The Lindberg Babe and Other Headlines

Do they ever present awards for the year's best DVD cover art? If so, those anonymous folks at Impulse Pictures deserve all possible honors for the adornment they have given to MAID IN SWEDEN, the 1971 Christina Lindberg picture. The disc is scheduled to street on June 24, but my preview copy arrived today and Xploited Cinema is already reporting it as "in stock." The eye-catching cover art is so quintessentially Christina, I can't believe I've never seen this image before. I also like the way her name appears under the title, like the name of an author under the title of a novel. The movie doesn't have a literary bone in its voluptuous body, as I recall, but it's several cuts above the norm for Swedish soft erotica and naturally a must-see for devotees of its doe-eyed star.

Overwork and a serious health scare related to a dear friend (I'm relieved to say that his surgery appears to have been a success) have taken the wind out of me, and consequently my blogging sails, of late. I've just finished the bulk of my work on VIDEO WATCHDOG #140, so this is my week between issues to concentrate on viewing and reviewing for the next issue or two. I'm currently working on a lengthy review of the long-awaited DVD premiere of the Peter Cushing-Christopher Lee classic THE SKULL (finally on DVD in its original Techniscope screen ratio) and making my way through Flicker Alley's extraordinary box set GEORGES MELIES - FIRST WIZARD OF THE CINEMA, as well as attending to some shorter reviews. One of these will be devoted to the first volume of cartoons from the PINK PANTHER spin-off series THE INSPECTOR, for which I have discovered a heretofore unsuspected love. Cartoons with titles like "Cirrhosis of the Louvre" and "Napoleon Blown-Apart" -- what's not to love?

For those who are wondering, copies of VIDEO WATCHDOG #139 -- our exciting DOCTOR WHO issue -- were shipped out last Thursday and Saturday to our subscribers and retailers. First class subscribers will either have them now, or very soon.

Finally, in case you (like me) had to miss the first public screening of Joe Dante's THE MOVIE ORGY last week at the New Beverly Cinema, there is primo vicarious info to be had from Glenn Erickson's DVD Savant, the blogs Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule and Mr. Peel's Sardine Liqueur, and also from this Variety report by Peter Debruge. Everyone is describing it as a tremendous and privileged cinephilic experience, and talking up the "Dante's Inferno" retrospective screenings in general as one of the great cultural events of the year. Atta boy, Joe!

What Some DVD Distributors Find Unthinkable

Dietrich Kerky is tempted by hitchhiker Ingeborg Steinbach in an especially exuberant episode of SCHOOLGIRL REPORT 3.

On the Mobius Home Video Forum, Don May, Jr. of Synapse Films has announced that Xploited Cinema has agreed to assume all distribution duties for Impulse Pictures' new DVD release of SCHOOLGIRL REPORT #3: WHAT PARENTS FIND UNTHINKABLE. Impulse -- a sub-label marketed by Synapse -- took special precautions to ensure that this 1972 sequel (co-directed by Walter Boos and Ernst Hofbauer) was uncut, in response to earlier complaints about a missing segment from their supposedly complete release of Hofbauer's SCHOOLGIRL REPORT #1 (1970). Evidently, the uncut content of this particular film was too much for Synapse's usual distributor to bear; after examining a preview disc, they refused to issue it.

Admittedly, SCHOOLGIRL REPORT #3 is one of the darker and bolder films in the series, featuring a few vignettes involving teenage rape at the hands of school officials, peers and pedophiles. However, the bothersome segment in question is undoubtedly one that features some fleeting prepubescent male nudity in a story about a teenage girl who volunteers to satisfy her younger cousin's curiosity about the ways in which their bodies differ. Granted, the boy's nudity can be a bit startling to American sensibilities, but let's be realistic: there is no erotic contact between the girl and boy (which one couldn't say, for example, of a similar scene between Laura Dern and Lukas Haas in RAMBLING ROSE) nor does the scene show anything couldn't be seen on a nude beach.

The film also has its share of more lighthearted, comic vignettes, two of which feature the respectively aged and twitchy series regulars Rosyl Mayr and Michael Schreiner, and there's a remarkably zesty romp -- one of the most erotic in the entire series -- involving doctor/father Dietrich Kerky and experience-seeking student Ingeborg Steinbach in which both performers appear to be enjoying the hell out of themselves... and each other. Jess Franco veteran Erik Falk is also featured in the final episode.

Thanks to the folks at Impulse, Synapse and Xploited for going the extra mile with this important Euro-exploitation series. Here's a link to the SCHOOLGIRL REPORT #3 ordering page at Xploited Cinema. They also have the first two releases in the series, as well as a highly collectable, full-color, 82-page souvenir magazine featuring dozens of poster and stills reproductions, as well as articles and bios pertaining to each film in the series and their key cast and crew members.