Been watching a lot more foreign films the last few years. And even more in the last year. Here’s a great German flick that came out when I was just a lad of 10 but didn’t see until this past year. Warning: review contains some vague but not ruinous spoilers.

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Guten abend, meine kinder!

Tonight’s viewing of All About the Benjamins has been indefinitely postponed so that we may bring you this special showing of the 1985 German film SugarBaby.

It stars Marianne Sägebrecht, of Rosalie Goes Shopping fame. [another incredibly strange and wonderful movie.]

SugarBaby—from the Deutsch “ZuckerBaby” is pronounced “TsugaBaby” like the Russians would say “Tsar” or “Tsammy Hagarovitch.”

The movie heavily features the hit 1964 song “ZuckerBaby” by Peter Kraus. And it goes a little something like this … “A One, a Two, a Three, a Four! Sugar-Sugar-Baby, oh-oh, Sugar-Sugar-Baby. Mmmhhh, sei doch lieb zu mir.”

Yes, that Peter Kraus, crooner of West German tunes like Sweety, Hula Baby, and Mit Siebzehn!

I know what you’re thinking: Heilige Scheiße!

What makes SugarBaby incredibly strange is both its romantic tale of stalking and its narrative style.

SugarBaby is about a lonely middle-aged frau who works for the local undertaker dressing stiffs. In her off-time, she shops, eats, watches television, eats, and swims alone in a dark poolroom. And eats.

Then one day, while daydreaming, she misses her stop and comes face-to-face with a sweet young hunk of blue-eyed-blond train conductor named Huber, whom she labels her …

TsugaBaby!

I love this film’s wonderful use of color, off-kilter camera angles, and—at times—unsteady camera work. Seriously, it feels like the DP was on the nod, at times.

Much of the film has very little dialog as we follow Marianne’s transition from desperate consumer to horny spy. Sooo horny.

She begins missing work as she spends her days riding the rails in search of her SugarBaby.

Finally, desperation drives her to take five weeks off and learn the train schedule system—a quite complex feat involving just the tiniest heist—and to circumvent at least half a dozen laws to track down hunky Huber.

Frankly, if this story focused on a man doing this scheiße, it might be creepy.

But, her being a middle-aged fat-frau, it’s both sad and sweet.

After much struggle, and a lot more shopping for naughty underthings and a new mattress, and of course eating, Marianne finally locates the lad and lures him with, you guessed it—candy.

TsugaBaby!

Luckily for Marianne, Huber is married to an awful shrew of a woman. So, when she invites Hubie up for supper, he accepts. Of course, when he doesn’t show, Marianne proceeds to tear her apartment apart.

Why, TsugaBaby, why!?

Then … just when you think all horniness is lost, Huber arrives and he and Marianne skip dinner to jump straight into der Geschlechtsverkehr! [That’s what Germans call the hunka-chunka.]

And that’s just the first half of the film.

Watch SugarBaby free on Tubi!