Liebesgrüße aus der Lederhose 6 (3 Stars)

I admit that I only watched this film today out of a sense of completism. I have a DVD box set that contains the five Lederhosen films, ground-breaking German erotic comedies released from 1973 to 1978. The box also includes two other films in the series. I don't consider them to be Lederhosen films, whatever's written on the box. Despite having only a tenuous continuity, the first five films form a unity, with many recurring actors, in particular Peter Steiner as Sepp, the main character in all five films. This sixth film, made in 1982, four years after "Liebesgrüße aus der Lederhose 5", features none of the actors from the previous films. The only thing that links it to the previous films is that Gunter Otto is still the director.

It's not just a matter of different actors. The style is a big shift from the previous films. The German erotic comedies of the 1970's had a naive innocence to them. In the 1980's, presumably influenced by the widespread availability of films on videotapes, Germany's softcore films moved closer to hardcore. The films still contain no real penetration, but they became more explicit, showing close-ups of the genitalia, both male and female. I'm sure this is what the German public wanted in the 1980's, but as a connoisseur and admirer of the 1970's films I'm disappointed at the change.

The film is about a riding school called Rosenhof which doubles as a hotel. The owner has recently died, and the new owner is his sister Agatha from Berlin. She's very efficient and businesslike, unlike the Bavarian staff who would rather spend their time having sex than working. Agatha fires most of the staff, which causes a problem when the guests arrive at the start of the holiday season. She hires six photo models who have been stranded in the area after a dispute with their photographer.

Agatha thought things were bad with the original staff, but it's much worse now. She didn't reckon with the libido of her new girls. They mercilessly seduce all the male guests. "Seduce" is a polite word for what they do, because they don't care whether the men are willing or not. It doesn't matter if the men are married or twice their age, they jump on them as soon as their wives leave the room. For instance, they strip a man in the field and demand that he has sex with all of them. He passes out after the first two girls, so they leave him unconscious and run off to find another victim.

I enjoy films in which women force men to have non-consensual sex, but I still don't think this film lives up to the quality of the first five parts.

Incidentally, I've now added the CINEMA tag to all of the films that I've watched in the cinema, not just the films I've seen in Germany. I needed a few hours to go through my old posts, but I think it was worth it. Maybe it's irrelevant to my readers, but it's very useful for me as a record. I may have failed to tag a few films, but I was careful, so I doubt there are many errors. Apart from actual cinemas, I've used the tag for any other public viewing, such as the free film festival in Birmingham's Brindley Place.