Preaching to the Perverted is a 1997 British sex comedy-drama, written and directed by Stuart Urban. It follows Tanya Cheex, a New York dominatrix who has come into London’s fetish underground, a moral-crusading MP, and the naïve tech recruit sent to spy on her. Unlike the later Fifty Shades wave, the film spends its time on rules inside the scene, on performance, and on consent.
Purity campaign versus House of Thwax
MP Henry Harding, played by Tom Bell, is running a purity campaign. He wants to destroy House of Thwax, a London BDSM club, so he hires Peter Emery, a virgin computer whiz played by Christien Anholt. Peter works at a Christian tech firm called Holy Hardware. His job is to infiltrate the club and secretly tape the play, evidence Harding thinks will sink the place. Peter is drawn in anyway. He falls for the club’s owner, the New York Domme Tanya Cheex, played by Guinevere Turner. The spy falls for the mistress.
A large party is set at Layer Marney Tower in Essex. Old English brick sits around a modern fetish scene. The joke is a culture-war pileup: parliamentary outrage against people who actually know what they are doing in a dungeon, and Holy Hardware against House of Thwax. The soft-hearted, bottom-adjacent spy finds that consent, performance, and the scene’s own boundaries make more sense than the moral judgment outside.
Real scene players in the club
A lot of the club world is played by actual BDSM performance artists, in the crowd and in smaller parts, so the dungeon looks used rather than invented in a studio. Among them are Chaos Clowns, Luci the Axle Grinder (Lucifire), Miss Kimberly, The Fetish Nun, Suzi Woodroffe, and Tutu. Guinevere Turner’s first lead is Tanya Cheex. Empire’s Jake Hamilton said her performance makes Sharon Stone look like a mother superior.
Banned, dropped, then put back on television
The BBC originally developed the script, then dropped it because UK television would not broadcast it. In April 2004 the finished film aired on terrestrial BBC One anyway. In Ireland, film censor Sheamus Smith banned it on 28 October 1997, and banned the later video release as well. The 2003 U.S. video release was cut to get an age rating.
A trailer mishap pulled the rental VHS of Donnie Brasco off shelves. The film itself had been passed as an 18; the trailer had not been classified. About 3,300 cassettes were withdrawn and replaced. Shops that kept renting the bad stock faced possible €1000 fines. The episode sits in the same period’s nervousness about BDSM on screen.
In 2013 the movie became the first European feature restored and remastered with Kickstarter money from fans. The restored Blu-ray came out in August 2013.
Reviews, then a later reading
Early reviews split, and the film picked up a cult name along the way. Empire’s Jake Hamilton praised Turner and said this ballsy British independent deserved respect. The Independent on Sunday heard glamour and comedy woven together, and strong dialogue. Secret Magazine in 2003 pointed to the costumes and to a convincing picture of a good fetish club. Qwipster’s Movie Reviews in December 2003 was sour: people who wanted more than an offbeat sex comedy would be disappointed, and the film “lives up to its name by not being able to appeal to anyone but perverts.” That sneer is part of the record. Mainstream critics were still using “pervert” as both the subject and the insult.
The reputation caught up later. In 2015 The Guardian put the film among the top ten BDSM-related movies. A 2020 BFI look back at BDSM in cinema singled it out as a rare case of a dominatrix written as a full character, and as a film that states how much consent and boundaries matter in any sadomasochistic encounter or relationship.
The club soundtrack, and Operation Spanner
The soundtrack CD is stacked with late-1990s fetish-club tracks under the comedy. Magnus & Maya contribute “Welcome to the House of Thwax,” “Journey Into Hell,” and “Postman Always Thrice,” among others. Also on it: Shimmon & Wolfson’s “Evil Queen,” Rejuvination’s “Sycophantasy,” and Mark Broom’s “The Alien Spoke.” The music carries the club’s pace as much as it sits under the jokes.
The plot’s moral panic also sits in the legal shadow of Britain’s Operation Spanner case, so the outrage is not free-floating fiction. This is not a technique manual. It is a soft-landing comedy. For adults looking for a fetish film from before Fifty Shades, closer to the mainstream and willing to treat a working mistress as the lead, Stuart Urban’s film is still a key British object.
