Peter Emery is a naive young computer technician. He is a devout religious man, and his employer Henry Harding, M.P. is looking to drive a local BDSM club out of town. To this end, Peter is sent to infiltrate the club and spy on the various perversions they practice there and bring back recorded evidence to build a case that they are "assaulting and battering" each other (which is illegal regardless of whether it is consensual).
Hilarity Ensues as Peter finds himself increasingly attracted to the club's owner and main performance artist Tanya Cheex and is torn between his loyalty to his employer and his devotion to Tanya.
Has examples of:
- Casual Kink: Life in the portrayed BDSM community.
- Ethical Slut: Several characters at the club seem to be this. Also, Tanya's deepest, darkest sexual desire, revealed while she and Peter are extremely drunk, is rather surprising: she'd like to have a ridiculously ordinary and traditional lifestyle; to have a husband, a house, two kids, a dog, the whole nine yards.
- Enemy Mine: While not exactly the worst of enemies, conservative Christians and radical feminists usually aren't too chummy with each other, except when banding together against the BDSM club.
- Gray-and-Gray Morality: While the film mostly seems to favor Tanya Cheex against Henry Harding, Henry clearly does believe in what he's doing, is not gathering pornography for prurient purposes, and never saw his disciplinary methods when he was the headmaster at a boys' school as serving any sexual interest. Tanya Cheex is also rather nice to Peter, but she's fudging the truth about the "safe" part of Safe, Sane, and Consensual. As for Peter, he perjures himself at the trial, but when he's reneging on his testimony, not when he's giving it. All in all, nobody is acting entirely above-board.
- Harding's secretary Wilderspoon, on the other hand, is shown to have several kinks, and to be interested in adding the evidence Peter is gathering to her own private Porn Stash. We also know Henry Harding wasn't getting anything sexual out of punishing the boys specifically because he was attentive enough to his surroundings to notice that she was eavesdropping and spying on him while he was paddling them, and getting quite a thrill from it.
- Tanya's associate Mr. Cutts Watson, meanwhile, is also shown to be a rather cruel and amoral guy, callously unconcerned for a neighbor's grief after having accidentally caused the death of her dog.
- Heteronormative Crusader: Henry Harding and the feminists, after a fashion. It turns out he's not altogether opposed to doing kinky stuff if it's with one's spouse.
- Moral Guardians: Henry Harding, Peter's mother, Peter himself (to a degree) and the feminists.
- Not Always Evil: The film runs both ways on this trope, with the protagonist finding some (though not all) of the BDSM club members to be rather friendly to him, and being friendly to them in turn even as he's gathering evidence against them.
- Safe, Sane, and Consensual: How Tanya Cheex and her friends generally portray BDSM while instructing the newcomers, particularly Peter.
- Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: Averted with Henry Harding; while he may be a bit of a Knight Templar, he's not a hypocrite. His secretary Miss Wilderspin, on the other hand...
- True Love Is a Kink: Peter Emery was able to get the BDSM Dominatrix queen Tanya Cheex so drunk that he gets her to admit her darkest fantasy; getting married and having sex with her husband in a hotel room.
