The Killer Condom

Grotesque, tasteless, sophomoric, lurid and self-consciously trashy, this low-budget farce, based on Ralf König's comic-book series, Das Condom des Grauns ("Condom of Screams"), is intermittently funny, surprisingly well produced and oddly good-natured. Shot in New York and at Berlin's Babelsberg Studios, it follows gay, Sicilian-born NYPD detective Luigi Mackeroni (Udo Samel, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Bob Hoskins) as he investigates an epidemic of emasculations at a hot-sheets Hell's Kitchen establishment called the Hotel Quickee. Mackeroni's superiors are convinced the bloody business is the work of disgruntled prostitutes, but Mackeroni...