EI continues to pump out some interesting seventies softcore titles and while the Sarno and the Nick Philips titles have thus far been the highlights in their Retro-Seduction Cinema titles, this pairing of one of their older releases (2069: A Sex Odyssey) and a vintage title new to DVD for the first time (Run, Virgin, Run packs a whole lot of goofy, sleazy, entertainment value into one nice little package. While certainly not for all tastes and far too soft to appeal to those looking for truer, harder smut, fans of drive-in era nudity should find a lot to like about these two films.

2069: A Sex Odyssey:

Shot in Germany in 1974 by Georg Tressler and presented here dubbed into English, this one tells the story of a group of five gorgeous alien women from Venus who need to harvest the, ahem, 'seed' of Earth men to bring back to their home planet which needs the virile juices of their kind to do something of great importance that somehow fuels the planet. Because this material is in such short supply up there on Venus where there are no Earth men, they're in need of not just a test tube or two worth but enough to keep things rockin' for roughly ten thousand years.

At first the girls are unsure how to attract the men of Earth to get what they need from them. Wandering around clad in strange silver space suits they stand out, but thankfully, standing out manages to get them some of the attention they want. Before you can say cheap and easy, these space girls are bedding one gullible earthling after another and it seems like their mission is going to be a success. The man who inhabit the small town that they land in automatically assume for some reason that the girls from Venus are actually members of the French ski-team, and therefore, they're fair game.

While some of the jokes work better than others, 2069 proves to be a fun romp through seventies Europe, sexploitation style. The plot mainly exists to get us from one writhing, nubile bump and grind session to the next but the premise is silly enough that it's an enjoyable trip. Performance wise we're not really looking at anything spectacular here but the girls all look really good which in this type of film is quite honestly the only thing that really matters. The dialogue is pretty dumbed down so it doesn't take much of an actress to be able to deliver them and when the film is dubbed anyway, the girls might as well be reading out of the phone book for all we know.

In terms of production values, well, the camera work does do a nice job of capturing the small European locations on which the film was shot. Everything is framed nicely and the village is pretty and scenic. The space suits that the girls wear are incredibly cheap looking and they clash really loudly against the location but that was probably the point and it does make for some funny moments.

Is this a classic? No, not by any stretch but it is a fun eighty minutes of completely unnecessary gratuitous nudity, bad jokes, cringe worthy puns, silly dubbing, horrible costumes, and reasonably steamy gals running around in the buff. In short, you could do a lot worse.

Run, Virgin, Run:

This 1970 offering from Hans Billian, the mastermind behind such seventies euro cult softcore funnies as I Like Girls Who Do and The Swingin' Pussycats is a nice film to double bill 2069 with as it proves to be more of the same – goofy, sexy, and fun.

According to the legend in a small town somewhere in Europe, every once in a while a magical wind that has come to be known as 'the Faun' blows through the area and brings with it a renewed sense of stamina for the men who live there. This results in a whole lot of happy wives and girlfriends in the area, as well as a whole lot of babies.

What most of the men don't realize is that the legend is a crock, and it's all been made up by the women of the town who are only too happy to fool around on their husbands and boyfriend behind their backs while they're off working. Most of the children aren't from the husbands, but from one single solitary male citizen, the studly young man named Michael Horn (Joav Jasinksi). The ladies are lining up to be with this guy and he's happy to serve them all, one per night.

Of course as things progress, a few monkey wrenches are tossed liberally into the works and there are a couple of twists towards the end, but yeah, basically, this movie is ninety minutes of Michael taking care of business. Again, as with 2069, there's some very funny (unintentional?) humor in the film resulting from the dubbing, the completely cheesy dialogue and the preposterous situations that Michael finds himself in time after time.

As with any softcore or sexploitation film the real reason to watch this film is for the lovely ladies who populate the cast. Thankfully, Run, Virgin, Run is completely up to par in that department, each of the ladies a true looker in the classic sense. In terms of plot, this one is slightly more advanced than the first feature but that honestly isn't saying much at all, it's still pretty simple, but again, it's effective enough for what it is and there are no false pretenses as far as what the film is trying to do. It exists to give us a few laughs and to titillate. Mentally stimulating it isn't, but really, were you expecting that in the first place?

Video:

Both films are presented in what one can only assume is their original aspect ratio of 1.33.1. Compositions look to be intact and the framing seems fine for each, and thankfully, the presentations that the movies get aren't half bad. There's some minor print damage and some moderate to heavy grain in a few scenes but for the most part the image is clean enough and color reproduction, though slightly faded, isn't bad either. Fine detail gets a little lost in some of the softer scenes but overall things are pretty crisp. Black levels are moderate to strong and there aren't any problems with the digital transfer in terms of mpeg compression artifacts or edge enhancement and only a slight bit of aliasing shows up to rear its ugly head now and then. Both movies look good.