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Released by: Ascot-Elite
Released on: November 18th, 2014.
Director: Erwin C. Dietrich
Cast: Peter Graf, Ingrid Steeger, Nadia Pil
Year: 1971
Purchase From Diabolik DVD
The Movie:
Written and directed by Erwin C. Dietrich and kinda-sorta very loosely based on Alexandre Dumas' classic novel, Die Sex-Abenteuer Der Drei Musketeiere (The Sex Adventures Of The Three Musketeers) begins with a scene in which a young man named D'Artagnan (Peter Graf) rows his boat down the river in a serene forest. As he does this, he's mooned by two randy local wenches. Shortly after that, a beautiful blonde named Yvonne (Ingrid Steeger) raises her top to him, giggles and waves. He pulls his boat ashore but before she can make her move, an older woman convinces him to lay back and let her do all the work. He obliges as Yvonne scowls at them on the other side of the river.
From here, D'Artagnan carries on an affair with lovely Yvonne, a distraction on his way to join up with the Three Musketeers - Aramis (Achim Hammer), Porthos (Jurg Coray) and Athos (Thomas Larisch). Now you'd likely expect those Musketeers to be doing battle with whatever evil may rear its head, to help out the king in time of need or generally just serve the greater good, right? These guys aren't into that. What they are into is hanging out in the local bar telling strange stories about the sex games of a group of monks that they spied on (which we see in flashback, and as it has nothing to do with the actual narrative you have to wonder if Dietrich swiped this from another movie or just recycled footage shot for a canned project? Who knows!). A few bar maids hang off of them and then later coerce them into bed. D'Artagnan, however, finds himself involved not only with Yvonne but then later with a dark haired beauty as well, causing him to lament 'My days were full of blonde sunshine, and my nights of black haired night' or some such nonsense.
Will our hero be able to keep it in his pants long enough to meet up with the Musketeers or is he doomed to live out the rest of his live in sexual servitude to a plethora of Euro-babes?
This one gets trashed a lot even by the admittedly low standards of fans of goofy European softcore films, but that's not necessarily fair. Yeah, fine, the story is nothing to write home about, in fact there isn't much of a story at all, but the scenes with the naked monks running around in a circle are bizarre enough to stand out and even if all Steeger does is stand around and get naked… who in their right mind is really going to complain about that? The actual Musketeers are amusing to listen to as the boast about whatever is they do to the bar maids and while the plot isn't going to hold up to any scrutiny, you'd be mad to scrutinize a plot for a film like this in the first place.
As is typical with Dietrich's films he got all of his ducks in a row as far as the production values go. There are some wonderfully ornate locations used throughout the movie and the costumes are nice too. Things actually feel fairly authentic in this regard, at least until we see the Musketeers riding horseback in close up - it's hard not to notice that not only are they not riding actual horses, but nothing in the background is moving at all! The camerawork is slick, the score is nice and appropriately lively and the cast all seem to be enjoying themselves. It's nothing more than light, sexy, superficial entertainment but for some of us, there's a time and a place for that. This fits the bill just fine when those stars align.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The Sex Adventures Of The Three Musketeers arrives on Blu-ray from Ascot Elite in AVC encoded 1080p high definition framed at 1.78.1 widescreen. This is a pretty strong upgrade over the previous 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, just a few specks here and there. Grain is obvious but never distracting and there are no issues with noise reduction or edge enhancement at all. There are a few stock footage inserts that stand out and don't look quite as clean as the footage shot specifically for the film, but that's a minor issue and just part and parcel for films that incorporate stock footage. Detail is very 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. All in all, this is another impressive transfer from Ascot-Elite.
Audio options are provided German and English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio and German and French Dolby Digital 2.0. While the 5.1 mix doesn't have the most directionality you're ever going to here, it does occasionally spread the score around a bit. Dialogue is well balanced and easy to understand and there are no issues with any hiss or distortion to note. There are a couple of lines early in the film that were not dubbed into English - those lines appear in German but when the English track is enabled subtitles do pop up automatically to translate those few lines.
The main supplement for the feature is a sit down interview with Raphael Britten who played 'Kardinel' in the feature. He's joined by Dietrich to talk about the movie but it's all in German with no subtitles so it's tough to understand what's being said. They do talk about Steeger though, at least from the looks of things, as some nice stills of her are used to illustrate this piece. A trailer is included for the feature as well as trailers for a few other Erwin C. Dietrich films available on Blu-ray from Ascot-Elite. Also on hand is 'Cinestop - Le Piccanti Avventure Dei Tre Moschettieri' which is a digital reproduction of a vintage photo comic made up of black and white stills from the film. No subtitles, sadly, but it's neat to see this and a nice addition to the disc.
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:
Die Sex-Abenteuer Der Drei Musketeiere is a whole lot of sexy softcore fun - it doesn't always make a whole lot of sense but it has such a playful attitude about it that you can't help but have a good time with it. The fact that the beautiful Ms. Steeger gets a lot of screen time in this helps a lot too! As to the Blu-ray, outside of the fact that there are no English subtitles for the interview, it's a good one. The transfer is quite strong and the presentation overall is very good.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
