Penis Munching Condom Beasties Rampage Around The Hotel Quickie...Only The Germans... (Kondom des Grauens [Killer Condom] (DVD))

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	Kondom des Grauens [Killer Condom] (DVD)
Date:	02/04/02 (229 review reads)
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Welcome to a New York city where all the inhabitants speak German and the hotel Quickie, New York’s premiere haunt for a quick bit of nookie is doing great business despite the rather unpleasant side effects of a visit. People go in feeling frisky, but men come out minus a vital part of their anatomy. Something is on the loose in the hotel and it seems to have an insatiable desire for todgers and its not just the clientel! Nope, no rampant Lorrena Bobbit either but instead a particularly viscious strain of killer prophylactics which resemble a perfectly ordinary condom until they are placed over the penis where they become ravenous beasties with rather sharp teeth! So much for safe sex! Cue then an investigation into the hotel by the local police lead by detective Macaroni(improbably named but no doubt a poke at the number of Italian Americans living in NYC) who must try to find out just what is causing the men of New York to become somewhat ‘Bobbitted’.

Gay, proud and not averse to a little on the job ‘cruising’ our intrepid detective has a close encouter of the most unpleasant kind in one of the rooms when he finds that staking out this particular hotel may have a few extra benefits. Just about to do the wild thang with a hot young stud he finds that his chosen method of same sex is anything but safe, but instead has that mean hungry look and razor sharp teeth. He gets lucky(kind of) and only loses a testicle to the rubbery little beastie, vowing then to go on a crusade of vengeance against the nasty litle critters. Of course no one believes him(like who would) until an MP(thereafter known as Dickless Dick) suffers a similar fate in the hotel and war is waged on the fugly little critters.

Who said the Germans have no sense of humour?

No one picking up a movie with a title like ‘Killer Condom’ would be expecting anything other than rather naff and exceedingly camp from what they are about to see o
n screen and this one doesn’t disappoint. This German production is a triumph of camp movie making, full of cheesy lines gratuitous but naff special effects and of course a plot which no serious movie maker would touch with a ten foot barge pole. Of course at the same time its quite fun. The main problem with this movie is that it does rely too heavily upon one joke, and that joke wears thin very quickly. Along the way it does try to poke fun at various other movies, notable Jaws and numerous cop series/movies but more often than not it misses the mark or simply doesn’t pack enough gags in to keep it interesting. After the initial very funny opening scenes its a rather uneventful, but nicely gory run through to the final credits.

Its always unintentionally funny when the makers of a movie such as this also try to pack in a moral message too. Social commentary has its place, but I’m sure a movie about penis munching condom beasts is really the right place to deliver an anti-homophobia message which the makers of this movie try unsuccessfully to slide into the storyline with all the subteltly of a thrown housebrick. There really isn’t that much intelligence at play behind the scenes of this movie and the messages it sometimes tries to deliver are rather ineptly handled to say the least, probably causing more harm than good. It also passes a number of comments on American society which is a little strange for a German movie, leaving the question of why not pick on your own country first before attacking another, perhaps Germany is too perfect to be satirised. Hmm...yeah.

Special effects are weak as I mentioned, the creatures failing to convince during their on screen time even though they were designed by H. R. Giger who designed the alien in Alien and therefore is a man with some pedigree in this area. The creatures in Killer Condoms look false, but that is by no means Giger’s fault but the way in which they have been im
plemented, no doubt more due to budget constraints than anything else - Killer Condoms was never going to be a box office smash no matter how much I’d love to see a title like this up there with this years plethora of upcoming multi-million dollar movie sequels.

Ultimately Killer Condoms is a fun movie, or at least a fun idea which will gain a following and continue to shift copies over the years simply because of its title and its subject matter ovre and above its real quality. As a movie, it starts well but then feels like an opportunity missed, because it could have been one of the real campy classics given a better handling, the scope for satire on the safe sex angle alone is enormous but goes largely underused which for me is an enormous shame. Still, there is plenty here to keep the gore hounds happy and it is one of the more original movies seen in recent years so it might be worth checking out if you are tired of seeing Hollywood churn out the same old thing week after week. Of course its a 'tad'(ok a lot) on the gratuitous side, some of the gay imagery might put some viewers off and ultimately weird horror movies are an acquired taste so hardly a movie with universal appeal. If nothing else, its probably the sole member of a new movie genre - the homosexual horror flick...

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