Dagmar's Hot Pants (1971)

Directed by Vernon P. Becker
Starring Diana Kjær, Anne Grete, Anne-Lise Alexandersson, Robert Strauss
Rated R
Denmark/Sweden

"You're the cleanest broad I've ever known."

From what I've read - this one hit the screens a decade or so before my time, so I wasn't there - Dagmar's Hot Pants did brisk business on 42nd Street and in drive-ins, for two reasons: it arrived at the height of hot pants mania, and it featured then-notable US character-actor Robert Strauss, clearly slumming it in Euro-sploitation land. Also, it was originally rated X, but so was everything in 1971. Well, I am sad to report that there are no hot pants involved, and Robert Strauss (RIP), a near-constant presence on TV screens in the 1960's, is no longer much of a draw. So, what's left? Swedish tits. Also some Danish tits. And that's nothin' to sniff at.

Dagmar (Diana Kjær, RIP) is your average hooker with a heart of gold, a big-eyed, red-headed Swedish beauty slumming it in Copenhagen for reasons unknown, entertaining an assortment of sophisticated world travelers for a handsome fee and occasionally brokering a budget deal with a local. We meet Dagmar on a very momentous day in her life - her very last day working as a prostitute.

Dagmar is woken from a sound sleep by the phone. On the other end is Johnny (Robert Strauss), one of her clients. A high-rolling American just shy of retirement age, Johnny tells Dagmar he's just got to see her later that day. She knows it's going to be some bullshit about how in love he is with her, but she figures she's leaving town tonight anyway, so she might as well give him a proper send off. She makes plans for later, and then calls her best pal Vivi (Anne-Lise Alexandersson) a va-va-voomy platinum blonde who's still fucking last night's 'date' when Dagmar calls.

Vivi's going to be moving into Dag's spacious pad when she splits, so amidst grunts and groans, she makes plans to meet with her friend at the lawyer's office later that day to sign the lease. And then Jack, Dagmar's brother calls. He's got some fuckin' problem, too. So she makes plans with him, as well. It's a very hectic day for our girl Dagmar.

Compounding Dagmar's troubles, her pal Ingrid (Anne Grete) calls her up just as she's about to leave and asks her to come over and help her out with two double-booked clients, leaning heavy on the 'I-helped-you-plenty-times' guilt trip. Dagmar simply cannot make it, so she dials up every other whore in town and tries to get one of them to make the gig, but everyone is a busy.

"I can't, I'm just too beat," says one girl, as she gets whipped by a client. "I'd love to, but I'm tied up right now," says another, as she struggles against the ropes that bind her. A third girl is, frankly, insulted by the phone call. "I've found someone I love, and I've given up that sick, perverted life," she says, hanging up the phone. Then she goes back to fucking her voluptuous blonde lesbian lover.

You know, stuff like that. Sure, it's not really funny. But you've gotta see these girls!

Since no one else will do it, Dagmar calls Ingrid back and tells her that she'll try and make it. Then she puts on a kicky white mini-dress and goes to see the doctor, who tells her the "Test results are negative." So that's good news. I'm assuming it's good news. Then he says, "You know, all these tests cost you girls a lot of money, but I know how you can get all your medical needs taken care of free, Dagmar..." And then he squeezes her boobs.

Dagmar manages to escape the creepy doc's clutches and visits her stockbroker, who tells her she's still rich, and then asks her to cure his goofy teenage son of his nagging virginity. Dagmar's in a good mood, so she agrees. Then she drops by her lawyer's office, where she meets up with Vivi. Not only does Vivi buy Dagmar's apartment, but her generous friend throws in her little black book, as well, complete with notations on how much to charge each of the johns. So that was sweet of her.

Meanwhile, Ingrid's stalling with her two Japanese businessmen clients.
"In Japan, if a Geisha girl is late," says one of the men, "The next day, she's back in the factory making transistor radios."
"Don't worry," Ingrid tells him, "She's worth the wait. She's Swedish!"
Dagmar finally shows up and they pose for pictures. Then the four of them have a groovy dance party before getting down to business.

Unfortunately, that drunken bastard Igor Romanoff barges in halfway through, yelling about his 'missing rubles' and threatening to ruin the party. Mr. Suzuki tells him to beat it, unless he wants to be the "Next Russian in orbit", and then karate-chops a table in half to show him he means business. Igor gets the drift and splits.

After the party breaks up, Dagmar and Ingrid share a quiet moment together. Dagmar tells her she's quitting the business for good and leaves. Then she heads over to some nutty fat maestro's pad and has gross, sweaty sex with him while classical music blares away, threatening to bring the whole house down. Then she puts her dress back on and heads out for more adventures. She runs into her pal Brita (Helli Louise), who has a moped and what has to be the world's first mobile phone. She tells Dagmar it's her new business model. She's a hooker on wheels. I guess that's supposed to be funny. Hard to tell at this point.

