DANCERS FOR TANGIERS (1977) **

Schlockmeister producer Erwin C. Dietrich gave us this lurid, nasty, but uneven slice of exploitation.  It tells how girls around the world are lured, tricked, and coerced into the white slave trade.  One girl is told the cops are looking for her and a friendly gentleman agrees to help get her out of the country.  When she refuses to work as a cabaret dancer at the Moulin Rouge, her new benefactor supplies her with heroin to make her more compliant.  Naturally, the customers want her to do more than just dance.  

Another girl is picked up at a train station, raped, drugged, boxed up (literally), and sent to Amsterdam.   Then, the slavers pose as film producers and lure an aspiring actress with the promise of a phony audition.  Really, they want to try to sell her off to an oil sheik.  Meanwhile, a feminist reporter tries to bring the illicit sex slave ring down.  

Dancers for Tangiers is sleazy, meanspirited, and chockfull of hateful, poorly dubbed dialogue.  (“Use these juicy boobs to trick the men into buying more booze, babe!”)  There’s plenty of softcore action, hateful men, bondage, and ‘70s bush to go around, that’s for sure.  All of this isn’t exactly sexy or entertaining, unless you get your kicks from seeing women sold into sex slavery.  It’s also heavily padded with striptease scenes; a handful of which are fairly decent.  (The two-girl floorshow is the definite highlight.)  At least these moments are more enjoyable than all the raping and drugging of easily duped women.  

The problem (aside from all the misogyny) is that the narrative hops around way too much.  So much so in fact, that a narrator randomly blurts out wherever the action is taking place at the start of every scene.  (“AMSTERDAM!”  “ZURICH!”  “TANGIERS!”)  If Dietrich had followed the model of the Schoolgirl Report series and just staged unconnected scenes of white slavery in an anthology style, it might’ve been more successful.  As it is, there’s just too much globetrotting for its own good.  

Probably the most memorable part is the white slaver named “Karate Jack”.  The only times he does any karate comes when the police try to bust the strip club and he delivers exactly ONE karate chop accompanied with the obligatory “Hi-YAH!”  The only true fight scene he gets is hilariously half-assed, and you have to wait till the finale to see it, but it’s ALMOST worth it.  I just wish there were more of these unintentional laughs to be had.  Then again, they might’ve felt even more out of step with all the depressing shit going on in the movie.  At least there is this classic dialogue exchange:  

Girl:  “I hear you’re a high-ranking man in the film industry.  Can you use me?”

Slaver:  “OH, YEAH!”

AKA:  Girl Slaves.  AKA:  Sensuous Slaves.  AKA:  Sensuous Slaves of Love.  AKA:  Sensual Partners.  AKA:  Confessions of the Sex Slaves.  AKA:  Island of the Savage Sex Slaves.  AKA:  Naked Street Girls.