SCHOOLGIRL REPORT VOL. #12: IF MOM ONLY KNEW… (1978)
Director: Walter Boos
Impulse Pictures

Impulse Pictures files the twelfth volume of the SCHOOLGIRL REPORT for fans who want to know more of what German schoolgirls get up to between classes.

The five teenage members of the school newspaper have to stay after class to see to the overflow of responses to their query of letters to the editor in response to the question: "In today's world, can a girl still be called a girl?" Each student presents a letter starting with the story of young Anne who has fostered an attraction to her pilot brother Helmut (Claus Tinney, SCHOOLGIRL REPORT 11) – fifteen years her senior – who has raised her since their mother died in childbirth and their father distanced himself from her until his own death. The seemingly mutual attraction smolders until the pair run into Helmut's stewardess ex-wife making a spectacle of herself with an American pilot. The taboo relationship is consummated, but not without consequences (mirrored by a class discussion of Lord Byron and his Gothic poem "Manfred"). On a lighter note, the story of Barbara (Gudrun Grau) finds her on a class trip to the countryside to observe the animal behavior. She is reluctant to go all the way with boyfriend Heiner (Stefan Wiesehöfer) – her only knowledge of the male form comes from art class – until she and her friends observe a pair of locals mating like rabbits "boar style" in the bushes. This not only gets her hot and bothered but also the entire class who take off to convenient haystacks and bushes to the bewilderment of their chaperones. On a more politically incorrect note, the story of Gabi (Johanna Ebertseder, SEXY WIVES) finds the naïve girl dragged by her mother (Helena Rosenkranz, SCHOOLGIRL REPORT 7) to the doctor's office for her migraines which keep her away from class. Unfortunately, they have come a day early and mistake young plumber Herbert Ballermann (Michel Jacot, SELF SERVICE GIRLS) – playing dress-up in lab coat and spectacles – for the highly recommended Dr. Meisentopf (Wolf Harnisch, SEX IN THE OFFICE); and he's only too happy to inspect her pipes using the highly unorthodox "Ballermann Method".

Poor Etta (Ginny Noack, PLAYGIRLS OF MUNICH) can't figure out whether she's a "nymphomaniac or just insanely horny". With her father in rehab since the suicide of her prodigy brother (the handheld POV discovery of the body looks like something out of a giallo), the sight of her mother fooling around with various strange men sends Etta into a frenzy of masturbation until she hooks up with rich classmate Paul (Sascha Atzenbeck, SO DEEP, SO GOOD) who turns her on to motorcycle sex and heroin, turning his "hump pad" into a brothel so that she can support her habit (the editors of the paper would like to help her but the letter is signed "Anonymous", despite the fact that she introduced herself as Etta in the narration at the start of the vignette). The final story finds daddy Ottokar (Ulrich Beiger, THE GREAT ESCAPE) shocked and daughter Dina pleasantly surprised when French exchange student Niki turns out to be not a girl but a virile jock (Willy Adler). Ottokar wants to put him on the next train back to Paris, but Dina's mother (Eva Berthold, WOMEN IN HOSPITAL) has her way (after daddy pushes an armoire in front of the connecting passage between the youths' bedrooms. Dina tries to get Niki to notice her, and had to significantly step up her game when classmate "Betty the Beast" (Margitta Hofer) makes a play for him.

Stronger on nudity than actual sex scenes – although it seems as though the camera or the editor intentionally elides the scene rather than any censorship imposed on the finished film – SCHOOLGIRL REPORT 12 has the moral that the schoolgirls of today are the same as those of previous generations. They are growing up in a more liberated time, but they will eventually take their roles in society (presumably the conservative definition). At this point in the series, it appears that the stories – variations upon ones in earlier entries as usual – are just tossed together under a flimsy framing device rather than designed to be particularly illustrative of the moral. I wouldn't exactly call the twelfth film better or worse than any of the previous entries, although it really doesn't have any standout story (like the hilarious EXORCIST parody of part ten), the but more downbeat stories are the better ones here. Impulse Pictures' single-layer, anamorphic widescreen (1.66:1) DVD comes from a rather poor-looking source; more so than some of the other entries, more suggestive of the rights owner's preservation of their assets than Impulse's mastering. Besides looking typically soft like an upscaled tape master, there are black splotches, vertical scratches, and the occasional missing frame (which seems more like print damage than salacious frames removed for the projectionist's collection). The German Dolby Digital 2.0 track is monophonic with the exception of the opening titles theme music of Gert Wilden which is in stereo (presumably a recent augmentation by the rights owners as seen on other series entries), while the optional English subtitles are free of any grammatical or spelling errors. (Eric Cotenas)

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