Abolishing all cinema censorship ahead of their Swedish neighbors, Denmark opened the floodgates for skin and sin to run rampant on local movie screens. As John Hilbard's tremendously popular BEDSIDE series, featuring comedian Ole Søltoft bumbling his way Jerry Lewis style through a variety of ill-suited professions, was showing signs of running out of steam, producer Anders Sandberg snapped up their star for what was to become a serious box office rival. Commonly referred to as the ZODIAC series, each episode was built around a separate star sign, grinding to a halt after only six signs. Sandberg had earned his stripes as production manager on US ex-pat Vernon P. Becker's 1971 simulated smash hit DAGMAR'S HOT PANTS before turning into one of the country's most prolific porn producers. Testing the waters with Ole Ege's BORDELLO, he realized that Scandinavian middle classes took hardcore imagery in their stride with nary a raised eyebrow, so he would soon surround Søltoft with primitive porn professionals plying their trade.
The first of the series still stays stubbornly soft however with only an occasional and invariably flaccid member intruding on the parade of foxy female flesh. Cunningly rechristened DANISH PASTRIES once the surprisingly above average English dub's producer Robert Sumner (who went on to fund several of Chuck Vincent's '80s classics) and director Richard D'Antoni (perpetrator of such unpretentious fornication fare as CAMPUS GIRLS and TEENAGE CHEERLEADERS) got through with it, it follows the frantic misadventures that inevitably occur when an experimental aphrodisiac for a bordello and a libido suppressant intended for a nearby all girls school get mixed up. See, members of the Copenhagen University's department of astronomy have noticed the approaching passage of Venus and, well aware of the ruckus this caused back in 1769 on the island of Tahiti, they're not taking any chances this time. An emissary, the naive and less than adequate Armand (Søltoft), is dispatched to the minute Danish hamlet housing both school and whorehouse, supplying the suppressant to the former and staying well away from the latter. Meanwhile, horny scientist Professor Bomwitz (Bent Warburg) has arrived at the same town to test his aphrodisiac. Identical suitcases are dutifully switched and voilà ! The movie was competently made by Finn Karlsson, a proper film school graduate turned journeyman director best known for his 1969 naughty box office blast STINE AND THE BOYS starring local sex kitten Sisse Reingaard. Jack of all trades Werner Hedman took over the reins for subsequent episodes as IN THE SIGN OF THE VIRGIN rather surprisingly proved Karlsson's final filmmaking assignment though he would continue to work throughout the decade in menial peripheral jobs on several sets. An alleged drinking problem may have rendered him hard to employ and almost certainly contributed to his untimely death in 2003, aged merely 66.
The time frame, which is the turn of the last century, allows for elaborate costuming adding luster to lust. Søltoft remains all buttoned up but Warburg, half of what was to become Denmark's busiest porno pair, lets it all hang out in simulated sex scenes, some with wife Anne Bie playing not the school's tormented new girl Geminette as some sources erroneously claim, who's portrayed by ravishing one shot wonder Eva Lindberg instead, but the first of the students to sense the effect of the Professor's concoction and making him the immediate beneficiary thereof. Mr. Warburg has a particularly memorable dream sequence that's tricky to describe, wandering buck naked among enlarged lady parts, all set to a chintzy rendition of Ravel's Bolero, which weirdly predates a similar spectacle from Chuck Vincent's 1978 VISIONS. The student body contains several starlets who would willingly comply with Danish dirty movies' demands for increased intimacy. The two girls sharing a lesbian liaison in the opening scene are vivacious blonde BEDSIDE regular Vivi Rau and sultry brunette Lene Andersen from Paul Gerber's THE KEYHOLE. The pleasingly plump prostitute is lovely Lone Gersel, also spotted in Phyllis and Eberhardt Kronhausen's groundbreaking sex documentary THE HOTTEST SHOW IN TOWN.
Although the skin-baring sweethearts receive the lion's share of this fast-paced flick's running time, it's the contribution of several highly respected Scandinavian character actors who stuck around even as the series got more seriously sexual that remains these movies' most striking aspect. A veteran thespian whose career started in the '30s, venerable Sigrid Horne-Rasmussen camps it up as the school's colossal head mistress, raising her skirts (fortunately revealing a pair of demure knickers, completely in character) and blowing Søltoft a lewd kiss after an inadvertent swig of the aphrodisiac. As blowzy brothel keeper Madame Gina, Lone Helmer's another classically trained actress unafraid to appear in XXX fare, not as a pornographic participant but still dangerously close to spilling out of her corset on this occasion ! Even so, the equally middle-aged Mette Von Kohl goes both of them one better as prim 'n proper lab assistant Ms. Troelsen, the Professor's first guinea pig, stripping down to decidedly less than ladylike lingerie. Sadly, all three of these brave grands dames of the Scandinavian screen have long passed away since.
