PREACHING TO THE PERVERTED -- MOVIE REVIEWS |
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directed by Stuart Urban, starring Christian Anholt, Tom Bell, Guinevere Turner, Julie Graham, Georgina Hale, Ricky Tomlinson
Preaching to the Perverted -- Screencap Gallery Preaching to the Perverted -- Little Movies DIRECTOR: Stuart Urban DIRECTOR: At the age of 13, Stuart Urban had his first film shown at the Cannes Film Festival. The Virus of War was a thirty-minute 16mm movie about a fascist outpost on some British Islands in the Atlantic. The cast and crew were all children and the film was seen on television globally. It is now preserved in the National Film Archive. After graduating from Balliol College, Oxford, with a first class degree in Modern History, Urban entered the film industry in 1982 and has worked in various capacities as writer, director and producer. His first full-length BBC drama, An Ungentlemanly Act, dramatising the first 36 hours of the Falklands War starring Ian Richardson and Bob Peck, won a BAFTA Award as the Best Single Drama and numerous other international awards. From 1994-95, Urban directed Our Friends in the North, the most successful drama for 15 years on BBC2, which won him another BAFTA for Best Drama Serial. It was recently voted one of the Top 25 Television Programmes Of All Time in the influential British Film Institute Poll 2000. In 1995, he wrote the $6 million HBO/BBC movie Deadly Voyage that won the Silver Nymph Award for Best Screenplay at Monte Carlo. In 1999, he produced, directed and co-wrote with Harold Pinter Against the War, an acclaimed and hard-hitting indictment of the NATO bombing of Serbia for the BBC and Cyclops Vision. He wrote, produced and directed Preaching to the Perverted in 1997 through his company Cyclops Vision. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- REVIEW OF PREACHING TO THE
PERVERTED As writer and director of the first feature film to revolve around the fetish club scene, I am very grateful for a chance to say what I was trying to do with it! The film caused much controversy and misunderstanding, especially among middle-aged male critics - though there were many rave reviews from younger critics. Even the film's visuals split critical opinion, so that British style and music magazines praised its look to the skies, while the hostile conservative press condemned as cheap and terrible. Now you can decide for yourself because the film is available for secure ordering online at www.preachingtotheperv.com This film is an ode to unusual love, the demands of unusual love and the right to express that love in public and in the bedroom (or dungeon as well, in this case). It was inspired by the actual prosecutions of the fetish world that plagued the 1990s, and it is still illegal for a Brit couple to indulge in spanking at home if it results in welts or bruises (never mind that up until last year schoolboys or girls were still legally thrashed in private schools). Tanya Cheex, a performance artist/dominatrix, played by Guinevere Turner (co-writer and actress in American Psycho), comes to London with her shock show. A moral crusader in Parliament (Tom Bell) decides to shut her down with a private prosecution and sends in Peter (played by Christien Anholt) a handsome but virginal infiltrator to gather evidence of obscenity as an infiltrator. He wants to save her, she wants to pervert him. Who will win? The narrative does not trade in realism, as you may gather. This a fairy tale with flagellation, a musical with eroticism and a pumping techno soundtrack. The film's world is presented in a stylised way, fortified by irony and robust humour: sometimes black, sometimes bawdy. I have no idea what people will say but they won't have seen many films quite like this one. The audience will be engulfed by a heightened reality and concepts of surreal humour - the recumbent cat on Scotland Yard sign, the organ in the House of Commons chapel that segues into the sleazy electric organ on the soundtrack of the shocking bestiality video that Harding forces himself to watch. Indeed, that's the theme of the movie: immerse in the perverse! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- REVIEWS: April 2003 - Curve Magazine "… a kind of high-tech, fast-paced, Moulin Rouge for the fetish world. A virginal computer geek with political aspirations is sent by a politico on a moral crusade to infiltrate bisexual Turner's sex-glam-shock world. Preaching is a timely film; the European court recently upheld the British government's prosecution of consenting gay S/M men, thus making S/M illegal in Europe. Despite that, Preaching never seems particularly political. Film highlights include chicks with bells on their crotches, tons of naked bosoms, a beautiful lesbian slave, S/M dykes yelling "cunt power," and Turner as an anti-penetration, clit-ring-bearing work of art who rages against straight vanilla sex. No wonder it was banned in Ireland. " -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- December 2002 - Erotic "The scenes withtin the "House of Thwax" are gorgeous, kinky eye-candy, filled with well-toned, wildly attractive bodies in varying amounts of fetish attire doing unacceptable things to each other". "Guinevere Turner...is groin-throbbingly gorgeous and gives great Goddess." "The club scenes all look fabulous: intelligent use of colour and light, kinky couture, magnificent maquillage and great bodies." