Schulmädchen-Report - Was Eltern nicht für möglich halten

Schoolgirl Report #1 (1970)

*** (out of 4)

Mondo style documentary was the first of thirteen films that were produced in German during a ten year span. These films were the most popular but there were countless other rips including Jess Franco's hilarious Virgin Report. In the film, a schoolgirl is caught having sex with her bus driver and it's up to the parents league to determine whether she should be kicked out of school. In the meeting is a psychiatrist who studies the behaviors of teenage girls and he tells the parents what their daughters are really doing. There are a variety of stories told in the film including a daughter getting caught by her mother masturbating, a girl thinking about losing her virginity and a young girl seducing her teacher among others. These types of mondo documentaries are pretty fun and this one here delivers on the nudity and sex, which is probably what make these studies so popular back in the day. There's one hilarious segment where four virgins, acting as if they've already had sex, do it too close to some white paint. Original title: Schulmädchen-Report: Was Eltern nicht für möglich halten.

A school advisory board gather to decide the fate of one of it's girl students who was found having sex with her bus driver in this German soft-core porn. Filmed as a faux-documentary (with some real life and some faked interviews interspersed between the little stories of various girls gone 'wild'), the main purpose is to titillate more than educate, and it does it's job adequately if not particularly well. This was the first in a LONG line (11 sequels!!) of "Schoolgirl Reports", and while it was enjoyable enough, I didn't see anything that special as to warrant one sequel much less that many. Just chalk it up to a case of "oh those wacky Germans". For a better film along the same lines, in my opinion, you should catch 1978's "Fantasm"

I watched "Schoolgirl Reports" for research purposes. Hahaha, yeah right! That's probably what every pervert says when he (or she) is caught gazing at erotic or adult film entertainment. Most likely, that sad excuse also formed the main reason why the clever director and producers disguised the film as a fake documentary or so-called educational film. Whether today or in the early 70s, each and every viewer simply wants to stare at slim and perky naked teen bodies and drool over their very first sexual escapades (usually with much older, uglier and fatter men). "Schoolgirl Reports" was unimaginably popular in Europe when it came out. So popular that it got programmed in big city theaters and spawned 12 sequels. Twelve!?! I guess the huge popularity can only be explained with a cliché. Different times... In 1970, free pornography wasn't all over the Internet - heck, there wasn't even "The Internet" - and the only hope for people to check out boobs, and maybe a little of bush, were films like these.

After a prologue in which one "schulmadchen" (basically a German high school girl)is caught having sex, concerned parents, teachers, and other students get together for a meeting, and this movie turns into a (mostly fake) documentary with a lot of talking heads and sexual scenes, ranging from innocuous nudity to softcore groping, being acted out as "illustration". Obviously, this movie uses the old exploitation trick of pretending to morally condemn or express liberal social concern over the same lurid subject that the movie itself is cheerfully exploiting. I'm sure when this movie was showing in a German theaters, there were a lot more dirty old men in raincoats than "concerned parents" in the audience(and any concerned parents that WERE there probably would have been well-advised to wear raincoats as well). I'm also sure that the makers of this, if interviewed today, would freely admit that the moralizing was just a lot of phony-baloney to ameliorate the (obviously very stupid) censors.

This movie seems pretty sordid on paper, but I actually found it strangely innocent compared to today. We STILL have this faux moralistic/secretly lecherous mentality today. Much of our current entertainment media, for instance, seems focused on following around under-age or just very immature young girls, morally clucking at their misdeeds while salivating over every sordid detail. And the more "legitimate" the medium and the more serious and shrill the moralizing, the more disgusting the hypocrisy. Moreover, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, etc. are (presumably) real people. The actresses in this movie are obviously not real "schulmadchen" (unless there was something strange in the German water back then, I'd guess most of these actresses had long since put their own school uniforms on mothballs). They not only don't look underage, but they don't act like real women of any age--they're fantasy figures like a twenty-five-year-old stripper with fake breasts dressed in a Catholic school uniform.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying its necessarily healthy for the media to exploit even "fantasy teens" like with this film (or the "Porkies"-style teen sex comedies of my own adolescence), but given how much we let REAL teenagers be exploited today. . . well, I just wouldn't worry about it too much.

Dubious "documentary" on the sexual liberation of the German (female) youth, circa 1970. The "re-enacted" vignettes are about as credible as documentary work as the Italian "Mondo" films of the previous decade, though the interviews are probably genuine (for the most part). One pretty steamy masturbation scene, otherwise pretty tame stuff. It did lead, however, to one of the longest-running series in film history (!), so it must have touched a nerve at the time. ** out of 4.