Many moons ago, in the pages of VIDEO WATCHDOG #15, I reviewed Mac Ahlberg's AROUND THE WORLD WITH FANNY HILL [Jorden runt med Fanny Hill, 1974], an entertaining softcore romp featuring Shirley Corrigan, Gaby Fuchs (MARK OF THE DEVIL) and, reason enough to watch all by herself, Christina Lindberg. It was released on VHS, circa 1992, by Kit Parker Video in tandem with Ahlberg's earlier and better-known FANNY HILL (1968), starring Diana Kjær -- "better-known" because it had been distributed here in the States by Jerry Gross' notorious Cinemation Industries as an early X-rated release, just prior to their memorable I DRINK YOUR BLOOD/I EAT YOUR SKIN double bill.I watched both films back-to-back at the time, but for some reason, I never reviewed FANNY HILL -- perhaps because I was more demanding in those days that the titles we review contain some measure of fantastic content. I found my copy while doing some attic cleaning over the weekend and decided to refresh my memory of it.
Like ALL AROUND THE WORLD WITH FANNY HILL, it is a contemporary treatment that has only a name in common with John Cleland's 1748 classic FANNY HILL: THE MEMOIRS OF A WOMAN OF PLEASURE. Ms. Kjær stars as Fanny, an unsophisticated virgin from the provinces who, while traveling by train to the Big City (presumably Stockholm), makes the acquaintence of Monika (Tina Hedstrom). Monika offers Fanny a room in her apartment until she finds a job, which she promptly obtains at her roommate's place of employment, a classy brothel run by Frau Schoon (MANNEQUIN IN RED's Gio Petré) -- who doesn't quite suspect Fanny's innocence. Fortunately, shortly after realizing what is expected of her, Fanny meets a new client, Roger (Hans Ernback), who urges her to quit when he learns that she is intact. Roger is the wealthy and carefree son of a shipping magnate and promptly takes Fanny and one of Dad's smaller yachts on a carefree, three-day cruise. Things have been going unbelievably well for the sheltered Fanny so far, but all this changes promptly upon their return, when Roger's dad (Gosta Pruzelius) puts his foot down, refusing to let the heir to his empire marry such an unpolished girl from the boonies. Fanny accepts his pay-off and, broken-hearted, embarks on a la ronde of subsequent relationships. Her lovers have their ups and downs, but in time, a rather remarkable turn of events leaves Fanny the unsuspecting heir to an infatuated gentleman's fortune, which gives her the necessary leverage for a happy, unexpected (by her, anyway) reunion with Roger.
Diana Kjær -- who would subsequently star in AIP's sex import DAGMAR'S HOT PANTS, INC. (1971), and who went on to play "Artist's Wife", "Girl Eating Meat" and "Whore" in later productions, according to the IMDb -- is cute, but the English dialogue is so lamely written and dubbed (by Titra Sound Studios, posing as Titan Productions) that everyone seems as thick and insipid as Fanny is supposed to be. It's impossible to gauge anyone's performance, or to gauge Fanny's personal growth during the course of her adventures. Furthermore, as Fanny's entire story unfolds as if by chance, the storyline is deprived of any sense of forward momentum; also, having been produced in 1968, the film is much tamer than many other films which had reached our shores by 1970. There is actually very little erotic content -- in those days, any film showing a bare breast in a sexual context got an R; if it was fondled or kissed, it got an X -- and what is present tends to be on the coy and playful side, as when one of Fanny's lovers coaxes her into exiting a car and walking into her apartment building nude -- an interlude we witness from behind, and in the dark. This is criticism at its cheapest, but I was reminded more than once of a line spoken by Severn Darden in THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST: "Teeedium... teeeeedium."
What holds one's interest, very loosely I admit, are the scenes involving music and dancing, which are decked out in appropriately retro-Euro style. However, this being a Cinemation release, Georg Riedel's original score was partially replaced stateside with music and songs by Clay Pitts. I've read that Pitts was the pseudonym of a successful, established musician who did this work on the side. Based on the voice heard on some of the songs, not to mention the cheerfully vacuous quality of tunes like "Sail A Boat" and "Do The Gravitational Pull," I found myself wondering if Clay Pitts might have been a beard for Neil Sedaka. After all, Sedaka was no stranger to writing and singing silly songs for low-rent pictures like PLAYGIRL KILLER and STING OF DEATH, so who knows? In this case, a soundtrack album was actually released -- in fact, I can remember finding a copy in the record racks of a local department store back in 1970 and wondering what the music from an X-rated film could possibly sound like.
Mac Ahlberg, who has since returned to his origins as a cameraman (Gordon's RE-ANIMATOR, Landis' INNOCENT BLOOD, Dante's THE SECOND CIVIL WAR, various Charles Band DTV titles), had a fascinating career as a director of erotic films in Sweden. FANNY HILL is pretty negligeable when compared to serious stuff like I, A WOMAN (1965) with Essy Persson, or the later films he made with Maria Forsa, like FLOSSIE (1974) and JUSTINE AND JULIETTE (1975); it's even negligeable when compared to the colorful, pneumatic fun of AROUND THE WORLD WITH FANNY HILL, which I called "imaginative" and "highly amusing" in my 1992 review. Mind you, if I were to see a subtitled version of FANNY HILL with the original score intact, I might feel differently.
The Kit Parker Video release of FANNY HILL carried an R rating on its packaging, incidentally... but it's doubtful that anything present in Cinemation's "Rated X... Naturally" theatrical release was missing from it.
