Mystery Movie Solved! HUMDINGER!!! (1976)

Back in November, trusted Temple of Schlock correspondent Mike MacCollum took a break from bombarding us with PSYCHED BY THE 4D WITCH research to send out a text message in which he asked "Hey, is HUMDINGER!!! still a Mystery Movie?" We knew it was still a mystery to us, but we couldn't recall doing an actual Mystery Movie post about it (or other unknown quantities from Hemisphere Pictures, such as HANKY PANKY and WILLING WIVES). After a couple of minutes searching the archives we ascertained that we hadn't, and that Mike must've spotted the title in our PENTHOUSE PLAYGIRLS review, so we texted back "It sure is! Why, what have you found?" Within minutes we had the solution -- but before we share it with you, let's quickly recap what this HUMDINGER!!! business is all about.

HUMDINGER!!! debuted in U.S. theaters sans an MPAA rating in April 1976, but received a swift and fraudulent makeover in July to become CAPITOL HILL SECRETARIES after Representatives Joe Waggoner (D-Louisiana) and Allan Howe (D-Utah), in two separate incidents, were arrested for soliciting undercover police officers posing as prostitutes.

The co-feature, CONGRESSIONAL PLAYMATES, was a re-titling of the aforementioned Erwin C. Dietrich piece of crap PENTHOUSE PLAYGIRLS.

Mike's research turned up a Baton Rouge playdate in mid August '76 that was promoted with the newspaper ad below, which appears to be a CAPITOL HILL SECRETARIES ad with the HUMDINGER!!! title.

Further sleuthing by Mike uncovered a review by Sunday Advocate film critic Terence Adams, who went to see a movie called HUMDINGER!!! but instead got the CAPITOL HILL SECRETARIES title card attached to the head of - are you sitting down? - a dubbed European sex comedy set in 1814! And despite being lured in by a movie with the tag line "From Watergate to waterbeds," no one in the audience seemed to care when neither anachronism worked its way into a story that takes place in the immediate wake of Napoleon's defeat. From the plot details revealed in Mr. Adams' understandably confused review, Mike was able to identify the film as FRAU WIRTIN BLÄST AUCH GERN TROMPETE/THE LANDLADY ALSO LIKES TO BLOW THE TRUMPET (1970) a.k.a. SEXY SUSAN KNOWS HOW!, the fourth in a series of six Austrian-produced period costumers starring Hungarian actress Teri Tordai as Susanne “Sexy Susan” Delberg.

So that leaves two final mystery movies from Hemisphere Pictures, HANKY PANKY and WILLING WIVES, both of which first appeared in U.S. theaters in December 1976.

As for SMARTIE PANTS, we solved that mystery almost 15 years ago but multiple online sources still claim that it's the tenth installment of the “Schoolgirl Report” series of German softcore sex anthologies when it’s actually the fifth: SCHULMÄDCHEN-REPORT 5. TEIL – WAS ELTERN WIRKLICH WISSEN SOLLTEN/SCHOOLGIRL REPORT 5: WHAT PARENTS SHOULD REALLY KNOW (1973).

Movie Ad of the Week: BED CAREER a.k.a. SWINGIN' MODELS (1973)

The West German sexploiter BETTKARRIERE (1972) -- directed by Ilja von Anutroff (a.k.a. Ralf Gregan) and starring Claus Tinney, Angelika Wehbeck and Ingrid Steeger -- opened in the New York area, sans an MPAA rating, as BED CAREER on May 4, 1973. The Daily News found the literal translation a bit too suggestive and advertised the film as NIGHT CAREERS instead (We'll post that ad as soon as we get it). Apparently neither title generated much box-office interest, because Hemisphere Pictures designed a whole new ad campaign and brought the film back to New York seven months later (December 7, 1973) as SWINGIN' MODELS.

Mystery Movie: BENEATH THE SHEETS (1976/1977)

This entry is actually a 2-for-1 deal. First, we found a newspaper ad from 1977 for something called BENEATH THE SHEETS, which appears to be an English-language U.S. release of an Isabel Sarli movie. The mystery: just what Isabel Sarli movie is it?

So, while we were looking around for Sarli's SHEETS, we turned up a completely different BENEATH THE SHEETS from a year earlier. Released by Hemisphere Pictures, this one looks like a European sex education "report" on teen promiscuity.

We're almost positive that it's a retitling of Reinhard Clausen's SABINE (1974), which had already been released by Hemisphere in 1975 and '76 as KICK FROM THE FOOT OF THE BED and REFLECTIONS FROM A BRASS BED.

So does anyone know for sure what's going on beneath the sheets in all these beds?

SRC Films, Inc.

If schlock fans are familiar at all with Hemisphere Pictures, it's probably because of the popular "Blood Island" horror movies from the Philippines that the company produced and distributed during the late 1960s. When their sexy Swiss import SWINGIN' STEWARDESSES became a huge hit in 1972, horror was quickly forgotten and Hemisphere president Kane W. Lynn ceased producing his own product to concentrate on the distribution of softcore Euro sex films with keywords like "swingin'" and "naughty" in the titles, which were hot double and triple bill attractions at U.S. drive-ins for the next decade.

