis bitten off by a complementary condom - you know that this is entertainment.

With an obnoxious leading man (played by Samel, whose chain smoking throughout the film surely sliced ten years off of his life) who is short, unkempt, overweight, and brutally direct, and a young street hustler for a love interest, it's a gay version of all those 80's low-budget thriller/drama/sci-fi flicks where the hooker with the heart of gold saves the seemingly irredeamable hero. It just happens - without giving away too much - in a hotel called "The Quickie" while a killer is biting of everything in sight.

I suspect this is in part about the AIDS epidemic, given some of the fallout when a Presidential candidate gets emasculated by one of the condoms ("You mean you knew about this killer condom?" asks one sr. cop. "Yeah, but it was only hookers and fags!"), but as with everything else in the flick, it is handled in a throw-away, flip fashion. I enjoyed this. Great cheesy flick.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

—Roald Dahl