This German sexumentary was shot in 1970 but didn’t see the light of U.S. projectors until three years later. Fitting, then, that it would get released by a company called Sunset International: by 1973, the sun had clearly set on this type of exploitation movie. It didn’t matter that the MPAA slapped it with an X rating; the phenomenal success of Deep Throat one year earlier spelled the end for this particular variety of soft sexploitation. It’s a shame, because if the very funny and entertaining Sex Freedom in Germany is any indication, the flame under this subgenre was turned off just as things were really beginning to cook.
“What happened to the good old-fashioned German morals?” a narrator asks during the opening credits to the (ear) strains of good old-fashioned krautrock. “No other country in the world goes about their enlightenment on sex so religiously, and dogmatically, and thoroughly as the Germans!” the narrator boasts, as we slide into a quick look at the career of porn filmmaker OSWALT KOLLE, maker of such enlightening films as Sexual Partnership and Your Husband, The Unknown Creature. Following this is a segment on Beate Uhse, a popular chain store in Germany which appears to be a combination Barnes & Noble and 42nd-Street-style porno palace.
A trip to a prophylactic factory yields big laughs as poorly-dubbed people in white lab coats talk about the new “Anti-Baby Condom,” while a technician inflates a sample until if s practically the size of the Underdog float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. We then travel to a small village in the Bavarian Alps where a homely married couple perform naked “free jazz” every night in a local pub – with the wife sometimes covered head to toe in black paint! — for the understandably confused locals. Moving on, there’s an amusing Christmas Eve visit to a sex commune where, we’re told, filming was allowed only after members were provided with “150 liters of liquid green gelatin for their carnal bath.” Naturally, an orgy and impromptu bongo party ensues.
Other highlights include Swedish psychologists DR. EBERHARD and DR. PHYILIS KRONHAUSEN who discuss their erotic art exhibition; an interview with a representative of the German Sex Democrats (“We want to bring the entire foreign policy under the auspices and the influence of sex!”);a defrocked priest with homosexual and pedophilic tendencies who counsels young male hustlers; a lesbian couple (“Men are not revolting to me, as long as they leave me alone!”); a whip cracking stripper named Gerta; a transsexual barmaid; a performance by the rock band APOCALYPSE; and a loquacious British gigolo who caters to rich, neglected German wives (and apparently saw Alfie too many times for his own good).
And just in case you need to clear a room in a hurry, there’s an outrageous piece of performance art by painter OTTO MUHL that must be seen to be(dis)believed. (0h,how I wish I could’ve been in the MPAA screening room when that scene was shown!).
From a 35mm purely-educational print.
