German exploitation
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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This page concerns German exploitation films and other forms of German culture that may be perceived as "exploitation". It includes cultural artifacts from Germany, as well as German speaking countries.
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Literature: Groschenroman
Despite the lack of respect from the literary establishment, various series in Germany have succeeded in achieving almost cult status. These include the classics Buffalo Bill, Rolf Torring, Nat Pinkerton or, later, the science fiction series Perry Rhodan, the crime series about FBI agent Jerry Cotton, for which several films were also made, or the ghost detective John Sinclair.
Well-known authors who first earned their money with magazine novels and whose names have now gained notoriety in other contexts are: Wolfgang Hohlbein, Karl May, Hedwig Courths-Mahler and Horst Bosetzky.
German cinema in the sixties
The majority of films produced in the Federal Republic in the 1960s were genre works: westerns, especially the series of movies adapted from Karl May's popular genre novels which starred Pierre Brice as the Apache Winnetou and Lex Barker as his white blood brother Old Shatterhand; thrillers and crime films, notably a series of Edgar Wallace movies in which Klaus Kinski, Heinz Drache, Wolfgang Völz, and Joachim Fuchsberger were among the regular players; and softcore sex films, both the relatively serious Aufklärungsfilme (sex education films) of Oswalt Kolle and such exploitation films as Schulmädchen-Report (Schoolgirl Report) (1970) and its successors. Such movies were commercially successful and often enjoyed international distribution, but won little acclaim from critics.
Sex comedies and sex reports
Early years of German pornography began with the softcore film Graf Porno und seine Mädchen (Count Porno and his girls) in 1968. The movie's success (more than 3 million admissions) lead to a whole series of films that was and is referred to in German media as the Sexwelle (sex wave). The most well known film of this period is Schulmädchen-Report: Was Eltern nicht für möglich halten (The School-Girl Report, what the parents don't believe possible) by Ernst Hofbauer in 1970. The sex scenes had become bolder with time and by 1975, when the legal ban of pornography was lifted, the era of German hardcore pornography began.
Bavarian porn
Director Hans Billian was the protagonist of the period and the films were usually in line with the so-called "Bavarian porn sex comedies", often depicting male performers as comic characters, like Sepp Gneißl in Kasimir der Kuckuckskleber (1977). This era was also characterised by several Josephine Mutzenbacher films.
Films
- Horrors of Spider Island (1960) - Fritz Böttger
- Schulmädchen-Report (1970) - Ernst Hofbauer
See also
- German culture, exploitation culture, Schundliteratur, German pornography, German erotica, German horror, Sauerkraut Westerns
- Aufklärungsfilm
- German erotica
- Groschenroman
- Erwin C. Dietrich
- Wolf C. Hartwig
- Klaus Kinski
- Oswalt Kolle
- Edgar Wallace films
- sex report films
