FILM REVIEW – PREACHING TO THE
PERVERTED
A
surprisingly good, dark British satire about the BDSM sex and fetish scene and
its struggle against Puritanical hypocrisy.
The
plot is straightforward enough. Tom Bell plays Christian moral crusader, Henry
Harding MP who gets increasingly hostile to the filth and degradation in
Britain’s sex clubs. He hires a young,
naïve and virginal Christian computer geek, Peter Emery, played rather woodenly
by Christian Anholt, in the film’s weakest performance) for an undercover
investigation into a fetish club run by an American Dominatrix called Tanya
Cheex. (Played brilliantly by Guinevere Turner).
Emery
establishes contact with Tanya’s London scene through the Internet takes a
concealed video camera to a BDSM show. Initially, |Peter doesn’t know the
jargon of the scene so he can’t tell whether he is a Dom or a sub, and
initially, he finds no evidence of anything illegal – immoral, but not criminal
activity.
Harding,
as concerned for his budget as about the lack of results, sends Peter deeper
undercover, and the poor man soon becomes a slave to Tanya, and as he gets
closer, he starts to fall in love with her.
Tanya
likes spanking and beating men with riding crops, but she avoids penetrative
sexual intimacy, She has several slaves, and any who try to have sex with her
are immediately thrown out of her inner circle. Tanya has a female slave, Eugenie, a man hating lesbian, who gets
jealous an suspicious of Peter, and who also has the hots for Tanya.
When
Eugenie finds out that Peter works for Whitehall, she tells Tanya who turns the
infiltrator into a double agent, trying to get him to find out what plans
Whitehall have to expose her activity. She does not realise that he is part of
such an investigation himself.
Eugenie
is allowed to punish Peter for not disclosing his real job, by making him act
as a chariot-pulling carthorse, taking her round the streets surrounding the
castle the fetish group have hired for the weekend. In subjecting himself to
such humiliation, Peter runs over a local dog, and the media expose of events
brings the case against Tanya to court, but not before he finally makes love to
Tanya with proper penetrative sex. .
Much
in court depends on Peter’s own evidence, but he openly perjures himself,
dismissing his film footage as faked simulated sex, and the case against Tanya
is thrown out of court, but Peter goes to jail for disrupting the trial.
When
Peter comes out, he finds Tanya, and his own mother waiting for him. Tanya is
pregnant to him. Closing scenes show him holding his baby in a room full of
BDSM apparatus, and Tanya letting Eugenie breast-feed the child for her as they
maintain their business.
The
film wisely avoids the traditional trouser dropping Whitehall farce or Carry On
film smut and innuendo path in favour of taking a realistic look at the Dom/Sub
BDSM scene. There are moments of absurd humour; i.e. a prisoner at the jail
holding Peter receiving a hacksaw smuggled in within a bunch of flowers.
There
are also some strong social commentary touches such as Londoners, especially a
milkman and his son, watching bemused as the fetish slaves leave the clubs with
their cages and chains, without bothering to get changed into less conspicuous
outfits first.
The
film has a strong moral message about leaving consenting adults alone, but also
notices how people outside the scene cannot help but be affected by what goes
on. The film’s main appeal is going to be to fans of Te fetish scene and Rocky
Horror Show aficionados.
The
production crew had no problem acquiring the stunning range of fetish-wear on
display, but they found that people would not let them buy or hire simple
chairs and tables and ordinary clothes for a film with such subject
matter.
There
are cameos by several leading British actors, Ricky Tomlinson, Don Henderson,
and Sue Johnson among them, in a British film that clearly deserves wider
attention than it received.
© Copyright. Arthur
Chappell
LINK TO THIS PAGE http://arthurchappell.me.uk/film.review-preaching.to.the.perverted.htm
LINKS TO OTHER PEOPLES PAGES E-mail arthur@chappell7300.freeserve.co.uk
UPDATES MYSPACE - http://www.myspace.com/arthurchappell
FACEBOOK - http://profile.to/arthurchappell/
FACEBOOK BLOG http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blogpage.php?blogid=85623
MY BOOKS - http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=952521