Around the World with Fanny Hill

Mac Ahlberg's AROUND THE WORLD WITH FANNY HILL tries very hard to be funny, in the vein of European sex comedies of which the Germans were leaders in the early 1970s. It fails to create the desired yocks, but with beautiful girls on display in exotic locations it fills the porn bill.

The film is routine overall but has several highly unusual elements. First it boasts an original English language soundtrack, with excellent synching to the lip movements, especially by stars Shirley Corrigan and Bo Brundin. A relatively big budget was assigned, with impressive globe-hopping locations ranging from Germany and Venice to Hollywood and Hong Kong.

Lastly, the English-track print recently released on DVD by Klubb Super 8 in Sweden includes explicit hardcore footage of fellatio and intercourse during a German orgy sequence near the end of the movie. This material was definitely excised for the U.S. release, which I caught at a drive-in back in the '70s.

Ahlberg would soon turn to making hardcore films like BEL AMI, JUSTINE AND JULIETTE and probably his most effective work, THE SECOND COMING OF EVA. He ended up in Hollywood as a successful cameraman, mainly turning out cheapies for Charles Band. His cinematographer on this FANNY HILL outing, Mikael Salomon, did him one better by becoming a Hollywood director and also photographing some very big-budget movies like Ron Howard's 70MM "Far and Away", James Cameron's "The Abyss" and Spielberg's "Always".