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Julchen Und Jettchen
Released by: Ascot Elite
Released on: August 12th, 2014.
Director: Erwin C. Dietrich
Cast: Brigitte Lahaie, Roman Huber, Elodie Delage, Jane Baker, Flore Sollier
Year: 1980
Purchase From Diabolik DVD
The Movie:
Better known to North American audiences as Amorous Sisters, Erwin C. Dietrich's 1980 film Julchen Und Jettchen doesn't break any new ground but it does fit nicely alongside the other sexploitation pictures he was cranking out around this time. It features quite a few of his regular cast members and offers up a breezy and entertaining mix of sex and laughs.
The plot follows two young ladies, Jenny (Brigitte Lahaie) and Juliet (Flore Sollier) who, along with a few other buxom young ladies, attend an all-girls boarding school somewhere in a remote European town. Here they learn under the tutelage of a woman named Mademoiselle Blanche (Barbara Moose) who would seem to be the school's only teacher and apparently the only class anyone actually bothers with is sex education, but hey, they all have a good time. When not spending their days in class, the girls frequently spend their nights fooling around either solo or with each other, occasionally sneaking a boyfriend into the dorm at night for a bit of extra fun.
There's more to it than that though - the girls also indulge in physical education, their training involving running naked through the woods in slow motion with butterfly nets for some reason. Meanwhile, outside the school, an albino hunk (Mike Montana) has puzzlingly lost the ability to please his wife (Jane Baker) in the bedroom. Thankfully for him, Jenny and Juliet sneak out of school just in time to learn of this, at which point they come up with a devious plan to help fix his problem.
As is typical with Dietrich's sexploitation pictures from this era, Julchen Und Jettchen is light on plot and works better as a series of sexy vignettes than any sort of serious narrative but it is really nicely shot and does a great job of taking advantage of its fancy Swiss locations. The film is a very colorful one and features top notch cinematography though portions of its score are recycled from other Dietrich endeavors and will definitely sound familiar to those who know his output.
Of course, as nice as the mountain ranges and historical buildings are to look at, the female scenery on display is the real reason most are going to be interesting in this film in the first place. The movie doesn't disappoint on that level, as Lahaie and Sollier are both fantastic looking here. Add Jane Baker to the mix and the puzzlingly named Barbara Moose too and you've got a pretty untouchable roster of Eurocult sex starlets all doing their thing - the lovely Nadine Pascal shows up here too, and she's nothing to sneeze at either.
The movie has a whole lot in common with the infamous Six Swedes series that Dietrich was behind and doesn't really try to differentiate itself from those films that much, but it does what it does quite well. Fans of Dietrich's sexploitation pictures will enjoy this one, regardless of how original it may or may not seem.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Julchen Und Jettchen arrives on Blu-ray from Ascot Elite in AVC encoded 1080p high definition framed at 1.85.1 widescreen. This is a decent upgrade compared to the DVD release that also came from Ascot Elite some years back. The elements used for the transfer were in very nice shape and there isn't much in the way of serious print damage to complain about at all. Grain is obvious but never distracting and there are no issues with noise reduction or edge enhancement at all. Detail is quite strong throughout the movie but sometimes the colors look just a little bit flat and a little bit faded. Black levels are closer to a really dark grey than a true black, but they're not bad. Skin tones are natural and warm looking and texture is pretty good too.
Audio options are provided German and English DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio as well as German Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono, there are no subtitles provided. The English audio here is fine, really only spreading out the score and keeping most of the other bits of the mix up in the front and center channel. No issues with any hiss or distortion to note and the levels are well balanced.
Extras include the lengthy twenty-five minute featurette entitled Peter Baumgartner, Filmkameramann (worth watching even with the language barrier for the plethora of behind the scenes photos) that also appeared on the Gefangene Frauen disc, this time with subtitles. This is a really interesting look back at Peter Baumgartner's career behind the camera working on plenty of different projects over the years. Here he talks about the influence of Italian art films, his first meeting with Erwin C. Dietrich, cutting his teeth on Sexy Baby (the first feature he worked on), how he occasionally directed some scenes on the movies he worked on as well as what it was like working with some of the cast members that appeared in the pictures he was involved with, Klaus Kinski being one of them. He also talks about acting alongside Lina Romay and making films for Dietrich with Karine Gambier and Brigitte Lahaie. Lucky bastard.
Aside from that, we get a trailer for the feature, trailers for a few other Erwin C. Dietrich titles available on Blu-ray from Ascot-Elite (Ich - Ein Groupie, Die Sklavinnen, Jack The Ripper, Downtown, Die Stewardessen and Die Teuflishcnen Schwestern), a still gallery, menus and chapter selection.
Once again, for the BD-Rom equipped, if you pop the disc into your drive you'll have access the same thirty-six page text interview with Dietrich from an issue of a German fanzine called Splatting Image and the rare one hundred and ninety seven page book on Dietrich's films, Mädchen, Machos und Moneten: die unglaubliche Geschichte des Schweizer Kinounternehmers Erwin C. Dietrich. It's all in German but these are nice additions to the release (and duplicated on all of the discs in the line so far). Additionally, the Blu-ray case fits inside a lenticular slipcover that basically features the same artwork.
The Final Word:
Julchen Und Jettchen is a fun sexploitation picture that's nicely shot, features some great locations and showcases its genuinely beautiful female cast members very well indeed. It's not deep but it is quite humorous and Ascot Elite's Blu-ray presentation is a good one.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
