Love Swedish Style (1972)

Based on a news article about a noted Detroit car designer who hired a beautiful girl from Sweden as his maid. In this story, Inga travels to California where she hops from one employer to the next as she's constantly getting in trouble for her unhibited sexuality.

In Sweden, we meet Inga Johanson (Karen Ciral).

She's introduced to a socially awkward american

Larry invites her to his room. He offers her pills to relax, but she says she doesn't need to relax.

They have sex. As soon as they're done, Inga gets dressed and is on her way.

She is headed to the U.S.A.

The chauffeur takes Inga from the airport to the home in California where she'll be working.

Inga is introduced to her new employer, Mrs. Jean Goodman (Ginger Madden).

Jean shows her the kitchen and introduces her to her twelve year old son Myron.

Myron immediately pictures Inga without her clothes on.

The Goodmans host a cocktail party around the pool. Dr. Larry Becker (Ted Roter), a psychiatrist, is smitten by this new house servant from Scandanavia.

Becker gives Inga his business card with his home address. She visits him several weeks later.

She tells Becker that she was fired when Mrs. Goodman caught her husband ogling her by the pool. She got a job as a masseuse but was arrested for providing sexual services to a customer. So, Becker gets her a job opportunity.

She's brought to the home of another couple. They are a lot more liberal than the Goodmans.

Indeed, they are swingers. The brunette wife invites the blonde wife to her bedroom.

Later, while Inga is busily polishing the dining room table, the blonde wife sneaks up behind her and starts undoing her buttons.

In short order, the two are completely naked.

The wife clears off the table and lays down Inga. The husband catches them and kicks Inga out. She's lost yet another job.

Inga calls her friend Britta. She is also from Sweden and working as a maid for a rich family. the Nolans. She invites Inga over.

The mean wife Elaine (Jane Tsentas) does not care for the fact that her dumpy husband Henry (Mark Roland) is always drooling over Britta. Henry is constantly henpecked and apologizes.

Elaine presents herself as conservative, but when she catches Britta fondling herself, she can't control her emotions. Elaine takes off her dress and has sex with Britta.

Inga arrives; Britta shows her to the guest room.

Inga is not even done unpacking and she's already having sex with Henry.

Look out. Elaine is done riding horses and is headed inside. When she finds them not having sex, but rather playing cards, she still loses her cool. "You can't fool me with your innocent act!" Henry finally grows a spine and spanks her. "This is a long time coming!"

Inga lounges by the pool at Becker's place. She tells him about her next job opportunity.

She was working as a waitress at a Swedish Smorgasbord when she met Sterling Phillips (Woody Lee), a Hollywood producer.

Phillips offers her the opportunity to audition. He ends up trying to rape her. She moves on to a couple other guys after getting the acting gig. Some boring love montages ensue.

She's invited to a part where LSD is slipped into her drink. A surreal scene as she's laid in a casket and all the rich people circle around her.

It turns into an orgy. The film ends with Inga relating this to Becker, and then a comedic epilogue where she's giving a judge a blow job and promising to stay out of trouble. THE END

VZ6 SCORECARD

Well, this had promise. A voluptuous Swede going from one sexual encounter to another is a recipe for surefire success in my book. But this grows unbelievably tiresome after the first couple of scenes. It's not filmed well, not particularly sexy (if you can believe it), and just gets downright boring.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect to the film is the backstory. It is based on a series of supposedly fact-based columns written around 1970 by journalist James Bacon for Los Angeles Herald Examiner. From IMDb:

"The subject was the kerfuffle caused by a beautiful anonymous girl from Sweden hired by a noted Detroit car designer to be his maid. The news of her beauty spread quickly and even famous Hollywood stars became obsessed with meeting this latest "It Girl." This forced the designer to hire another maid and install a special phone line just so the Swede girl can talk to her numerous rich and famous admirers. Bacon himself was very amused by the fact that his columns inspired a movie, so he ended up officially reviewing it for the October 8th issue of the Examiner."

Karen Ciral got her big break when a casting director for The Johnny Carson show saw her in a film and she was hired as a member of the Might Carson Art Players. She appeared on Police Story, Baretta, and the film FM. In June of 1979, as she was driving to an audition, a drunk driver hit her car head on. She died a month later from an accidental overdose of phenobarbital, which she was prescribed for seizures after the accident.

Bottom line - this should have been great, but awful filmmaking fucked it all up. Through no fault of Karen Ciral who wears miniskirts throughout and does a fine job. It's so incompetently put together: the nude scenes are often hard to view (bad angles, too close-up, etc.) and the story is exhaustingly repetitive. Attempts at humor fail just as badly as the attempts at the erotic. No thanks.

☆☆☆ 3/10