At first there was no effort to conceal their foreign roots, but Hemisphere v.p. Roger Cahn soon perfected a formula for the streamlining and Americanization of these mostly West German and Swiss sexploitation flicks: opening and closing credits were removed, new title cards were spliced in, and very simple but effective advertising campaigns were created featuring bogus names in the billing blocks and photos of models who never show up in the actual movies. When Lynn died in October of 1975 at the age of 56, Cahn took over as president of Hemisphere and continued to fill the release slate with titles like SELF-SERVICE SCHOOLGIRLS, VOLUPTUOUS VIXENS, WILLING WIVES, PENTHOUSE PLAYGIRLS, NAUGHTY CO-EDS, TEENAGE PLAYMATES, INTIMATE PLAYMATES, SMARTIE PANTS, HANKY PANKY, HUMDINGER!!!, and KICK FROM THE FOOT OF THE BED.

The company was eventually taken over by creditors who took a stab at G-rated family entertainment with the William Shatner-narrated MYSTERIES OF THE GODS before closing up shop in 1977. By that time Cahn had already departed with about a dozen of his Hemisphere acquisitions and started his own company, SRC Films, which would be the exclusive stateside theatrical distributor of the SCHULMÄDCHEN REPORT and Erwin Dietrich films for the next several years. SRC continued the practice of releasing softcore imports with interchangeable titles and ad campaigns well into the 1980s, as evidenced by the image gallery below.

(1977)

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(1980)

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One-Sheet of the Week: THE DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE / IN THE DEVIL'S GARDEN combo (1974)

First feature: LA PLUS LONGUE NUIT DU DIABLE (1971)

U.S. release in 1972 as THE DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE.

Re-released by MPM in 1980 as VAMPIRE PLAYGIRLS.
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Second feature: ASSAULT (1971)

U.S. release in 1973 under three different titles: ASSAULT, MOLESTED, and IN THE DEVIL'S GARDEN

Re-released by MPM in 1980 as SATAN'S PLAYTHINGS.

Released on video as THE CREEPERS. Shown on TV as TOWER OF TERROR.

This combo released in 1974, although a MOLESTED / THE DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE combo made the rounds a year earlier.

One-Sheet of the Week: SMARTIE PANTS (1975)

SCHULMÄDCHEN-REPORT 5: TEIL – WAS ELTERN WIRKLICH WISSEN SOLLTEN / SCHOOLGIRL REPORT 5: WHAT ALL PARENTS SHOULD KNOW (1973)

U.S. release in 1975 as SMARTIE PANTS

PENTHOUSE PLAYGIRLS (1975)

Misleadingly advertised by Hemisphere Pictures as another of the company's harmless Euro softcore imports, PENTHOUSE PLAYGIRLS is actually DIE MÄDCHENHÄNDLER / WHITE SLAVERS (1972), a vile and aggressively anti female slab of sleaze from producer Erwin C. Dietrich. Pic debuted in U.S. theaters sans an MPAA rating in December 1975, then received a swift and fraudulent makeover the following July to become CONGRESSIONAL PLAYGIRLS after Representatives Joe Waggoner (D-Louisiana) and Allan Howe (D-Utah), in two separate incidents, were arrested for soliciting undercover police officers posing as prostitutes (the co-feature, CAPITOL HILL SECRETARIES, was a re-titling of Hemisphere's still-unidentified HUMDINGER). Slapped with a well-deserved X rating when submitted to the MPAA in 1977, film accompanied ex-Hemisphere v.p. Roger Cahn to his SRC Films a year later to finish its theatrical days filling out triple bills and dusk-to-dawn shows under who knows how many other alternate titles. Print released to home video formats in 1985 (on the Private Screenings label, natch) runs 78 minutes.


Opening scene has a young lovely chloroformed in an elevator and carried off by two kidnappers (one of them is Dietrich in a cameo) working for an international white slavery ring; when we see her again she’s pulling a train in a filthy back room somewhere in Turkey. The masterminds behind this international crime organization are three hairy, paunchy, middle-aged thugs that hang out together butt-naked in a steam room, scratching their sweaty balls and hatching new plans to find “beautiful but dumb” women to peddle overseas. Their latest scheme is a Miss Bosoms Contest, which enables them to hand-pick ten knockouts from the hundreds of shapely young entrants reeled in by the promise of a trip around the world and a Hollywood screen test for the first place prizewinner. After the contest (ten topless Dietrich stock starlets on a grade-school stage, with a smarmy emcee and lots of canned applause) we follow the bad guys for the rest of the movie as they snatch "Soledad from Sweden," "Claudine from France," "Marie the cigarette girl" and others and prepare them to be shipped out to bordellos around the world. The following (badly-dubbed) exchange between two kidnappers about to fix one of the bound and nude captives with a heroin shot pretty much sums up this movie's foul attitude toward women.

