Les gourmandines

I found the film fun and average quality for its time. Lots of variety in scenes. Acting not bad for the time and genre and a real retro trip reminds me of the time and place from where it came. Nice use of street scenes and period autos. Gives the viewer a feel for post war Germany/Switzerland. Fun tasteful smut. Under rated at 4.5 stars at this point.

I just want to chip in that the frame story doesn't involve the journalists trying to come up with a sequel to their popular series on "rape", instead the previous series dealt with the sexual needs of neglected housewives ("grüne Witwen").

Quote: "The film starts with a magazine boss explaining to his fellow journalists that their recent series on rape"

Another quote: "The film starts with a magazine boss explaining to his fellow journalists that their recent series on rape ..."

The opening lines are: "Unser Fortsetzungmonstrum Intim-Report pfeift aus dem letzten Loch. Es läuft in der nächsten Woche aus. Tja, und dann sitzen wir wieder auf dem Trockenen. Wir brauchen nach dem Sex-Leben der Grünen Witwen, bei dem einigen von euch ein beachtliches Wissen pikanter Details nicht abzusprechen war neues Futter. In dem Zusammenhang fällt mir die Aussage einer Vierzehnjährigen ein ..."

This is a fairly early variation on the German softcore "Report" genre which took off in 1970. Whereas many of those were filmed in Munich, this one was photographed in Berlin and was a Swiss co-production. There is a very thin frame story of a magazine's editorial conference where the reporters chip in stories about "stark young seductresses" (, with the pastiches or stories often ending abruptly and the introductions lasting only a few seconds. The first vignette, for example, deals with a girl meeting an art student at the beach and then seducing him in his studio.

The second episode sticks out as it deviates from the "seductresses" scheme and deals with a full-service gas station where the customers get a free lay on the layby in return for purchasing a full tank of gas. This was a comment on the contemporary phenomenon of gas stations giving out freebies such as collectible stickers and other trinkets at the time.

The stories are threadbare but the girls are beautiful, Ingrid Steeger among them, who, despite her girly appearance, had already been acting in movies for five years at this point.

Just a bit of soft core fun and frolics but not only does this already look rather quaint with the 70s hair and clothing but the, now seeming, very non PC nature of the exercise amazes. The film starts with a magazine boss explaining to his fellow journalists that their recent series on rape, although very popular has now run out of steam. They then all come up with ideas around the assumption that young girls are seducing poor guys all over the place. We get the guy's introduction and then go into the sexy sequence. Initially the guys get to say quite a lot but by the end they barely get a word in before we are closing in on some new nubile lass stripping off. It can't be that the Swiss are particularly strange looking that everybody looks 'interesting' but that apart maybe for the girl's eye make-up, there was no overall 'look' to conform to. The gal's breasts are of all shapes and sizes, their teeth similarly varied and the guys look as if they have come from a failed audition for some drinks ad for Playboy magazine. Overdressed and all facial hair and pot bellies. Extraordinary. The whole thing is well shot, the sequences not overlong and pretty varied with lots of outdoor shoots. Enjoyable

In the most memorable scene of this movie, German sex star Ingrid Steeger plays a mini-skirt clad, lollipop-sucking "princess" who likes to sit on "peas", especially really big ones. She sits on one guy's "pea" during a crowded--and very bumpy--bus ride, and, understandably smitten, the guy follows her off the bus and into the woods for some (more) sex. All the various stories in this German "schulmadchen report"/"sex report"-type movie are pretty much this stupid, but the girls in them tend to decline somewhat in attractiveness from Ms. Steeger.

The ridiculous frame story involves a group of scandal sheet reporters discussing the problem of "young seducers" throwing themselves at older men. (I don't think this has ever really been that much of a societal "problem"--more likely the dirty old rotters watching this back in the day WISHED it were a problem). The result is, of course, is very similar to the more famous Ernest Haufbauer-Walter Boos "schulmadchen-report" series, but those had a little less sex and quite a bit better stories. The girls in the Hofbauer-Boos films were not especially believable as "schulmadchen", but the mature and voluptuous women in this movie are not even remotely believable as the characters they're supposedly playing--the "young seducers" here don't look appreciably younger than the "older men" they're seducing.

Still you get to see these ridiculously horny, clothing-averse vixens seducing a male artist, a chemistry teacher, a lesbian piano teacher, a soccer star, a Shakespearean actor, and a naive English university. One girl is working as a prostitute at a gas station (oookay). Another girl hitches a ride to school with a passing motorist and gives HIM a ride on the way. Another girl does a sexy strip out of a red halter and hot pants ensemble and has sex with four guys. With it's it numerous, sex-soaked but really pretty pedestrian stories this isn't as entertaining as most of the Hofbauer-Boos films. It's also not as good as producer-director Irwin Dietrich's own "Swinging Stewardesses" where a lot of these same actresses, much more believably, played horny airline stewardesses, and at least you got some good travelogue footage in between the sex scenes. Irwin Dietrich later produced some of Jess Franco's sickest 70's WIP films. This is not nearly as sleazy as any of those, but it's not as interesting either.