Tag Archives: jörg-buttgereit

Recap:

At the Hotel Quickie several men have their snorkels bitten off. When detective Luigi Mackeroni “investigates” the crime scene with the handsome rent boy Billy, the hard-boiled cop loses one hard-boiled egg to a Killer Condom. Of course, nobody believes him, until he and his stalker Bob or Babette manage to inflate and burst the nasty little bugger. But then it goes to show that that there is not just one Killer Condom, there are more, so many more.

Ralf König used to be one of germany’s biggest creators of comic books. Even though he and his comics were (are) gay as ten flamingos, everybody, no matter how straight we were, had to read them. After all, isn’t a comic book about gay sex not so much hotter than no comic book about sex at all? His graphic novel Der Bewegte Mann even became a smash hit in german movie theaters (international title Maybe… Maybe Not), starring some of germany’s best and/or most popular actors. Of course, Der Bewegte Mann had a woman and a straight man it, it was an extremely conventional romcom with a whole lot of gay comic relief going on in the background, so it was just right for an extremely conventional audience. But with Ralf König now officially being a cash cow, the time was right to bring König’s opus magnum to the big screen: Das Kondom Des Grauens. The cast consists of solid TV actors and TV comedians, for the special effects they got Jörg Buttgereit, notorious creator of independent movies, and they even hired HR Giger, whose work did a whole lot for Alien and Species, but of course not for this one. I guess they never really had the budget and just wanted to brag with his name.

The movie was a flop, and unsurprisingly so: it is so totally not Der Bewegte Mann, it is all gay, tasteless, trashy, grim and maybe even a little gross. It is a trash movie. How many trash movies have ever been hits at the box office? This one is made for people who kindly ignore the shortcomings of a movie if only we get to see something that’s really good and funny.

By the way: before rewatching this on YouTube I read a review that compared Mackeroni to Phil Collins. Of course I cannot unsee that, and I think it adds an extra dose of fun to the movie.