First kidnapper: “Take off your belt.
Second kidnapper: “Want me to put it around her arm?”
First kidnapper: “What do you think you’re supposed to do, beat her with it?”
Second kidnapper: “Well, I wouldn’t mind…”

Adding insult to injury is the overwhelming evidence that Dietrich may actually identify with these scumbag criminals; they not only escape justice at the end, but are en route to Mexico to fill another order when "The End" appears onscreen (superimposed over a shot of an airplane taking off, probably pulled from THE SWINGIN' STEWARDESSES). Scenes of the ten giggling Miss Bosoms contestants bouncing around the brothel they're now forced to work in are either wacky outtakes from BLUTJUNGE MASSEUSEN/PIN-UP PLAYMATES (same year, same locations, most of the same cast) or Dietrich is more deranged than I ever imagined. Evidently the "beautiful but dumb" ones never seem to mind being kidnapped, dragged halfway around the globe and forced into prostitution. Wellllll, at least this place is clean! And the guys are all kooky old mama's boys and nervous closet cases! Tee-hee-hee! It could've been a lot worse for us! CUT TO: Another kidnapped young woman getting her legs pried open again and again and again by a neverending line of leering, lip-smacking Turks. Blecch!

I should've known this thing was poison when Ingrid Steeger failed to show by the 15-minute mark.


Below: Masked wrestler "Jack the Raper" in a scene from PENTHOUSE PLAYGIRLS




While we're at it, does anyone know the true identity of HUMDINGER!!! (a.k.a. CAPITOL HILL SECRETARIES)?

INTIMATE PLAYMATES (1974)

The blog got a few hundred hits earlier this week for our coverage of THE TEENY BOPPERS, so here's another Ernst Hofbauer masterpiece for all you dirty old men out there. This one was originally titled WENN DIE PRALLEN MÖPSE HÜPFEN, which by my best attempts yields an English translation of -- strap yourselves in -- WHEN THE BOUNCING PUGS HOP. If “möpse” isn’t a German euphemism then I’m afraid at least one story about a bunch of little curly-tailed, wrinkle-faced doggies is absent from the heavily truncated tape we screened here at the Temple. Or else the German-English translators I used were totally wrong. Regardless, I'm now sorry I didn’t assign this review to the Keeper of the Pit, doggone it. *

Framing device for the usual smut show has young stud Peter taking the desirable Annie to his uncle’s apartment, ostensibly to knock boots but instead to subject the increasingly frustrated fräulein to one ribald tale after another. A dentist next door and the nosy, elderly landlady downstairs contribute to the fun. The butchered print that was once available from Alpha Blue Archives (as a 2-on-1 tape with Joe Sarno’s DADDY DARLING) runs a mere 54 minutes, shows plenty of scratches and liver spots and contains only five stories; how many others got chewed up in drive-in projectors over the years is anyone’s guess.

1. Helen, a beautiful virgin, gets tipsy in a nightclub and is swept off her feet by Juan, a smoothie who deflowers her and then splits. After a period of intense depression and promiscuity, as well as a lesbian relationship with her friend Annie, Helen finds true love with Ernest -- a virgin she deflowers.

2. A poor but jolly old man discovers that his granddaughter is planning to marry Tony, the son of the richest man in town, Fritz. Unfortunately, Fritz will only let the girl with the largest dowry marry his son. Tony and the girl’s grandfather steal Fritz’s trousers while he’s sacking some other guy's wife and refuse to return them unless he okays the marriage.

3. Sultry student Ruth has an affair with Fred, her art professor, but ends the relationship when she catches him frolicking in the paint with three nude blondes. She meets George, who is Fred’s son, and they fall in love. Ruth and George marry, but Fred seduces her again and soon she’s sleeping with both father and son.

4. Ennio (Rinaldo Talamonti), who works at the pizzeria, is dating Elsie, a virgin who always tells him “you can knock at the door all you want but you can’t come in!” One night he starts knocking on the door while they’re in her Volkswagon and…well, if I say any more I'll spoil it for you. Talamonti turns up in a number of these Hofbauer pics and the guys who do his English dubbing always crack me up.

5. Last and best story, at least in this abbreviated version, has business partners Horatio and Oskar cheating on their wives with each other’s wives as well as the sexy owner of the local massage parlor.

In the U.S. the film was released as INTIMATE PLAYMATES in 1975 by Hemisphere Pictures and received the company’s usual treatment at the time: all credits were lopped off to avoid easy identification, a new title card was spliced in, and an ad campaign was whipped together with bogus names in the billing block and a photo of an actress who never appears in the actual movie. When Hemisphere president and founder Kane Lynn died and the business fell into the hands of outsiders, Hemisphere vice president Roger Cahn started his own company (SRC Films, Inc.), took control of INTIMATE PLAYMATES and several other movies, and became the exclusive distributor of the SCHULMÄDCHEN REPORT and Erwin Dietrich films in the U.S. SRC continued the practice of releasing softcore imports with interchangeable titles and ad campaigns well into the 1980s. The MPAA site lists NAUGHTY FRESHMEN as an alternate title for INTIMATE PLAYMATES, but SRC also used that as a front for SCHULMÄDCHEN REPORT 11.

* The MILO AND OTIS jokes about pugs and pussies would’ve been flying fast and furry-ous! Heck, maybe I’ll ask him to fetch a copy anyway jest to chew on as a bone-us!