BAVARIAN SEX COMEDY COLLECTION

From Secret Key Motion Pictures, a two-disc package offering four prime examples of softcore German sex comedies from the 1970s …

Disc one contains three Germanic films from the era when this type of genteel smut was fast becoming yesterday's news.

First up is 1977's BOTTOMS UP (a.k.a. AUF DER ALM, DA GIBT'S KOA SUND).

This begins with a couple of spies (an average Joe lucky enough to have been paired with a cute blonde temptress) attempting to assassinate an elderly, bespectacled professor (Walter Feuchtenberg). Their plan fails but they continue to pursue the oblivious intellectual undeterred.

As the professor and his assistant persist through the sumptuous Austrian countryside, we discover that the locals are just as keen to bump him off - the reason being, everyone wants to know his secret formula for turning cow manure into petrol.

The plot is near-impossible to follow, not only because it's wafer-thin but also because it serves purely as a flimsy springboard projecting the viewer from one madcap chase to the next Benny Hill-esque slapstick sight gag.

Of course, the women are big breasted and the men gurn each time a proposition is put their way. It's juvenile, boyish humour that becomes even more camp through the at-times unbelievably dumb and crass American dubbed dialogue.

A peculiar film indeed, BOTTOMS UP is lightning-paced and utterly senseless. With its scenes of aborted roadside dynamite ambushes, it sometimes resembles the old "Roadrunner" cartoons!

The sex is tame but the girls are hot in an early 1970s manner. And everyone concerned looks like they're having tremendous fun. Apparently the film was a huge hit for respected director Franz Josef Gottlieb (THE MIRACLE OF LOVE), which makes you wonder what audiences were smoking back in 1977.

At best, the exterior locations are scenic and well-shot.

I LIKE THE GIRLS WHO DO (a.k.a. LIEBESJAGD DURCH 7 BETTEN) follows, in which a handsome young man is upset to discover that his rich uncle's partying has caught up with him. Still, every cloud has a silver lining, and it transpires that the uncle is keen for the nephew to inherit his legacy.

But nothing in life is ever that simple, and in order to inherit a fortune our witless hero must fulfil seven tasks in the ensuing seven days.

In a nutshell, the young man is required to call upon each of the playboy uncle's seven grieving mistresses and recover amulets from them. But the uncle has primed his hirsute fillies in advance, instructing them to teach his naïve young nephew in the ways of physical love …

Initially wary, the lad is egged on by - I kid you not - his own dad, and thus embarks on an episodic journey through each woman (an exterior sex scene with baseball players acting as peeping Toms; an evening encounter in a furniture shop). Of course, the upshot of these vignettes is lots of slapstick comedy embarrassment and soft scenes of carefully obscured fucking.

Little more than a string of painfully unfunny dalliances for the most part, the film finally has a point - of sorts - when one young woman takes a shine to our big-hearted hero and aims to make an honest man of him.

Honestly, this is cheap amateur-hour fodder with private homes as sets and ugly, ill-lit camerawork. The comedy is broad and farcical, while the acting is impossible to judge due to the ludicrous dubbing. There's lots of exaggerated face-pulling though, rest assured. And groan-inducing CARRY ON-style musical inserts …

Finally, disc one peters out with INN OF 1,000 SINS (a.k.a. EIN ECHTER HAUSFRAUFREUND).

Albert (Peter Hamm) is employed as an odd-job man at a hotel exclusively for female visitors. He soon finds that his job more or less entails servicing the sexual needs of his customers. Which sounds great, but the ungrateful buffoon soon starts stressing over all the bonking he's doing at work, and the sex he must provide at all other times to his attractive young wife.

Albert visits his psychiatrist at one point, looking for a solution. But, what would you know, she's a hot blonde nymph too. Within minutes she throws her naked self at the flustered stud.

Slightly better shot and edited than the previous two offerings, SINS at least works as a story. But it still doesn't go anywhere significant, and straddles awkwardly between surprisingly subtle humour (well, relatively speaking) and the moronic slapstick the Germans clearly had a hankering for in the 1970s.

To say SINS was the best of the three films offered on disc one is like saying I'd rather drink a pint of piss than eat a bowl of shit. But at least the females are good to look at and some may derive interest from seeing Hamm and Gisella Krauss reunited on screen following Joe Sarno's superior BIBI.

Disc two provides us with the dubious pleasures of RUN VIRGIN RUN (a.k.a. DIE JUNGFRAUEN VON BUMSHAUSEN).

Bumshausen is a small town in Austria (actually, the American dubbing has 'hilariously' renamed it Fucklerhausen) where its female inhabitants are frustrated by the lack of young men on offer - so the narrator tells us.

The women tell their libido-challenged spouses of a strong wind that is coming, which will reinvigorate their flaccid dispositions. So the old fools parade around the quaint country settings comically attempting to breathe in the sacred air.

This allows the local females to badger the local stud, a young and healthy blacksmith. He does his best to service them appropriately - and as a result many of the women fall pregnant.

Curious as to how this has happened, the Minister of Population visits Fucklerhausen to investigate. Meanwhile, the blacksmith seeks to retire from his position as local buck and make an honest woman of his favourite fraulein …

More of the same here, I'm afraid. Occasionally funny dubbing, achingly bad sight-gag set-pieces, sex and nudity that is more rude than dirty - akin to old seaside postcards actually - and half-decent exterior photography. At least the women are corkers.

Each film is presented in 1.33:1 (their original aspect ratios, I assume - as primitive as each production is, they do at least appear to be competently framed). The images are admittedly worn - the standard vertical lines and specks apply. But given the age and obscurity of these titles, they've scrubbed up as well as can be expected. Colours and detail are adequate, while contrast holds up surprisingly well. And what roughness exists on these original prints merely serves to add to each film's grindhouse 'quality'.

Each film is dubbed in English mono (the American dialogue - clearly a lot stronger than what our native European friends originally spoke - is often a dubious highlight of these films). Audio is generally fine throughout. Each film does suffer moments of hiss but drop-out is minimal.

In true Secret Key tradition, none of the films offered here have scene-selection menus. Each film is afforded it's own share of chapters though, so you can nudge through them at will via your remote control handset.

The only extras in this package are a couple of radio spots for RUN VIRGIN RUN on disc two, along with trailers for a selection of other Secret Key titles.

The inclusion of a fold-out six-page booklet is a nice bonus, boasting fine liner notes from the ever-reliable Michael Bowen (along with assistance from German erotica expert Herr Weber) and attractive colour photographs.

When all's said and done, there isn't much to recommend here. If you like your humour puerile and your sex scenes effectively neutered, then you will be well-served by these tame and childish offerings. On the other hand, they do possess a certain charm - especially if you remember the days of renting out "naughty" European comedies in the halcyon days of pre-certificate video.

Review by Stuart Willis