As befits a production intended for mass consumption, the movie's particularly well photographed by Henning Kristiansen, already a veteran DoP since the late '40s, working within whatever genre his country's cinema would embrace, including Knud Leif Thomsen's French New Wave inspired 1964 black comedy SCHOOL FOR SUICIDE as well as the occasionally dabbling in soft porn Gabriel Axel's 1988 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner BABETTE'S FEAST. How's that for eclectic ? Kristiansen was ably aided by a then eager young upstart named Michael Christensen who had already worked as camera operator on another exploitation outing made by an American ex-pat, Jack O'Connell's CHRISTA celebrating the breathtaking beauty of blonde bombshell Birte Tove, illogically renamed Swedish FLY GIRLS for the US market as they tended to associate Danish with, well, pastry !
The first of the series still stays stubbornly soft however with only an occasional and invariably flaccid member intruding on the parade of foxy female flesh. Cunningly rechristened DANISH PASTRIES once the surprisingly above average English dub's producer Robert Sumner (who went on to fund several of Chuck Vincent's '80s classics) and director Richard D'Antoni (perpetrator of such unpretentious fornication fare as CAMPUS GIRLS and TEENAGE CHEERLEADERS) got through with it, it follows the frantic misadventures that inevitably occur when an experimental aphrodisiac for a bordello and a libido suppressant intended for a nearby all girls school get mixed up. See, members of the Copenhagen University's department of astronomy have noticed the approaching passage of Venus and, well aware of the ruckus this caused back in 1769 on the island of Tahiti, they're not taking any chances this time. An emissary, the naive and less than adequate Armand (Søltoft), is dispatched to the minute Danish hamlet housing both school and whorehouse, supplying the suppressant to the former and staying well away from the latter. Meanwhile, horny scientist Professor Bomwitz (Bent Warburg) has arrived at the same town to test his aphrodisiac. Identical suitcases are dutifully switched and voilà ! The movie was competently made by Finn Karlsson, a proper film school graduate turned journeyman director best known for his 1969 naughty box office blast STINE AND THE BOYS starring local sex kitten Sisse Reingaard. Jack of all trades Werner Hedman took over the reins for subsequent episodes as IN THE SIGN OF THE VIRGIN rather surprisingly proved Karlsson's final filmmaking assignment though he would continue to work throughout the decade in menial peripheral jobs on several sets. An alleged drinking problem may have rendered him hard to employ and almost certainly contributed to his untimely death in 2003, aged merely 66.
The time frame, which is the turn of the last century, allows for elaborate costuming adding luster to lust. Søltoft remains all buttoned up but Warburg, half of what was to become Denmark's busiest porno pair, lets it all hang out in simulated sex scenes, some with wife Anne Bie playing not the school's tormented new girl Geminette as some sources erroneously claim, who's portrayed by ravishing one shot wonder Eva Lindberg instead, but the first of the students to sense the effect of the Professor's concoction and making him the immediate beneficiary thereof. Mr. Warburg has a particularly memorable dream sequence that's tricky to describe, wandering buck naked among enlarged lady parts, all set to a chintzy rendition of Ravel's Bolero, which weirdly predates a similar spectacle from Chuck Vincent's 1978 VISIONS. The student body contains several starlets who would willingly comply with Danish dirty movies' demands for increased intimacy. The two girls sharing a lesbian liaison in the opening scene are vivacious blonde BEDSIDE regular Vivi Rau and sultry brunette Lene Andersen from Paul Gerber's THE KEYHOLE. The pleasingly plump prostitute is lovely Lone Gersel, also spotted in Phyllis and Eberhardt Kronhausen's groundbreaking sex documentary THE HOTTEST SHOW IN TOWN.
Although the skin-baring sweethearts receive the lion's share of this fast-paced flick's running time, it's the contribution of several highly respected Scandinavian character actors who stuck around even as the series got more seriously sexual that remains these movies' most striking aspect. A veteran thespian whose career started in the '30s, venerable Sigrid Horne-Rasmussen camps it up as the school's colossal head mistress, raising her skirts (fortunately revealing a pair of demure knickers, completely in character) and blowing Søltoft a lewd kiss after an inadvertent swig of the aphrodisiac. As blowzy brothel keeper Madame Gina, Lone Helmer's another classically trained actress unafraid to appear in XXX fare, not as a pornographic participant but still dangerously close to spilling out of her corset on this occasion ! Even so, the equally middle-aged Mette Von Kohl goes both of them one better as prim 'n proper lab assistant Ms. Troelsen, the Professor's first guinea pig, stripping down to decidedly less than ladylike lingerie. Sadly, all three of these brave grands dames of the Scandinavian screen have long passed away since.
As befits a production intended for mass consumption, the movie's particularly well photographed by Henning Kristiansen, already a veteran DoP since the late '40s, working within whatever genre his country's cinema would embrace, including Knud Leif Thomsen's French New Wave inspired 1964 black comedy SCHOOL FOR SUICIDE as well as the occasionally dabbling in soft porn Gabriel Axel's 1988 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner BABETTE'S FEAST. How's that for eclectic ? Kristiansen was ably aided by a then eager young upstart named Michael Christensen who had already worked as camera operator on another exploitation outing made by an American ex-pat, Jack O'Connell's CHRISTA celebrating the breathtaking beauty of blonde bombshell Birte Tove, illogically renamed Swedish FLY GIRLS for the US market as they tended to associate Danish with, well, pastry !
