Schoolgirls Growing Up

Schoolgirl Report #3 (1972)

*** (out of 4)

The third of twelve films in the German Schulmadchen-Report series ran into a ton of controversy when it went to be released on American DVD early in 2008. The subject matter for this third film was too hot for the DVD distributor so the release ended up getting pulled and could only be sold at one online store. Months later an edited version was released but this review is for the uncut, international version running the complete 96-minutes (whereas the cut version is at 76-minutes). If you've seen the first two films then you know what to expect as this series tries to pass itself off as an educational movie warning parents about what their teenagers might be doing in regards to various sexual situations. We get the typical stories of girls sneaking out to have sex, younger girls going after older men and even a Romeo and Juliet type story but the controversial ones are going to be the most talked about. The first of the big three has a girl getting gang raped in her school bathroom but the adult won't believe her and instead he scares her into prostitution. The next story has a teenage girl catching her father in bed with another woman because her mother is ill and away in a hospital. Wanting to keep her father with her mother, the girl decides to start sleeping with her dad. The third of these "bad" stories centers on a 15-year-old girl who sees her older sister having sex and it gets her interested so she sneaks into the shower with her 10-year-old cousin. OK, the first two stories don't bother me too bad because you expect that sort of nastiness when it comes to exploitation, which this series is. If someone actually believes these are "learning" movies then I guess you will be shocked. The third story with the young kids is the one I have no problems with it being cut out. It's obvious both kids are underage and that the boy hasn't even hit puberty. Seeing them to "playing around", even though there's never any real touching, is just too creepy to watch. Perhaps I'm being a hypocrite because I loved Fat Girl, which features young nudity and I've seen Child Bride but those two films do talk about the subject in a serious way. This film here is meant to be fun and what I saw there wasn't fun. With that said, I still enjoyed the movie overall as we get sexy stories, stupid interviews with people off the street and countless other sexploitation scenes that come off fresh even in the third film. I've got nine more to go through but I must admit that I'm looking forward to each and everyone of them.