The Movie:

Rife with nudity yet devoid of much actual sex, 1971's Dagmar's Hot Pants Inc., directed by Vernon P. Becker, was an American/European co-production that was originally slapped with an X-rating by the MPAA upon its original, domestic theatrical release (it was later acquired by MGM and now carries an R-rating). By modern standards, it seems fairly tame as you'll see more graphic sex on cable TV these days, but the movie remains an amusing sexploitation comedy and is, in its own goofy way, kind of charming.

Set in the Danish capital city of Copenhagen, the picture introduces us to a shapely young woman named Dagmar (Diana Kjaer of Fanny Hill and Do You Believe In Swedish Sin?) who makes a very nice living for herself as a prostitute but who decides that it is time to leave the sex industry for good. While she sets out to sell her apartment so that she can afford to move away from Copenhagen and start anew, she still has to take care of the different Johns who have been making use of her services on the regular. As she goes about her business, she helps a young man lose his virginity, makes time with the local orchestra conductor and struggles to get some of her fellow prostitutes to help cover for her, as they're all, when she calls, indisposed and indulging the various kinks of various clients (a scene as ride with puns as it is topless women).

There really isn't a whole lot of story here, it's just light and breezy sex scenes strung together by an equally light and breezy story that just follows a working girl on what she hopes will be her last day in the business. Most of the humor is corny and misses its mark and the production values aren't anything all that exciting, but those who appreciate goofy, early seventies European sex films will no doubt enjoy this one as well. It's campy, usually intentionally so, with lots of questionable fashions and decorating choices on display, but there's plenty of female eye candy on display throughout the movie, which was clearly the whole point of the film to start with.

Despite the fact that she's clearly dubbed, as is everyone else in the movie from the looks of things, leading lady Diana Kjaer handles the lead role without any trouble. In fact, she's actually pretty good here, bringing an appreciable cheekiness to the part and looking great while she does it. She has good screen presence and Becker clearly had no problem focusing on her looks and taking advantage of the fact that she obviously had no problem doing nudity. Swedish sex pot Inger Sundh, of Flossie and Joseph Sarno's The Seduction OF Inga, also appears in the film alongside fellow Swede Annelie Alexandersson and Danish actress Anne Grete Nissen.

It's also amusing to see Ole Søltoft, a Danish actor who also had a brief singing career who was a stalwart of Danish hard and soft sex films in the seventies probably best known for playing the lead in the series of Agent 69 Jensen films, pop up in this movie as he was also one of the leads in director Vernon P Becker's 1975 sex film, A Man And A Maid (which was also released as The Groove Room). Seemingly incapable of giving a serious performance, Søltoft is a lot of fun to watch as no matter what's happening to the different characters that he played over the years, he always looked like he was having the best time ever. In Dagmar's Hot Pants Inc. he's well cast as Dr. Lennart Peterson and, as you'd expect, really seems to be enjoying his work.

The Video:

Dagmar's Hot Pants Inc. arrives on region free Blu-ray from Code Red in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.85.1 widescreen and taking up 22.5GBs of space on the 25GB disc. Taken from a brand new 2k master, small white specks are common throughout and it does look like more cleanup work could have been done here, but there isn't much print damage outside of that, aside from the odd scratch or two. Colors look good and detail is solid, if rarely reference quality. This looks decent, the expected amount of film grain is retained as it should be, and skin tones, important to a movie like this, look natural as well. There aren't any problems with any noticeable noise reduction or edge enhancement and overall, this looks good, if not amazing.

The Audio:

The only audio option on the disc is an English language 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track, with optional subtitles available in English only. There's a bit of sibilance in a few spots but otherwise the audio sounds pretty good. It's properly balanced with a decent bit of range to it.

The Extras:

The only extra on the disc is a trailer for the feature.

Overall:

Dagmar's Hot Pants Inc. doesn't reinvent the seventies European sex film in any way whatsoever but it offers up lots of skin and sin and occasionally a few laughs and it does feature a pretty nice female cast, clearly its main selling point. Code Red's Blu-ray looks and sounds decent but is light on extras. Still, fans of softcore imports from this era will enjoy this, and if you fall into that admittedly fairly specific demographic, you can consider it recommended.

Ian lives in NYC with his wife where he writes for DVD Talk, runs Rock! Shock! Pop!. He likes NYC a lot, even if it is expensive and loud.