Starring: Horst Tappert, Werner Peters, Hubert Suschka, Walter Richter, Erika Pluhar, Judy Winter

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35mm print courtesy of Elizabeth Purchell

When a popular local trans drag performer is found dead in the trunk of a car, vice detective Perrak is put on the case. But as he begins getting closer to solving the mystery, he finds himself pulled deeper and deeper into a sexual underworld of corruption and blackmail that reaches the highest echelons of power and industry.

A surprisingly gnarly variation on the German krimi film from genre legend Alfred Vohrer (The Creature with the Blue Hand), Hard Women makes good use of its trans milieu by providing plum supporting roles for performers like Ramona Vargas and Angie Stardust—the latter of whom would later go on to star in Rosa von Praunheim’s trans musical masterpiece City of Lost Souls. A flop upon its initial American release as The Blonde Connection—with an ad campaign that emphasized its trans elements—the film would eventually be recut and rereleased by exploitation film legend Samuel M. Sherman’s Independent-International Pictures as the kinky Hard Women before falling into obscurity. This English-dubbed version of the film has never been released on home video.