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Four Dimensions of Greta
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| Year: |
1972
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Director: |
Pete Walker
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| Stars: |
Tristan Rogers, Karen Boyer, Alan Curtis, Robin Askwith, Leena Skoog, Kenneth Hendel, John Clive, Nick Maran, Martin Wyldeck, Godfrey Kenton, Pearl Hackney, Elizabeth Bradley, Erika Raffael, Felicity Devonshire, Jane Cardew, Minah Bird, Bill Maynard
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| Genre: |
Comedy, Drama, Sex, Trash |
| Rating: |
  5 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Journalist Hans Wiermer (Tristan Rogers) makes his way onto a plane at Berlin airport, and as he settles down for the flight to London he opens his briefcase and inspects the photographs inside. Noticing the woman sitting next to him peering across at the contents, he plonks the case down in her lap and tells her to help herself, all he wants to look at are the photographs of Greta Gruber (Leena Skoog). This starts a reminiscence about how he came to be in possession of those pictures: he is meant to be on a business trip, but has been sidetracked into finding the whereabouts of Greta by her parents, friends of his fiancée's parents. So where to start?
We never do find out the real reason for Hans's trip to the UK, as he is so preoccupied with his search that he doesn't have much time for anything else, so let's hope he had a good excuse for his bosses lined up. There's a point late on in this where he remarks to nobody in particular that this is like a cheap British sex film, and it's funny 'cause it's true, or it would be if it was funny. It was the first British movie to be made in 3D, so it just had to be a softcore effort, didn't it? Actually, it's not 3D all the way through, only when Hans interviews somebody who knew Greta and then the screen spins and we are meant to put on our glasses for the full effect.
The full effect being what you'd expect from a 3D film, that is a lot of things flying at the camera, the novelty being that some of those things are naked bodies. However, as these sequences take up about twenty minutes of a ninety minute film, if that, then you might feel shortchanged about how much three-dimensional action you're getting. For most of this, in fact, it's a fairly ordinary and even slapdash private eye plot, where the journalist goes about asking for details on the missing girl - no, I won't make comparisons to Citizen Kane - but the more he discovers, the less he knows until the grand revelation at the finale.
It doesn't help that everyone has different ideas of what Greta was like, so her former flatmates say she was a sex-mad tyrant, her fellow employee at a strip club says she was an exploited innocent, and her short term footballer boyfriend thinks she was all sweetness and light. The footballer was played by Robin Askwith, so yes, you do get to see him in 3D and gurning into the camera when the baddie breaks his arm during one flashback. That's not the most ridiculous aspect, though, as there are plenty to choose from: how about the accent on Hans, about whom when he is asked if he's German you half expect him to answer "No"? Why he had to be German at all is unclear, and simply seems to be an excuse for some off-colour jokes at the start.
Nobody in the film was German, not even Leena, who was Swedish, but for British audiences of the day a European accent meant a more free attitude to sex than they got at home, or at least they did in movies like these. Hans doesn't get it together with Greta as he has a fiancée in Berlin, but that doesn't stop him getting it on with an old flame, Sue (Karen Boyer, who sounds like she's been dubbed by Stephanie Beacham), even though she is engaged too. Crazy. Anyway, they team up and turn sleuths to track Greta, becoming privy to some rather too explicit to believe recollections, though there is that 3D. The best effect comes when Greta flings her underwear at the camera, and there's a foolish part anticipating Nine and a Half Weeks where Skoog and Askwith share an intimate meal, although thrusting a banana at the camera is evidently not as erotic as director Pete Walker might have hoped. There's a strong hint that this is tongue in cheek, but mostly it's daft. Music by Harry South.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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