Gay Video Review	Gay Video Reviews Archive

Ludwig I: Lost Virginity
Rating: 2 Stars
Produced by Marcel Bruckman and Ole Lundquist. Photographed and directed by Marcel Bruckman. Written by Tom Sullivan. Edited by Frank Rehder. Music by Keyser Media. Starring Ludwig Stauffenberg, Jonas Klein, Sascha Jackson, Nicolas Essler, Clemens Pfeiffer, Kai von Bohoff, Achim Graf, Benjamin Sommer, Heiko Paulus, Daniel Mansfeld, Kevin Bloomquist, and Kim Peters.
How to order

Ludwig Stauffenberg shares a surname with Klaus von Stauffenberg, who tried to kill Hitler in 1944, and a hairstyle with Vanessa Redgrave, who was similarly coiffed for her role in Antonioni's Blow-Up in 1966. Ludwig is a pale, dazed young German whose large features, narrow face, and slender physique collude with his hair-do to give him a pleasantly retro appeal. In this European-made pageant of battiness, he is the star.

The half-dozen sex episodes are preceded by sepia-toned intros showing Ludwig ambling around, leaning against walls, lying on benches, dreaming, fantasizing, and looking stoned. Visual evidence suggests that Ludwig's loss of virginity takes place entirely inside his head, a place where countless neurons have appear to have vanished as well. In the first sex scene, he's deflowered by two black-clad, blond young men-- a short-haired, semen-eating sexpiglet teamed with a long-haired, mechanical top-- in front of a large red crucifix covered with flowers and vine leaves. The set-up suggests a sacrament of initiation. But in the closing segment, Ludwig, apparently dead, hangs crucified with props and furniture strewn around him like wreckage, while a three-way unfolds nearby. At the end, the fluffy-haired, lifeless Christ figure's mouth is miraculously flecked with semen or drool.

View our poll archive

Whatever all this is supposed to signify, it undermines the sex, which ranges from serviceable to ecstatic. Here and there, the safety envelope is pushed and sometimes punctured; in addition to spooge ingestion, director Marcel Bruckman offers an instance of fucking that starts with the usual condom and seems to end bareback. The models are attractive, though often lit and photographed in unflattering ways. The soundtrack leans too heavily on pop-classical chestnuts by Grieg, Wagner, and others, but does make memorably campy use of Schubert's "Ave Maria." Someone called Tom Sullivan gets a writing credit; if the forthcoming Ludwig II has no writing at all, it will be an improvement.