What happens to good films made totally against the grain? What if Botticelli's Venus was painted urinating into an acolyte's mouth? In cinema, such works can find their way to late night screenings, safely past the bedtime of anyone who might object or find them too 'off-beat'. Such was the birth of films that include The Rocky Horror Show and Eraserhead. Or films openly shocking like Pink Flamingoes. Late nighters may be rubbish – or they may be the last bastion of artists that are out of synch with popular and critical tastes. At the time of writing, The Filmhouse in Edinburgh runs seasons of 'psychotronic' film – one of the many sub-genres at the midnight masses of secretive cinephiles.

Our film was fittingly introduced by a masked man with a heavy European accent. "How many films," he asks, "satisfy both your voyeuristic and artistic tastes?" He goes on to mention the awards Singapore Sling has won in its native Greece. The promise of kinky sex, even with vomiting, incest and torture, sounds so much more respectable if it has subtitles and a dialogue in Greek, French and English. And a cinematography award so we can make polite conversation about the nice photography.

But before we write it off as art-house exploitation, let me add that the plot machinations and breakthrough acting devices alone (that blend character, voice-over, narrating to the camera and rehearsing to the camera) put it in an exceptional class of movie. And the cinematography would be Oscar-worthy were it not for the subject matter.

Without giving too much away (Singapore Sling is basically film noir with other elements forcefully mixed),the story concerns a dodgy private detective in love with a dead woman. If that sounds familiar, it's meant to be. The woman is Laura – cue the plot line from the Otto Preminger classic – and she is hauntingly described by the wistful Julie London version of the eponymous song (from a cappella to romantic Glen Miller). Singapore Sling is just the nickname that the detective earns from a couple of female sociopaths, one of whom is worryingly like his dead Laura.

The black and white photography leaves us open-mouthed from the outset. Lush, atmospheric shadows are thrown together as our senses are pounded by a thunderstorm. Rain fights with the flora, ricochets off surfaces, drenches the faces and bodices of two women who, with Hamlet-like grandeur, dig a grave. You feel drenched. And each scene in Singapore Sling is composed with equally mesmerising beauty. Baroque magnificence and delicate taste insulate us from the nastiness to follow. Murder is a parlour game. . . . in the old days, father would murder the servants . . . the girls would only have to plant flowers.

Our female protagonists are mother and daughter. They re-enact murders as a refined sado-masochistic and incestuous ritual. Who is Laura? Was she just a serving maid? Who is in the picture hanging on the wall? Singapore Sling is drawn into their deadly web after knocking on their door, a bullet wound in his shoulder. He feigns a degree of distractedness to give himself time. At what point does the torture make his loss of mental capacity real? While this is not a film to watch if you have a queasy stomach (think, Greenaway's, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover),our sense of revulsion is numbed by being drawn into the twisted aesthetics of the protagonists. I am not kidding – they tie him up, give him electric shocks, and use him for sex before urinating on his face. Later, his abuser realistically makes herself vomit over him as she orgasms. Are you OK with that? If you're still reading, let's get back to the cinematic technique . . .

Singapore Sling occasionally narrates a voice-over, stoically treating it as 'just another case.' Our other two characters go one further. They will narrate what is happening or about to happen to the camera. At one point, Mom (we never learn their names) rehearses dramatic lines in French and English. For a coming role play or for our benefit? Whichever it is, the barrier between audience, character and actor is broken down. When we are simultaneously being inundated with extremely visceral and unsettling material, the effect is challenging. Cocteau once said that film is a, 'petrified fountain of thought.' We might want to analyse, the plot, the Freudian symbolism, even the techniques. But we are helplessly frozen in the terrible vision, and swept along by a smorgasbord of extreme sexual fetish that makes 'The Story of O' look like 'Gone With the Wind.' This makes it even harder work piecing together the mystery when 'all is revealed' (there are a number of interpretations to the central mystery). One of the first things I did was order a copy of Preminger's Laura from Amazon to re-examine the detailed references.

At the Thessaloniki Film Festival, Singapore Sling won a triplet of Best Actress, Best Cinematography, and Best Director. Although as deliberately shocking as, say, Pink Flamingos or Thundercrack!, it oozes style in equal proportion to perversion. British censors promptly banned it. The director called it, "a comedy with some elements of Ancient Greek Tragedy" but reacted to the ban by realising it maybe depicts an underlying malaise in all of us. A darker side we try to ignore. A side that inveigles without substance. The stuff hidden in dreams. Like Laura – 'the face in the misty light . . . that you can never quite recall', as our song says.