Dagmar has lunch with her deadbeat brother Jack (it's still only lunchtime?), a shaggy-haired musician who asks her for 35,000 crowns to pay for his girlfriend's abortion. Dagmar figures she's never gonna see this chump again, so why not? She gives him a travelers check.

Then she meets up with a dude on the vice squad. They gulp whiskey, smoke weed, and fuck. Again, I think that's supposed to be a gag. Then Dagmar says goodbye to the guy who hides in her closet to watch her fuck other dudes. He pays her $200, and when she tells him she thinks he gave her too much, he tells her, "No, it's a going-away gift. Over the past two years, you've become like a daughter to me."
Like the daughter you watch have sex with strange men? Gross.

And then Dagmar takes a much-needed bath. Afterward, she packs her bags, grabs her teddy bear, and calls a cab to take her to the airport.

And then her pimp Vince shows up, and fuckin' ruins everything. She has sex with him and then encourages him to shower off his sex-stink. He takes her advice, and while he's soaping up, she snatches up all her stuff and takes off down a side staircase, still in her towel. She gets dressed on the way down. Cleverly, she took Vince's clothes with her too, so he can't chase her. He runs out into the hall naked and scares a bunch of biddies half to death. Then he locks himself out of the apartment. So he's all messed up.

Dagmar gets off the plane in Sweden and runs into the arms of Lenny, her true love. There's a sort of melodramatic twist ending that explains how Dagmar ended up a whore in Denmark, but it's so dumb I'll let you find out for yourself what it is, so that you can also roll your eyes and chuckle at the lameness/idiocy of it all, like I did.

Dagmar's Hot Pants is a pretty strange movie. I am almost sure it's meant to be a comedy, but the jokes land so far off the mark that you can practically hear them wooshing as they fly by. You can see how certain scenes would play out if more capable hands were involved - Benny Hill in the grabby doctor scene, for example, or Russ Meyer directing the horny Japanese businessmen vs. the drunk Russian bit - and it makes you realize that there was the potential for Dagmar to be a very funny and sexy little film. As it is, it's more of a naughty drama with an awkward comic tone. It's a slow-burning oddity saved from the dustbin just because Kjær is so lovely to look at, and she's naked in nearly every scene, as are most of the other women in the cast. Les Baxter's score is pretty swingin' as well, and the mod décor and groovy outfits are boss.

I guess what I'm saying is...thanks for the boobs, Sweden.

One thing, though: why's Dagmar's Hot Pants? She doesn't wear pants once. Maybe it's a euphemism.

All in all, director Vernon P Becker had a pretty great run. In fact, he's probably Sweden's all-time greatest (or at least most prolific) sexploitation peddler. Prior to Dagmar, he produced The Seduction of Inga (1971), and he followed this one up with Swedish Wildcats ( producer, 1972), and 3D softcore foolishness The Groove Room (director,1975). In 1979, he produced the legendary Nocturna (aka the disco Dracula), and finished his career producing the rarely-seen Love Scenes (1984), which boasted a pretty incredible cast: Tiffany Bolling, Julie Newmar, and Britt Ekland! Who knows where he is now. Probably in Gothenberg somewhere, chasing the maid around the room.

- Ken McIntyre

Sexbomb (1989)

Directed by Jeff Broadstreet
Starring Linnea Quigley, Delia Sheppard, Robert Quarry
Rated R
USA

"When the wolf attacks you, scream your tits off."

Every so often, glossy teen splatter mag Fangoria decides that they're an empire and expand wildly, starting a host of 'new and exciting' projects that they will abandon a year or so later, when they once again sober up to the fact that there's only so many horror-nerd dollars to go around. Just a year or two ago, they were announcing all kinds of crazy shit - a comic book line (dead after a handful of first issues), a television channel (nope), an annual awards show (lame). They went through a similarly bold expansion in the late 1980's, when horror - and heavy metal, and Jolt cola, and monster trucks, and fake tits, and Andrew Dice Clay, and anything else loud, ugly, and obnoxious - was a burning-hot commodity. Jumping on the Freddy-Jason-Leatherface frenzy, Fango divvied up their latex-obsessed coverage into three different magazines: Fangoria, Gorezone, and Toxic Horror. The latter was the sleaziest of the three, but they all basically covered the same ground, as did two other short-lived rivals, Slaughterhouse and Horror Fan. I read them all, because I was a teenage horror-obsessed dirtbag, baby, and all I really remember about 'em is that all of them pimped Sexbomb to the fuckin' moon. There were two reasons for this, and both of them were bolted onto Delia Sheppard's chest.


It did help that the film is a horror-flick spoof, and that it co-stars a right-off-the-bat topless Linnea Quigley (so hot at the time that the credits just list her as "Linnea"...like Madonna! Or, uh... Charo!) and a handful of tongue-in-cheek gore effects, but trust me when I tell you that the splatter-nation was stroked and primed for a good year about the coming of Delia Sheppard, a top-heavy, blindingly beautiful new sensation straight outta Denmark, a Penthouse Pet turned softcore siren, the scream queen to end all scream queens. Who, after all, could compete with lungs that large?


