UNDERCOOKED HAMBURG

Always make sure your sexploitation is heated to the proper temperature.

“Eros center,” or sometimes “eroscenter,” is a term used in Germany to refer to a street or building where sex is for sale. Every major city has one. We wrote about Cologne’s eros center Pascha a long while back. In Hamburg, the eros center is a street known as the Herbertstraße, which is where some of the action in Eros-Center Hamburg takes place.

Gunter Hendel directed and stars as a journalist who arrives in town to interview eros center prostitutes just as a knife killer begins terrorizing the district. We know even before we see Hendel practicing karate that he’s going to be the hero here. But Eros-Center Hamburg is supposed to be a sexploitation movie, so how does it fare on that front? Sadly, not well.

We remember reading somewhere that Hendel clashed with his producer over Eros-Center‘s sexual content. He managed to keep it down to a few bare bosoms and asses, which suggests he saw the film not as sexploitation but as a vehicle to promote himself as a serious director, a screen star, or both. He must have been smoking something imported from Amsterdam, because he’s a terrible director and a charisma challenged actor.

The truth is the only reason we watched this movie is because the angel who goes by the earthly name Doris Arden is in it, but she makes a criminally early exit thanks to the slasher and our attention bled out at that point too. There are some hilarious moments, but overall we suggest you save yourself the time. Eros-Center Hamburg premiered in West Germany today in 1969.

Hey Gunter, can I get some lip balm for this scene? I’m all dried out.

Don’t worry, sweetie. I’ve got extra. Just lean down here and pucker up.

West Germany, Hamburg, Cologne, Eros-Center Hamburg, Erotic Center, Doris Arden, Christiane Lange, Gunter Hendel, poster art, cinema, prostitution, sexploitation, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 12

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

February 12

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

February 11

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

February 10

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

February 9

1960—Woodward Gets First Star on Walk of Fame

Actress Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Los Angeles sidewalk at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that serves as an outdoor entertainment museum. Woodward was one of 1,558 honorees chosen by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when the proposal to build the sidewalk was approved. Today the sidewalk contains more than 2,800 stars.

February 9

1971—Paige Enters Baseball Hall of Fame

Satchel Paige becomes the first player from America’s Negro Baseball League to be voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Paige, who was a pitcher, played for numerous Negro League teams, had brief stints in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Major Leagues, before finally retiring in his mid-fifties.