Author: docsleaze

Featuring Holmes and Watson’s attempts to find out why a series of erotic sculptures have had their penises shot off, the film somehow encompasses distinctive genital warts, repressed homosexuality and strange masonic knob-shaking rituals. In the course of their investigations the duo are required to visit several Victorian brothels and observe various bizarre fetishes (at one point Wiliam Gladstone – portrayed by Emmerdale Farm’s Toke Townley – is seen having his naked buttocks slapped with a glistening wet fish)…

Using the framework of the traditional private eye thriller, director Eric Cocker fashions a startling tale of suppressed desires and unspoken lusts erupting into a mundane everyday world. As his hard-boiled hero Tom Mulligan (played by beefcake pin-up and reputed part-time rent-boy Biff Gloy), stalks the damp and grey South London badlands in search of an old friend’s missing daughter, he finds himself disturbed by his growing fascination with sado-masochism and his hitherto hidden desire to be dominated by tough women…