Ms Kathleen's Review

Screen 6 of 9

There are scenes that are not for the squeamish, and I don’t mean that in a good S&M way. Stories of serial killers, psychopaths, male sadists who want to injure women and fringe fetishes恋物 — a strong sexual focus on one thing (such as the man who pays a prostitute to stomp a chicken to death in front of him) are not a good mix with tales of forbidden yet erotic desires (FemDom女性支配 — female domination, Lesbianism, etc). And that is the problem with both Krafft-Ebing's research and with Wood's film. Perhaps one or more of these stories would make an interesting movie in and of itself, but as a series of dramatizations, as seen through the eyes and analysis of Krafft-Ebing, the movie comes up short.

For the readers of Predominant, the best chapter in the film (Chapter 6 on the DVD) is the section on Masochism. Here you will witness a very brief scene of a woman whipping a man, emasculating him through what we today would call pony play, and trampling him by standing on his humbled body (the prostitute looking disinterested the entire time, playing to Krafft-Ebing's analysis that all women are passive and have no interest in such activities but are merely doing it for money).