Movie titles don’t get much more scandalous than LOVE UNDER 17, which is actually Veit Relin's LIEBE UNTER 17, a fairly innocuous German “Report” film from 1971. I saw it at the Twin Drive-In with my friend Rob back in October 1976, when I was just over the threshold of 20 - and I did what most healthy young men do in the presence of such entertainment: I turned it into research, jotting down credits from the screen and writing an actual review for a fanzine I was plotting about the flood of Euro softcore entertainment that was not being seriously evaluated in print anywhere at that time. (This plan never got beyond the stage of a couple of written reviews and a few collected pressbooks.) Shortly after the film opened, it was seized by local police in response to someone’s complaint and replaced with something else.
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| CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, 10 October 1976. |
Cut to screen caption: 50 YEARS LATER...
Over the years, LOVE UNDER 17 has become very obscure and I have read that it is now considered a “lost” film even in Germany. But last week, two things happened out of the blue: First, an incomplete English dubbed 35mm print actually showed up on eBay, the bidding starting at only $19! Secondly, I discovered by Googling that a DVD-R of the film was now available from different online sellers from a label called Desert Island Discs (whose holdings encompass such titles as DECAPITATION ISLAND, CALIGULA REINCARNATED AS HITLER and THE ADVENTURES OF OZZIE AND HARRIET). 50 years had passed... did the film suddenly go out of copyright or something? Anyway, I wasted no time - I ordered LOVE UNDER 17 from Movie Zyme Warehouse and it arrived super-fast. And last night, I had the delirious experience of revisiting this odd and funny little movie I expected never to see again.
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| CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, 8 October 1976. |
After an opening downbeat vignette dramatizing the dangers of teenage hitchhiking, the film - intercut with seemingly authentic on-the-street interviews filmed in Munich - tells a series of short stories about first love that are variously sweet, randy, and comic, allegedly based on anecdotes from actual teenagers, all presented of course as “a public service.” It was all so refreshingly un-neurotic. I was happy to see Erik Falk (later a frequent Jess Franco star) turn up in the final story, in which a bar pick-up results in a lasting relationship. Unlike the somewhat choppy print I saw at my local drive-in, this DVD-R was maybe a 6 or 7/10 in quality and absolutely uncut - and in answer to your question, the women it features all look to be at least in their late teens. Also, while the opening text screens and credits were in English, a voice-over translated them into German and the entire film was in German! (The sales page I ordered from had specifically identified the picture as being in English.) I'm not complaining too much; the stories were easy to follow, and besides, an English copy would have surely been less complete. One of the most interesting details about the English credits is that the director's name is given as "R.B. Winston" and the English adaptation is credited to Robert H. Oliver, a cohort of producer Dick Randall who had previously worked as an actor in Mario Bava's FOUR TIMES THAT NIGHT, written THE MAD BUTCHER with Victor Buono, and directed FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS! It's a small world.
So... if you should happen to win that 35mm print from eBay (I would try, but I have no means of viewing it) PLEASE have it transfered to video and please SEND ME A COPY! I suspect the English dubbing was part of its original appeal.
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