Imagine if Gorden Kaye, who played Rene in the classic BBC sitcom 'Allo 'Allo, had been found to be into swinging, orgies and videoing himself having sex. That's one way of understanding the bizarre story of Bob Crane, star of the American 1960s TV comedy Hogan's Heroes - little-known over here - and the subject of this grisly biopic by Paul Schrader. Greg Kinnear is Crane, the clean-cut family man who became fascinated by the world of strip clubs and porn. Willem Dafoe is John Carpenter (no relation), the tech wizard who introduced him to state-of-the-art video kit, including cameras the size of encyclopaedias, and there's a lot of retro fun to be had at the expense of these clunky prototypes.

Schrader contrives shaky hand-held camera-work, hungover colours and ominous music as Crane begins to lose it. Dafoe is excellent, too, as the creepy buddy Carpenter, who is to play Kenneth Halliwell to Crane's Joe Orton. The porn stuff may look derivative and tame after Boogie Nights, but it's a diverting study of how video made it a more discreet and viable consumer-option for the respectable suburban male, with the side effects of hypocrisy and fear. Greg Kinnear plays Crane very nicely, like a loaf of white bread going horribly mouldy.