Blutjunge Verführerinnen (3½ Stars)

This is Ingrid Steeger's third Swiss film, made in 1971. More precisely, this is the third film directed by Erwin C. Dietrich in which she appears. Despite having a run time of only 76 minutes, the film is divided into 10 unrelated vignettes. Ingrid Steeger herself only appears for six minutes

The title of the film's English release was "Young Seducers", but the word blutjung is stronger than jung, the usual German word for young, so a better translation would be "Underage Seducers".

The film's intention is obvious. It's an imitation of the German Schoolgirl Report films, of which the first two had been released at this time. They'd been immensely successful, attracting millions of viewers, so Erwin C. Dietrich wanted to cash in on their success. The film poster even imitated the Schoolgirl Report films by adding the words "What parents ought to know". The best way to judge this film is by comparing it with the Schoolgirl Report films.

The film begins in Berlin in the office of a fictional weekly magazine, Constanze. The editor has assembled his reporters, and he tells them he wants them to write a feature about the sexual activity of schoolgirls. One by one they tell stories that they know about from personal experience.

In the first story, an unnamed artist meets a girl called Rosemarie while sunbathing on the shore of the Wannsee, West Berlin's biggest lake. She tells him she's a foreign language secretary on her day off. He takes her back to his atelier to paint her. She takes a few minutes to enjoy the view from the fifth floor of his apartment. He also enjoys the view.

This is Berlin!

Rosemarie insists on posing nude.

The painter never gets to use his brush.

After the story the editor asks what the story has to do with schoolgirls. The reporter adds that she was lying about her job; she was a schoolgirl playing truant.

In the second story a young girl called Angela, age not stated, has sex with men who visit a petrol station in Berlin. She services one man after another while their cars are in the forecourt.

Angela seems very disinterested. The men moan with pleasure, but she hurries away after each customer.

By now a pattern is emerging. The women in the film are sexual aggressors, whereas the men remain unnamed as if they're coincidental. In the 10 stories, the family name of three men is given, but not one is named by his first name. That's a minor detail, but it's significant.

I say "women", not "girls", because it's impossible to accept them as underage. In Germany the age of consent is 16, so the girls would have to be 15 at the most. The actresses are all in their twenties. That's something Ernst Hofbauer got right when he made the Schoolgirl Report films; he cast girls who were teenagers, so they really looked like schoolgirls.

In the third story Ilse seduces her German teacher. She rings him up late at night, saying she's considering suicide. He invites her to his apartment to help her. She rips her clothes off and pulls him into bed. She scratches his face badly. The next day in school she tells everyone that he raped her, and they believe her. That's a good story, but does Ilse look like she's 15? Hardly.

The fourth story is the only one in which the schoolgirl seduces a woman, not a man. Suzanne, played by Ingrid Steeger in her six minutes of fame, seduces her piano teacher. The teacher is unnamed, just like the male victims! When it's over, Suzanne blackmails her. She says she hates playing piano, so she wants the teacher to write a letter to her parents saying she's untalented and the lessons are a waste of time.

In the introduction to this story it's stated that Suzanne is 15, but Ingrid Steeger was 24 at the time, and that's the age she looks.

The fifth story is an abrupt shock. 15-year-old Toni is waiting at a bus stop, and I noticed straight away that it wasn't Berlin. It wasn't even Germany. Based on street signs, I figured out that it was Zurich. It's a big jump from one country to the other. From here on, the vignettes alternate between Zurich and Berlin.

This is the only woman in the film who actually looks like the age that she's supposed to be. I don't know when the actress was born, but it's probably down to her youthful looks. Erwin C. Dietrich should have invested more money in the makeup of the other women. It's possible to make a woman look younger, with a bit of effort.

By now, the vignettes are looking disjointed in their composition and cinematography. It's difficult to believe that the same film crew was responsible for all 10 stories. The second and fourth stories are strongly influenced by Russ Meyer, with the sex scenes being quick cut with other images. During the sexual intercourse at the petrol station we see a petrol pump filling a car's tank. During the sex with the music teacher we see a metronome ticking, getting steadily faster. If the whole film had been like that I would have given it five stars. Alas, it's not to be.

Nevertheless, the fifth story has an amusing style. On the bus Toni seduces a man, unnamed, of course. There are hardly any words spoken between the two, while a poem is being recited in voiceover. The poem is about a young girl seducing a monk, even though the man in the film is just an everyday businessman. The poem is so good that it can hardly have been written for the film. I suspect that it's a medieval German poem. Can anyone recognise it?

Bouillon und Fleisch und Leberkloß,
das war ihm alles leid im Schoß,
dagegen jene milden Sachen,
die aus Mehl und Zucker machen,
wozu man wohl auch Milch und Zimt,
und gute sanfte Butter nimmt;
ich will mal sagen, manche Torten,
Dampfnudeln, Krapfen, alle Sorten,
auch Waffel, Honig, Pfannkuchen,
die pflegt er häufig auch zu suchen.

Zuweilen, auch bei kühler Zeit,
trieb ihn die Lust zu Zweisamkeit.

Der guten Mädchen, ach wie schön,
ist dieses Beispiel anzusehen,
denn dieses Mädchen, ob es gleich
noch müde war und etwas bleich,
zog doch durch andachtsvollen Sinn
den frommen Knaben zu sich hin.
Das passte schön. Sie reitet ihn
und selbstverständlich leitet ihn
als ein geduldig' Satteltier,
sie oben auf, er unter ihr,
ganz einfach mit geringer Müh,
bloß durch die Wörter hott und hü.

Er bleib ganz ruhig, als dies geschah
und sprach "Mach du nur immerzu,
du störst mich nicht in meiner christlichen Ruh".
Husch husch! Du spielst auf seiner Glatzen
und hinter dem Ohr ein Kribbelkratzen,
dass ihm dabei ganz sonderbar.
bald warm, bald kalt zumute war.

Und milde sprach das Mädchen dann,
"Mein Freund, du kannst nun gehen".
Und wie es einem gehen kann,
das hast du nun gesehen.

Fascinating! This vignette is brilliant in itself, but it contributes to the lack of continuity in the film.

I shan't go into any details about the last five vignettes. I'll just give my overall impression. I admit that I enjoyed the film, but after comparing it with the Schoolgirl Report films I decided that I couln't rate it as highly. It has some advantages. The cinematography is beautiful, superior to the Schoolgirl Report films, and several of the vignettes are outstanding, but something is missing.

The stories are too short. If they were longer, we could get to know the characters better. 10 minutes per story is the least that I would expect. There's also no morality lecture, which is something that made the Schoolgirl Report films interesting. There's no humour, and there's no attempt to show a happy ending in the last story.

And, of course, I have to criticise that the schoolgirls don't look like schoolgirls.

The film was a hit. There were over three million visitors to the cinema in Switzerland and Germany alone, not counting its success in other countries. That led to two sequels, which I'll also review.

In the interview on the Blu-ray, Erwin C. Dietrich admits that he filmed dozens of small stories back to back. He picked the best scenes for this film, saving the rest for later. When he made the next two films he already had lots of stories available, so he only had to film a few more scenes to fill the films. This led to the sequels being not as good as the original, in Dietrich's own opinion. I'll bare that in mind in my later reviews.