Saturday, January 20, 2018

Dagmar’s Hot Pants, Inc. (1971)



Softcore sex comedy Dagmar’s Hot Pants, Inc. was produced by a consortium of American, Danish, and Swedish companies, filmed in English, and released stateside with an X-rating. Weirdly, the film later became part of the MGM library (primarily, it appears, for streaming purposes), so that means in two different decades, American movie executives thought American audiences wanted to see this thing. Such is and was the mysterious power of the porno-chic period, or else why would a disposable 1971 skin flick remain available for viewing in 2018? Oh, well. Dagmar (Diana Kjaer) is a Copenhagen prostitute about to quit the business, so the movie tracks her frenetic final day as a working girl. Between making arrangements to sell her apartment and relocate, she services several clients, doing everything from deflowering a shy young man to enduring the overzealous ministrations of a chubby orchestra conductor. Despite a few meager attempts at character development, this is strictly lightweight fare for the heavy-breathing crowd. To give a sense of what the movie offers, the wittiest scene features Dagmar calling fellow hookers for help with a busy schedule, only to get polite refusals from one girl who says “I’m just too beat” (while getting whipped), from another who says “I’m all tied up” (while she’s actually bound), from a third who says “I’m dead tired” (while screwing inside a coffin), and so on. Just as Kjaer’s confident portrayal suggests she could have handled real dramatic scenes, the almost-imaginative comic bits suggest cowriter/director Vernon P. Becker could have edged further into outright farce. Instead, they made tepid smut.

Dagmar’s Hot Pants, Inc.: LAME

2 comments:

Booksteve said...

Were Strauss's scenes shot and added just to the US version, then?

I have a tape I recorded off the radio in 1972 that includes a radio ad for this movie!

By Peter Hanson said...

Sure seems to me that Strauss shot his scenes during principal photography. His character is important to the plot (though I use that word loosely) and his bug-eyed mugging dominates the first 20 or so minutes of the flick. While some of the European performers were obviously re-voiced for US release, my best guess is that the other tweaks were limited to trimming chatty scenes in order to focus on flesh, as per the norm when transporting Continental erotica. Strangely, everything I've read (admittedly, just a few pieces online) indicates the picture was shot in English, though it wouldn't surprise me to learn that foreign-language takes for certain scenes were also filmed to please domestic audiences in Denmark and Sweden.