Like his documentary HELL'S HIGHWAY: THE TRUE STORY OF HIGHWAY SAFETY FILMS (2003), Bret Wood's dramatically stylized visualization of cases from 19th-century Austro-German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing's notorious, groundbreaking taxonomy of sexual variation is a window into bygone morals and mores. Lurid though the material is, the film is scrupulously anti-erotic; Wood alternates explicit but passionless vignettes depicting sadomasochistic rituals, vampirism, same-sex attraction, lust murder and fetishism with dramatizations of Krafft-Ebing (Ted Manson) interviewing patients and depictions of contemporary treatments for mental disorders. The atmosphere is ...
Released:
2006
Rated:
R
Length:
98 mins