Jadgrevier der scharfen Gemsen (4 Stars)

This is a German erotic comedy made in 1975. The literal translation of the title is "Hunting ground of the horny rams". Actually, the title is ambiguous. It's not clear whether the rams are the ones being hunted or the ones doing the hunting. In America the film was released as "Has anybody seen my pants?" It was common for the American releases of European films to have completely different titles, supposedly tailored to American taste.

My spellchecker has informed me that the title is now wrong. Since the German spelling reform of 1996 the word "Gemsen" is spelt "Gämsen". That's strange, because the two words are pronounced differently. Very slightly differently. The difference is only noticeable when speaking slowly. As my German friends know, I'm an opponent of the German spelling reform. I use the new spelling, but grudgingly. It's supposed to be more logical than the old spelling, but all it's done is add more illogical things. One of the other problems of the spelling reform is that it's an ongoing process. Every few years new changes are published. The most recent change concerned the German letter ß (often confused with the Greek letter Beta, which has a tail). Until recently there was no upper case equivalent of ß, so it had to be written as SS. Since June 2017 it's required to write the upper case ß as ß, i.e. identical to the lower case version. Most Germans don't even know about this recent change.

But wasn't I supposed to be writing about a film? Oh yes... the hunting ground, etc. It stars Josef Moosholzer as Jonathan Schmidinger, a German born in America, which of course makes him an American as well. His parents are from Tegernsee in Bavaria. He's a patriotic American, as you can see from his underwear, but he returns to Germany to claim an inheritance. His cousin has left him a hotel in Heidelberg. He flies from Houston, where he lives, to Munich. That's a detour. It would have been better for him to fly to Frankfurt (150 miles from Heidelberg) than Munich (750 miles from Heidelberg). I'm sure the film's director knew this, but it's supposed to be a Bavarian comedy, so Munich is essential to the plot.

Jonathan makes his first acquaintance with Bavarian hospitality at the airport. His suitcase is stolen while he's waiting for a taxi. Jonathan jumps into the next taxi and tells the taxi driver to chase the thieves. It's a long chase on the autobahn, and the taxi driver wants to give up when the fare exceeds 100 Marks, but Jonathan tells him that if he doesn't catch the other car he can't pay him, because his wallet was in the suitcase.

They lose the chase. Any other taxi driver would have called the police, but Karli (played by Franz Muxeneder) takes Jonathan back to his village and buys him a drink. He believes Jonathan's story about being a hotel owner, so he gives him 1000 Marks to make his way to Heidelberg. In return Jonathan says Karli and his family can stay in the hotel free of charge as often as they want.

There are a lot of misadventures on the way to Heidelberg. Jonathan repeatedly loses his trousers, which is the explanation for the American film title. When he arrives he finds out that the family hotel has been turned into a brothel. Jonathan takes over and tries to close the brothel, but he's stopped by gangsters. They say they gave his cousin a loan to open the brothel, so they're now partners and receive 50% of the income. They don't have any documents to prove it, but they have guns.

Poor Jonathan doesn't just lose his trousers, he spends a lot of time running around the hotel dressed only in his stars and stripes underpants.

An American soldier visiting the brothel sees Jonathan's underpants and immediately salutes the flag. The girl with him is a German, but she wants to follow American customs.

If you're not acquainted with Germany, you'd think that Heidelberg and Bavaria are next door to one another, not 750 miles apart. Jonathan is kidnapped by the gangsters in a helicopter, then thrown out (with a parachute), and he's lucky enough to land in Karli's village, just outside Munich.

This is Karli's girlfriend Molly. How does he do it?

And this is Molly's mother Lisa, played by the wonderful Rosl Mayr.

This is a very good film, the best of what German erotic comedies have to offer. Beautiful naked girls, slapstick humour, car chases, helicopters, explosions and ridiculously over-the-top fight scenes. And did I mention the beautiful naked girls?

Here are a few of the film's lobby cards that show Jonathan's misadventures. I love the old lobby cards. They ceased to be made when multiplex cinemas became popular. If I had a lot of money I'd try to collect as many as possible.