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- February 2003 - Secret Magazine "We will never know, but was this the film that changed England? How come that after all this time now the world of "fetish" has been better accepted by customs, parliament and other so called " moral crusaders" whom themselves are more perverted than some of us!? The approach of the film is quite original, as a young infiltrator is despatched by moral crusaders to gather evidence against fetish clubs operating all over Britain. He is introduced to the secret underground world of fetish kink but becomes infatuated with sex goddess Tanya Cheex. The rest you will have to see for yourself…you will not regret it…" "The film boasts excellent costumes, good acting and is a great vision of what goes on in a good fetish club. Highly recommended!" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feature in SKIN TWO Magazine "Seen a good pervy film lately? Or...ever? In fact can you name a good pervy film? Go on, try to think of one. That's why when Stuart Urban called us and said he was making Preaching to the Perverted we paid attention." "It's a very British thing Preaching to the Perverted. If there's one dodge we are the masters of, it's putting the most outrageous stuff past our moral guardians by passing it off as comedy." "And one final important point: this film looks gorgeous.....all the way through the film it's as if Urban's been rifling through a pile of SKIN TWO mags, has pulled out a load of the most "colourful" images and slapped them on the screen for all to see. Preaching to the Perverted? Tell me about it mate..." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feature from Interview Magazine "Looking just like yourself all the time is not always in your best interest," says actress/screenwriter Guinevere Turner. In the widely acclaimed film Go Fish, which was Turner's feature film debut as both actor and screenwriter, she wore sweatshirts and backward baseball caps. Her next movie, Preaching to the Perverted, in which she plays an American dominatrix disciplining unruly Londoners, demanded a more punishing costume. "I looked like a cartoon character in it," she says. "Every day it was two-and-a-half hours of makeup, false eyelashes, wigs, rubber corsets....Every dress-up fantasy I ever had was satisfied." Although Turner personally prefers the effortless sophistication of "Myrna Loy holding a martini and solving a crime, or Rita Hayworth tossing her hair back," the stilletto-heeled life beckons once more: She is currently collaborating with I Shot Andy Warhol director Mary Harron on a screenplay about the life of '50's pinup Betty Page, whom Turner will play in the film. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TimeOut "Bold, provocative ... surreal. It is to Urban's credit that he never descends to the level of smutty innuendo (Tom Charity)". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New Musical Express "Watch the nation's moral guardians squirm ... who can admit to having sat through this without having been ever so slightly corrupted? With skilful manipulation ... psychological verve, sick laughs - Urban forces the listener to undergo the same journey as the innocent abroad (Peter) ... a humorous critique of hypocrisy in our society." Dele Fadele -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Melody Maker "Truly exhilarating ... stylised, spicy sauce: a Rocky Horror for the chemical generation. Oh, Bondage! It's yours" Carl Loben -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Film Review "The film's cheeky charm overcome my prejudices ... a playful and unconventional love affair garnished flamboyant imagery and characters ... (this) unpatronising look at a quite mat but essentially harmless world strikes home ... quite an accomplishment" Peter Griffiths. Star Rating * * * -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Tatler "Of the 'Trainspotting' school - set to become a cult" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- London Evening Standard - Hot Tickets Magazine "A thrilling, helter-skelter, break-neck journey through the seamy underworld of the fetishist" David Taylor -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Elle - UK Edition "An engaging take on the British sex comedy ... (a) romp. Think West Side Story meets Carry On Spanking" Kate Spicer -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Forum "Dares to embrace the fetish scene. Reminiscent of the classic Personal Services ... It's a spanking good watch" Elizabeth Coldwell -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scene "A good-natured camp romp highlighting the hypocritical nature of the Establishment's attitude to sex - deliciously timely for this sleazy - ridden times" Kate Spicer -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Options "Farcical and believable" Suzi Feay Star Rating * * * -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Diva "Most definitely a film you should find a slot for in your Filofax ... visually stunning, especially the club scenes, with excellent costumes and imagery, wickedly amusing. Yes please, mistress!" Vicky Powell -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thud - Metro Return to Table of Contents
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