I was watching this, enjoying the performances and how events were unfolding. The dastardly plot to have someone lobotomised in order to silence them, the unnerving scenes in the asylum. I felt I was watching something really special and then the wheels came off in such spectacular fashion I think my jaw hit the floor.

1st - the doctor is caught by another doctor smooching a patient that was possibly going to be lobotomised later that day, and this is apparently not worthy of any comment whatsoever. Fair enough, maybe just an odd moment. Or commentary on the unconventional practices of early brain surgery.

2nd - we learn of an elaborate plot to lure boys into the clutches of a gay man by... letting them get a gander at a scantily clad young lady in a bathing costume. This technique being so successful that any gay man will attract literally hordes of boys this way. An alternative take on 'gay conversion therapy?'

3rd - we learn that this technique differed from an earlier, equally successful technique of luring boys into gay trysts, by bringing your mother along to play gooseberry. Nothing apparently gets a young man going quite as much as a chat over dinner with a fella's mother. Somehow the age and attractiveness of the mother is a variable in the success of this lure, so once mother is over 45 please be warned that the adolescent boys may revert to being reluctant to depart from their heterosexual preferences.

4th - a pack of desperately hungry men (during the Spanish Civil War) chase Sebastian through the streets. They are so delirious and hungry that, to a man/boy, they completely disregard his money when he throws it at them. No, instead of using that money to buy a lifesaving meal, our young Spaniards, on the very edge of starvation no less, muster the energy for a Chariots of Fire like race around town, catch Sebastian, and eat him alive. Not one dissenting voice in the mob, not even an argument over who gets the liver.

6/10 for me for the great start but ye gods this was one offal finale.