Grotesque, tasteless, sophomoric, lurid and self-consciously trashy, this low-budget farce, based on Ralf Konig'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 has a close encounter with the real culprit: a carnivorous creature masquerading as a common prophylactic. While getting to the bottom of the conspiracy behind the killer contraceptives, Mackeroni falls for a handsome hustler (Marc Richter), fends off the advances of a cop-turned-transvestite entertainer (Leonard Lansick) and fights for tolerance in the workplace. Director Martin Walz uses locations cleverly, and the set design -- to which internationally renowned artist H.R. Giger (who designed the ALIEN) somehow contributed -- is unusually lavish-looking, given the limited budget. Walz also cowrote the screenplay with Konig (whose work also inspired the depressingly reactionary gay sex farce MAYBE...MAYBE NOT), and there's something bizarrely amusing about seeing the German cast barrel through situations and dialogue designed to evoke both classic noir films and TV cop shows. The latex lampreys were designed by director Jorg Buttgereit, of NEKROMANTIC notoriety, but they're actually most entertaining when, in the guise of ordinary rolled-up rubbers, they creep purposefully along bed tables, crawl out of sewer grates and, in a scene involving a bathing politician with big ambitions and a bigger cigar, ride a rubber duckie in a sudsy tub. (In German with English subtitles)