Film Review: Killer Condom (1996)

SYNOPSIS:

The plot takes place in New York, and in the present. In a Hotel called “Quicky” a professor blackmails a student of his into having sex with him. But when the professor puts on a condom, the carnivorous condom bites off his penis and disappears. Detective Mackaroni who gets the case thinks that the college girl just bit off her teacher’s penis! Mackaroni goes to the motel himself to check out the crime scene, in the lobby he finds a gigolo named Bill and he asks him to follow him to crime room, there the two men attempt to have sex when they are suddenly interrupted by the attack of a killer condom.

REVIEW:

In Lloyd Kaufman’s book “Everything I Needed to Know About Filmmaking I Learned From the Toxic Avenger” he described a lot of Troma’s films as being “lovable goat sh*t.” That being said I might enjoy Lloyd’s catalog of movies a bit more than he does and “Killer Condom” is no exception. That being said I didn’t want to start this review with a disclaimer I will get into that in the next paragraph.

In watching Martin Walz’s “Killer Condom” based on Ralf Konig’s comic book, you have to understand the real title is in German “Kondom des Grauens” and all the performances in the film are given in the German language. So you’re probably saying to yourself “what is the big deal, it’s just a foreign film?” Well here’s where it gets a little bit interesting, this is the German film, with German actors, acting out the parts of New Yorkers and the film is set in Manhattan and is a spoof on cop dramas. And folks, if you know Troma they do weird quite well so think of this as the jump off point.

The cliché of a macho donut eating gun slinging butch cop is nicely turned on its head when in “Killer Condom” he also happens to be gay. If you’re bothered by gay stuff this isn’t the movie for you, personally I am not. Also when we still have the danger of AIDS this is a film that is willing to show you the dangers of carnivorous condoms. On top that this film poke fun at the stereotypes of macho men and action hero’s. Also the film has a nice gritty sleaze feel to it being full of hookers, perverts and religious fanatics.

One of the very interesting things I love about horror films is that more so than any other genre horror tends to play a beautiful double edged sword and the fact that while most of the genre down for being shallow it has some of the most deep statements on both a symbolic level and a human level. It is kind of hard to say with a straight face that a film entitled “Killer Condom” is such a film, because in reality it is.

Udo Samel who does an outstanding job of delivering us our clichéd cop by the name of Luigi Mackeroni (not sure but I think “Mackeroni” is German for “Macaroni”) is working the case to find out why young gay men at the same sleazy hotel are continuously being emasculated. After no one on the police force will believe Mackeroni that are condoms with teeth biting off men’s wieners and he is taken off the case Mackeroni then goes renegade and continues the investigation on his own. When he finds the genetic research laboratory in the sewers of New York where the condoms are being made it also learns the people making them are doing such with a very malicious agenda.

I don’t want to give too much away and I want to leave something for you to discover while watching the film but this is a treat. I don’t like movies that are preachy, I think the genius of the movie it makes a great social statement like “Night of the Living Dead” is that it doesn’t yell its opinion at you, you just have to watch it and pay attention to what it is saying –like wise you’ll miss it. “Killer Condom” granted is not “Night of the Living Dead” but it certainly took a page out of its book and ran with it, just did it a lots sleazier.

Killer Condom (1996)