Liebesvögel (1979) Poster

(1979)

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6/10
Blink and you'll miss Biggi
Wolfgang_Rodenbach1 December 2009
Warning: Spoilers
During a hazy pre-credits sequence, Peter Wohlers (Rolf Zigan) dreams of having sex scene with Biggi Stenzhorn. Biggi enthusiasts will be sorry to hear that this encounter is very short and truncated. While both Peter and the audience are still wondering if her appearance was real or merely a fantasy on his part, we learn by way of a all-knowing narrator that Peter works at a bank. He is a very shy with the long haired creatures known as women (according to the same narrator). His boss (Horst Sieger) has noticed his recent distractions and orders him to take a week off. Peter decides to visit his friend Frank whom he thinks might help him loose his cherry. But Frank, who's sideburns are part of his enormous mustache, is more interested in having sex with Ginny (Ginny Noack) in another room, leaving Peter to fend on his own.

That night, while Frank is away, Ginny has been instructed to instruct Peter in the ways of love, starting off with a little 69. And although Mr. P proves himself to be a pornographic pro, he fails to reach a climax. Still, the next day the romantic fool still buys Ginny some flowers, only to find her busy in bed again (presumably with Frank, but this is not 100 % certain). Befuddled and confused, Peter ends up in a bar and is immediately picked up by Elsa (Marion Brandmeier). He tries to act butch and claims to be unable to be faithful, but Elsa one-ups him by revealing she is married. He goes home with her and after a night of passion, splits when he finds out she has a young child in the next room. Again he buys her flowers but this time he hears her arguing with her husband and decides not to leave them on her doorstep after all.

Still feeling the urge to experience an orgasm, our hero tries calling various sex adds he finds in the paper and ends up in a brothel run by a madam (Christa Abel) who should never be allowed to wear lingerie in public. Peter immediately reverts to his shy persona but, by this point in the film, it is really hard to muster up any sympathy for his 'shy and inexperienced' shtick after seeing him take part in every previous sexual encounter but one. Obiously by now he knows how to handle himself. And indeed, he manages to tire out both of the available prostitutes (played by Dorle Buchner and an unidentified actress) and again leaves with his head hung low, feeling unsatisfied. The man should really have been proud of being able to go all night and satisfying all those women, but noooooooo.

For a third time, Unser Peter visits the flower shop and finally realizes that the shop attendant (Margitta Hofer) is the girl of his dreams. Naturally the feeling is mutual, and she immediately skips work. They go for a walk before she takes him home for a cup of coffee or two. If you're still reading this you may have noticed that for Seventies Europorn this film actually suffers from an abundance of plot. Most sex scene are preceded by a long and boring set-ups, such as the dance and bathing sequences between Peter and Elsa and then an equally long winded courtship with the flower-shop girl. Also, the attempts at humor (Peter grabbing a ladies fur coat instead of his own) fail to inspire any laughter. But the biggest mistake director Jürgen Enz ever made was to make the first and last sex scene in the picture (with Dream girl Brigitte Stenzhorn and flower girl Margitta Hofer) the shorter and most rushed encounters (this could also be editor Jörg Enz's fault). Anyway, (final spoiler) Peter and Die Floristin both finally climax and live happily ever after. He should have hooked up with Biggi in the end. At least that would have been poetic justice.

6 out of 10
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5/10
Bird in Hand Beats Two in Bush
Nodriesrespect7 January 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Clearly the Bratwurst and Sauerkraut guy of German porn (a Teutonic twist on the meat 'n' potatoes variety of movie-making, just in case I lost you), not exactly the most fertile breeding ground for cinematic creativity to begin with at the best of times, Jürgen Enz signed most of his hardcore endeavors using the alias "Kenneth Howard", a name fornication film fans soon learned to fear. Main reason for this was the director's typically tiresome approach to frantic farce, all too appropriate to his nationality, think sub-standard Benny Hill with lots of pratfalls and people chasing each other, mugging shamelessly to assure even the dimmest of Jerries got the joke. DAS SEXABITUR, KOHLPIESEL'S TÖCHTER, VERBOTENE SPIELE AUF DER SCHULBANK, the list seems endless and feels even longer in actual viewing, as assembly line and cookie cutter as the genre ever gets.

With a script credited to Christoph Walz (I'm assuming this is NOT the similarly spelled Austrian actor and recent Academy Award winner from Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS!), DIE LIEBESVÖGEL proves par for the course, its sole saving grace provided by Günter Lemmer's characteristically colorful bordering on gaudy cinematography desperately cringing to convey good cheer. Its bevy of beautiful if overly made up starlets really deserves better than the constraints of such a career-crippling concoction. Pressed into purely decorative duty, with the sad exception of far side of zaftig Christa Abel once again employed as a facile figure of fun forced to strip down to lingerie (and worse), they supply the eye candy the guys go gaga for, supposedly making Huns heave with laughter. Illustrating the cultural contours that often keep comedy from traveling abroad, I saw this film only yesterday - unfortunately, not for the first time - at the still hanging in there ABC cinema in Brussels, making up a mind-boggling double bill with Roberta Findlay's supremely downbeat MYSTIQUE, and you could hear a pin drop for all the guffaws it generated.

Stalwart stallion Rolf Zigan (familiar from Alan Vydra's HAPPY HOLIDAYS and who resembles a svelte sibling of Siggi Buchner, making a brief appearance for convenient comparison) stars as bank clerk Peter Wohlers, so painfully shy around the fairer sex he has to binge booze himself into a stupor to work up the courage to make his move. This frequently leads to awkward situations waking up next to women he doesn't even recall picking up in the first place, such as the all too briefly glimpsed Biggi Stenzhorn from Hans Billian's profoundly preferable ZIMMERMÄDCHEN MACHEN ES GERN in film's pre-credits sequence. Taking the week off from work to sort out his hang-ups at the behest of his surprisingly sympathetic employer, another thankless turn by middle-aged mucky movie mainstay Horst Sieger (the blind dude oracle from Enz's side-splitting TAGEBUCH EINER SIEBZEHNJÄHRIGEN), Peter makes his way to Munich for a crash course in can't fail seduction techniques from his impressively bewhiskered best buddy Frank (Michael Wagner) who's in the midst of groping gorgeous Ginny Noack, shown to much greater advantage in Navred Reef's stateside if foreign-filmed PLAYGIRLS OF MUNICH.

Married Marion Brandmeier (also in Gunter Otto's PROFESSIONAL JANINE) scratches Peter's itch but thwarts his romantic expectations when she turns out to be a mom as well which instantly renders her off limits in the hopelessly middle class suburbs of '70s Schnitzel skin flicks. A trip to a local brothel yields, apart from Abel's embarrassing cameo, some perfectly passable three-way turmoil - albeit labored rather than lustful - courtesy of the delectable Dorle Buchner from Michel Caputo's big budget WILD PLAYGIRLS and an uncredited performer also in SEXABITUR. This encounter doesn't quite cut it either for our hard to please Peter, play for pay apparently too disheartening a prospect to put up with (cue more German bourgeois hypocrisy), his innate gentlemanly nature costing him a small fortune in "thanks, but no thanks" floral arrangements purchased from pretty bouquet boutique proprietress Margitta Höfer, another Billian beauty seen in both ROSEMARIE'S SCHLECKERLAND and AUS DEM TAGEBUCH DER JOSEFINE MUTZENBACHER. No prizes for guessing that this hardworking good girl (Gott im Himmel, I rest my case...) will turn out to be Peter's true lurve, although slipshod editing reduces their eventual union to little more than an afterthought.
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