Well, it was all for nothin', really. All those magazines, save for Fango itself, soon folded. All that bullshit 80's excess, the Freddy fingers and mud-wrestling and Dokken, it was all kaput by the early 1990's. Blame it on Kurt Cobain. Everybody else does. As for Sexbomb, it didn't even get a proper release until 2003 and by then, well, the buzz had severely diminished. But let us not judge this film on the merits of this modern, digital age, because it was not made for times like these. It was made for hormonal werewolves with VCRs who would never have to ask, "Linnea who?"


Speaking of Linnea, her perky, teacup tits are the very first thing you see as Sexbomb opens. She runs around a sofa in her skivvies, getting chased by a dude with a jockstrap on his head. It's just another day in the life of Phoebe Love, scream queen at large, currently shooting a slice n' dice flick called "I Rip Your Flesh With Pliers, Part 2". When the scene finishes, the director sends Linnea off to get fitted for "tearaway nipples." Ouch.

You want plot? Well, I can offer a wisp, at least. King Faraday (Robert 'Count Yorga' Quarry) is the loudmouth, cigar-chomping producer of Rip Your Flesh. A cheap and vindictive man, he shows up on set and begins cutting corners, firing, among other people, Lou Lurrod (Stuart Benton), the script consultant. Lou crumples and limps off the set, a broken man with no prospects and no future. Into his life vavooms Candy (Delia Sheppard), King Farady's trophy wife (in other words, erm, 'Queen Farady'. Say it out loud, and then groan). It should be mentioned right here that Delia was well worth the hype. It helps, of course, that she is either nude or poured into a pink tube-dress for most of the film's running time, but her stunning, Jayne Mansfield-esque curves are a true marvel to behold. She's so absurdly attractive, it's almost painful to look at her.
Anyway, she wants out of her marriage with the old grouch, and the only way she can do it while continuing to enjoy her lavish lifestyle is, naturally, to kill him. So, using her considerable feminine charms, she ropes Lou into her web of intrigue.


Lou gets hired back onto the shoot when King mistakes him for Candy's hairdresser. I know that doesn't make any sense, but roll with it. He gets an assignment to write a film called Werewolves in Heat. Candy spends the rest of Sexbomb trying to kill her husband; Lou spends it either fucking Candy, or trying to stop her from killing her husband. Somewhere in there, there's a werewolf rape scene.


Eventually, King goes missing. Porn legend Veronica Hart (credited here as Kathryn Stanleigh) is King Farady's daughter, who suspects a plot is afoot. There's some weird fucker in a Dashiki involved, as well. I dunno, it's hard to pay attention when Sheppard has her shirt off so often.

By the way, the Sexbomb DVD has a fantastic, rambling commentary track from Sheppard, Linnea, and Robert Quarry. Delia says stuff like, "You know, some people will buy your clothes after you've worn them. Even one stocking. Even if it's ripped!" Linnea tries her best to keep the conversation on track, but its mostly hopeless.
At one point, they're watching a very Scooby Doo-esque scene where Linnea gets chased by the jockstrap guy while some band plays a song on the soundstage.
"I still have that bra, and that belt, and that skirt," Linnea says,
"And the filling," croaks Quarry. That guy is fucking awesome.


Anyway, there's a scene where the Dashiki mobster dude and his muscle-chick girlfriend are carrying on, and he gets a call from the presumably dead King Faraday. It is at this point that I realize I no longer have any idea what's going on. I switch on the commentary for some clarity, and Sheppard is saying, "I don't really get who this character is. What's he supposed to be doing?"

And she was in the movie.

In summation: the sophisticated twenty-first century viewer will, within three minutes, Google "Delia Sheppard nude scenes", and call it a night. But the VCR werewolves from 1989? They will howl in delirious lupine lust and wish, with all of their wolfbane-cursed hearts, that Kurt Cobain never makes that fuckin' record. Sexbomb truly is the last gasp of the 1980's, a glorious, self-referential mess that blusters, roars, and strips down at every opportunity, an eager-to-please bit of pop culture flotsam that will be worshipped as a campy masterpiece about five minutes after we're all dead.


PS: Director Jeff Broadstreet went on to direct the universally loathed Night of the Living Dead 3D in 2006. As of this writing, he appears to be directing a remake of Spider Baby (!). Linnea decided to start adding "Quigley" to her credits again after this film. She is still adorable and still the go-to scream queen. Delia Sheppard did not become the cult icon we thought she would, but that is neither our fault nor hers. Again, it's probably Nirvana's. She continues to act in television shows and major Hollywood productions - hell, she was 'Trophy wife to George Wendt' in 2007's Larry the Cable Guy's Christmas Spectacular, and you can't get much more high-profile than that - but lately, it seems like a lot her appearances have gone uncredited. Perhaps she should try pouring herself back into that pink tube-dress for her next audition. It sure the fuck would work on me.


Links: Delia Sheppard
Linnea Quigley

Availability: Sexbomb is available on DVD.
Buy Sexbomb at Amazon.
-Ken McIntyre