Love it or hate it, a policy of late night screenings on rare movies is something that keeps independent cinema alive. Singapore Sling may not be to your taste, but such willingness to dare keeps the doors open for a wider selection of films than can be found anywhere outside of film festivals.

So while we don't get certain things explicitly shown (some may feel they saw certain things, like with Reservoir Dogs and the ear scene),the movie is quite mental. And it is tough rating it ... it is black and white, it has violence, a lot of (forced) sexual situations, a lot of depravity in general ... and a lot of despicable and very crazy people in it. An insane Asylum should be the place for them to be - although I would fear for the sanity of the other patients ... jokes aside, this really goes far out.

And it is consistent about it. So the movie sticks to its guns (or whatever you want to call it) - you almost don't feel the nearly 2 hours running time of disgusting episodic tortures/fun times happening. It's all in the eyes of the beholder/viewer. Can you dig this? Can you "enjoy" the madness? I can't answer the question for you ... you have to decide for yourself. "Good times"? Bad times? It feels like an insane play - and playing they do! Acting as some would call it - and no matter if you approve or not, the job they're doing is phenomenal

How do you review of film that is too bizarre, too extreme and generally too unique for words? Probably just by stating that you should track it down yourself and be as amazed as the rest of us were! "Singapore Sling" is indeed one of the craziest Euro-cult movies ever released; a totally 100% original hybrid between 1940's film-noir and relentless 1970's drive-in exploitation, shot in elegant black and white and introducing some of the most eccentric characters movie-goers have ever beheld. Not a single taboo is left untouched in Nikos Nikolaidis convoluted screenplay, whether it involves tasteless sexual perversions or insanely violent tendencies, and yet – in some inexplicable fashion – it's all beautifully illustrated in the eye of the camera. Nikolaidis main inspiration clearly goes back to the golden years of widely acclaimed noir-cinema, particularly Otto Preminger's "Laura" and John Huston's "The Maltese Falcon", as the primarily storyline introduces a lonely detective desperately seeking for his lost and unreachable muse Laura. But this only covers a small part of "Singapore Sling's content, as the investigation leads him to the secluded mansion of a demented Greek lady and her equally insane daughter. Mother and daughter spend their days mourning over the recently deceased man of the house (whoms body they still keep around, mummified in the attic) and enacting sex-laden role plays of how they eliminated previous perpetrators. When Singapore Sling – the detective's nickname – literally tumbles down on their doorstep, he promptly becomes an important part in their deviant universe of unusual lusts and fetishes. Apart from maintaining their incestuous lesbian relationship, the women now also compete for the sexual interest of their male guest, and it doesn't take too long before ambiguous conspiracies are thought up.

"Singapore Sling" implements a seriously inventive narrative structure, with all the three lead characters regularly facing the camera to talk to the audience. This perfectly portrays their different persona's without reverting too much to overlong acquaintances. The male lead is mysterious and a bit unworldly, the young girl is definitely crazy but mainly docile because she doesn't know any better and the adult lady can't possibly be categorized. She nearly always repeats her lines – once in French, once in English – and looks genuinely uncanny with her wild hair-styles and penetrating eyes. The odd couple's depraved sexual habits are extendedly & graphically shown, resulting in numerous jaw-dropping sequences including vomiting during intercourse, masturbating with all sorts of kitchen devices & fruit, urination, necrophilia and bondage. But apart from the strong sex, "Singapore Sling" also contains other repulsive and unusual viewing material, most notably the ladies' nauseating eating rituals. Not only does the food (human leftovers?) look disgusting, their table manners are sickening enough to put you off of having dinner for the next couple of weeks. How can a movie stuffed with such a large amount of extreme filth still come across as watchable, let alone stylish, you ask? I have no idea, but director Nikolaidis succeeds seemly without efforts in making his film appealing to audiences much wider than just sick puppies and sexually frustrated lunatics. "Singapore Sling" is compelling and oddly comical, constantly firing off demented quotes ("I vividly remember the day daddy took my virginity" or "corpses are the best garden-fertilizer") and uncensored sleaze. It's not entirely without flaws, unfortunately, as I personally anticipated more genuine horror shocks. You have to wait until the film's perplexing climax to witness the first and only bit of unsettling bloodshed and I found this to be a little too long. Also, Nikos Nikolaidis occasionally crosses the line tributing older films, as the music and even some of the dialog are a little TOO reminiscent to Preminger's classic "Laura". Other than that, "Singapore Sling" is an absolute must-see for fanatic cult-pursuers.

* Special word of thanks to IMDb'er Dario 2nd!