"A schnozzola horror film", says the 1992 first translated edition of this German graphic novel, and indeed it did become a horror film in 1996, distributed by Troma, who promoted it at Cannes with a "six-foot-long fanged condom". Lloyd Kaufman deserves all the praise he gets! By the way, the film is called 'Killer Condom' but it occurs to me that it could also have had the same name as another surreal horror movie featuring a mass murderer that's typically an inanimate object, namely the car tyre in 'Rubber'.

It was originally published in German in 1988 as 'Kondom des Grauens', then translated into English by Jim Steakley. I believe there was a sequel, 'Bis auf die Knochen'. Literally, those mean 'Condom of Horror' and 'Down to the Bone', which put together serve as a pretty accurate synopsis. It might be fair to suggest that male readers take that as their trigger warning. You'll probably want to be sitting down when you read this!

It's gloriously inappropriate from moment one in ways that make Troma a natural company to be involved in the film version. The prologue features a man used by his wife as a male prostitute. He stumbles away from a paid encounter at the docks with the penis of his client still inside him, still moving and hissing like a snake, which makes for quite the delicate bus ride home. He's eventually able to crap the thing out but then it leaps out of the toilet to attack him. In chapter one, a college professor brings his favourite student to the Hotel Quickie. She's failing her classes and he's happy to fudge her grades but she'll have to do something for him in return. Fortunately, condoms are a free perk at this hotel. Unfortunately they're also killers.

As you might imagine, Ralf König's tongue was firmly planted in his cheek when he wrote this, even if that suddenly sounds rather like a sexual act—maybe it was planted in somebody else's cheek—and this promptly turns into a spoof of the hardboiled detective genre. Or maybe the hardboiled dick genre. That term may be gloriously out of date but even more applicable, given that the cop on the case, Det. Luigi Mackaroni, is also gay and perpetually both horny and able to get it up, an admirable feat at the best of times but even more so given where this story goes.

When he's brought in to investigate the incident in chapter one, he sees it as straightforward. The student, Phyllis Higgins, must have bitten her professor's dick off, whatever she says. Even if some other hooker bit some other dick off some other john on the very same bed in the very same room of the very same hotel only a week earlier. However, after he picks up a partner and books the very same room himself, he starts to see it differently. Fortunately this dude brought his own rubbers. Unfortunately, when the one in the room hisses and runs away, prompting them to search for it in the nude, it promptly bites off his right testicle. So now, it's a rather bizarre locked room mystery. ""It was a rubber, Sam. A rubber with teeth like a meat grinder."

While he's in hospital, thirteen more pricks are lost and the newspapers are talking about "HOW SAFE IS SAFER SEX" and suddenly we have depth. While it might seem on the surface like this is an outrageous parody and nothing more, I should point out that it's also a love story, in its own way, and a powerful commentary. Where 'Rubber' was played primarily for surreality with only a hint of social comment ("Is it... black?"), this has rather a lot.

After all, the setting is the gay and sex worker communities in New York City. AIDS was the hidden killer in both of those until science figured out what that was and suggested, if not a fix, at least a way to mitigate the danger. Practice safe sex, using condoms, whether you're gay or straight, and the more partners you have, the more important that advice becomes. Here, König renders that solution a new problem. Now it's the condoms that kill, quite literally, with sharp teeth and quite the rapacious appetite.

One thing I didn't find here was any dipping into conspiracy theory territory. Nowadays, it's mostly accepted that AIDS is caused by HIV which originated from SIV, an equivalent virus in chimpanzees. However, venture below the surface of accepted science and there's a stunning variety of theories that betray more about who came up with them than any actual reality. One, which stemmed from a KGB disinformation campaign called Operation Denver, suggested that AIDS was really created by the CIA as a biological weapon to commit genocide against undesirable minorities, such as gay people, black people and sex workers. It would have been trivial for König to go there and extend that to genetically engineering killer condoms, but he resists the urge.

Instead what he did that feels groundbreaking, even for a 1992 book, is to create a lead character who's a gay NYPD detective in a situation where being a gay NYPD detective simply isn't worthy of note. It's simply normal. Det. Mackaroni acts in every way we expect an NYPD detective act except in sexual preference. He sees precisely no clash of morals or ethics in being a gay cop in New York's finest and that's a refreshing approach.

And so there's a lot more here than I ever expected in a German graphic novel turned Troma film. It's hardly mainstream material but it' also not the outrageous shock horror that it may seem at first glance. It's a surprisingly poignant romance and a surprisingly effective social commentary. OK, so it's all of those things. It's outrageous shock horror that also happens to be a surprisingly poignant romance and a surprisingly effective social commentary. But that's a good thing. ~~ Hal C F Astell