La cavaleuse au corps chaud

Mac Ahlberg's AROUND THE WORLD WITH FANNY HILL tries very hard to be funny, in the vein of European sex comedies of which the Germans were leaders in the early 1970s. It fails to create the desired yocks, but with beautiful girls on display in exotic locations it fills the porn bill.

The film is routine overall but has several highly unusual elements. First it boasts an original English language soundtrack, with excellent synching to the lip movements, especially by stars Shirley Corrigan and Bo Brundin. A relatively big budget was assigned, with impressive globe-hopping locations ranging from Germany and Venice to Hollywood and Hong Kong.

Lastly, the English-track print recently released on DVD by Klubb Super 8 in Sweden includes explicit hardcore footage of fellatio and intercourse during a German orgy sequence near the end of the movie. This material was definitely excised for the U.S. release, which I caught at a drive-in back in the '70s.

Ahlberg would soon turn to making hardcore films like BEL AMI, JUSTINE AND JULIETTE and probably his most effective work, THE SECOND COMING OF EVA. He ended up in Hollywood as a successful cameraman, mainly turning out cheapies for Charles Band. His cinematographer on this FANNY HILL outing, Mikael Salomon, did him one better by becoming a Hollywood director and also photographing some very big-budget movies like Ron Howard's 70MM "Far and Away", James Cameron's "The Abyss" and Spielberg's "Always".

This movie is not for children to begin with, but instead it is for couples looking for a great sexual comedy. Fanny reminds me in this movie of Goldie Hawn and her husband reminds me of Tim Conway. I think the best way to explain this movie is that it is a wild jump from country to country with crazy adventures and hot men and women. A kind of Monty Python and Benny Hill comedy hour with lots of crazy ideas and situations. A must see for couples and anybody wanting a great movie night.

Don't expect a great movie here ... but somehow it keeps you on your seat from beginning to end.

"Jorden runt med Fanny Hill" (= Swedish for "Around the world with Fanny Hill") is one of those soft porn comedies that boomed so well in the first half of the 1970-s.

Nowhere & never serious, dotted with slapstick and showing a hilarious bottom line, 'Fanny Hill' includes some pretty original scenes. Of course carrying lots of nudity all the way, both male & female.

Its attraction is increased with at least 10% by the presence of Christina Lindberg. She's only around in two short scenes, but that probably is enough to let this film live on beyond the Seventies.

I've seen two previous films by Swedish director Mac Alhberg--the arty erotic classic "I, a Woman" with Essy Persson, and the partially hardcore "Justine and Juliette" with Maria Forse and Harry Reems, which is the absolute worst of many not-so-good adaptations of that famous Marquis de Sade book churned out by Eurotrash directors in the swinging 60's and 70's. Not surprisingly, this movie falls somewhere in between. It's pretty tame and inoffensive, more of a latter-day "nudie-cutie" than even a softcore sex film. It's not particularly funny, but neither is it painfully unfunny like a lot of European sex comedies of that era. And the dubbing is pretty decent for change--it's not done by clowning goofballs trying to "add" to the humor, nor (as this case with Swedish films in particular) by completely unintelligble, thickly-accent locals.

The story involves a bored Swedish housewife, "Fanny Hill", who finds out her commercial-director husband is cheating on her, not only with her best friend (an encounter she herself sets up to trap him) but with several other girls besides. She leaves him and goes to Hollywood, where she is immediately discovered, and embarks on a career as a big Hollywood sex star, having lots of erotic misadventures "around the world" (including one with a French marquis who thinks she's a boy!) while her jealous husband chases after her. (I might point out here that really no such thing as a big Hollywood sex star--the biggest sex starlets in America, then and now, spend a lot more time in NY tenement apartments or non-descript condos in the Valley than they do traveling around the world).

I have to confess I sought out this movie because Christina Lindberg appears in a small (but naturally butt-naked) part as one of the "Meatball Girls". All the women are above par here though. The lead Shirley Corrigan is a rather mysterious actress. Her name suggests she's Irish, but she could be English or American or perhaps some Scandanavian or continental actress with an anglicized (irish-ized?) pseudonym. Aside from this movie, she mostly appeared in Spanish and Italian productions like "The Devil's Wedding Night" and "Dr. Jeckyl and the Wolfman". Whatever the case, she really has a great body and spends about 90 percent of the movie in her birthday suit. (Unfortunately, she doesn't appear in the same scenes with Lindberg, but that probably would have seriously fogged up the camera lens). As Swedish erotica goes this is alright. Those who prefer hardcore sex and lots of underarm hair will probably be disappointed, but if you don't mind a more innocent nudie sex comedy, this should do pretty well for you.