By Lee Pfeiffer
Impulse Pictures continues their onslaught of releases of the retro erotic series Schoolgirl Report. The German films were all the rage in European cinemas back in the 1970s and this latest DVD edition (#12, "If Mom Only Knew...", for those who are counting) follows the standard formula. The 1978 film consists of numerous short stories linked by a thin plot device. In this case, the staff of a high school newspaper review letters written to them by fellow students outlining their sexual experiences. As each letter is read, the movie cuts to an enactment of the scenario. In the first episode, a young virgin is raised by her older brother, an airline pilot, after their parents pass away. She can barely control her sexual urges but, without a boyfriend, has no outlet for her passions. She develops an unhealthy crush on her brother, which he initially resists. ("Initially" is a key phrase in these types of movies.) Before long, she's casually walking around the house starkers and one night the unthinkable happens. The girl deludes herself into thinking she can actually establish a normal lifestyle with her brother as her lover...but she is in for a rude and tragic awakening. Another episode is a comedic one that follows the antics of a group of high school kids on a field trip to the forest with their stuffy teachers. After discovering a couple in the woods doin' what comes natural in the woods, the kids become uniformly aroused and run off to various remote locations to re-enact what they have just witnessed. As is usual in these flicks, the teachers are the victims of slapstick comedy. A grittier episode concerns a young girl who comes from a tragic background. Her brother died, her father committed suicide and her mother thinks nothing of having sex with strange men in her presence. She becomes sexually obsessed herself and is chronically pleasuring herself before moving on to becoming a drug addict and prostitute. The remaining two segments revert back to comedy. In one, a mother brings her young daughter to the family doctor for a checkup without realizing she has mixed up the dates. The doctor is out but a plumber who is doing work in the office pretends to be the physician and gives the young woman the kind of exam mom never dreamed possible. More slapstick occurs when the actual doctor returns to the office. In the final chapter, a German family agrees to take an exchange student into their home. They think it will be a girl who can act as a companion to their teenage daughter but it turns out to be a hunky male student from France...and we all know what hunky male French students like to do. In short order, despite dad's fevered attempts to keep them separated, not only is their daughter screaming "C'est magnifique!" but her friends end up sharing in the pleasure, as well.
As sordid as these scenarios sound, the Schoolgirl Report series is fairly tame by today's standards. The segments are all soft core but there is an abundance of full frontal nudity, both male and female. The films are impressive in one respect: some of the scenarios are well done and evoke some genuinely erotic images. Others, such as the comedic segments, tend to fall into the "guilty pleasure" category. The Impulse DVD features the film in original German language with optional English sub-titles, though it should be pointed out that they are entirely superfluous because the plots aren't very difficult to follow even if restricted to just the visuals. The transfers show a good degree of snap, crackle and pop from the master film source, but that only adds to the retro-based naughty fun. Click below to order: