Julchen und Jettchen, die verliebten Apothekerstöchter (1980)

User Rating:

5.4/10   

Director:

Erwin C. Dietrich

Writers:

Erwin C. Dietrich (story)
Christine Lembach (screenplay)

Release Date:

8 July 1982 (UK)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

Twenty lovely ladies in the funniest naked romp of all time!

Plot:

Comedy about some schoolgirls being taught anatomy (of the sexual nature) by the sexually frustrated Barbara Moose...

Plot Keywords:

Schoolgirl | Lesbianism | Beauty | Erotica | Sex

Cast

Jane Baker	...	Miss Brown
Élodie Delage
Roman Huber
Hans-Ruedi Isler
Brigitte Lahaie	...	Jenny
France Lomay		(as Francette Maillol)
Mike Montana
Barbara Moose
Nadine Pascal
Flore Sollier	...	Juliet (as Ella Rose)

Also Known As:

Come Play with Me 3

Runtime:

UK:65 min

Country:

Switzerland

Language:

German

Color:

Color

Certification:

UK:18 (cut video release) | UK:X (cut theatrical version)

Movie Connections:

Edited from La bête (1975)

Blossoming women prancing around in the nude

The exploitation branch of the Swiss film industry consisted for a long time of just one man: Erwin C. Dietrich. This film is a rather typical product of his early 1980s softporn period.

As in almost all films directed by Dietrich, Peter and Walter Baumgartner were responsible for cinematography and music, respectively. Both did an exceptional job here, although one might object that Walter Baumgartner's beautiful musical score has little connection with story and characters. However, it fits very well with these plentiful depictions of blossoming fruit trees Dietrich is so keen on, and my best guess is that these blossoms serve as an allegory for the blossoming young ladies the movie is about.

Or rather, it is about showing these women prancing around in the nude - I even recall seeing them in that state hunting butterflies with butterfly nets, in slow motion, but I may have been hallucinating. Dietrich is an admirer of the fully-developed female form, and thus - although our young ladies attend the ubiquitous girls-only boarding school - they appear to be well into their twenties. The only lessons we ever get to observe are sex education lessons, and these scenes are directly lifted from Dietrich's earlier film 'Mädchen ohne Männer'.

A second story line sees a well-tanned muscle man (Mike Montana?) failing his wife (Jane Baker) in the most delicate of marital duties. Although there is a connection to our boarding-school girls, this connection is highly unconvincing.

The word 'story' also hints at the biggest weakness of this film, and the weaknesses of so much of Dietrich's other output. There is not much of a story to start with, and the pacing and editing destroy any remaining sense of coherence.

As a product for the cinema, there were limits to how much could be shown in 1980, but these limits had to be exploited to the full - if only for commercial reasons. The result is a surprisingly large number of female masturbation scenes, which also tend to go on for too long - a deficiency normally associated with hardcore pornography. Most of these scenes were cut or at least shortened in the UK release, unwittingly improving the film's pacing. Still, the 2002 DVD release is the version to be seen, especially as the picture quality is pristine.