Hard Women: A Hard Movie to Categorize

This screening was part of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesday series. For upcoming shows, click here.

When I revisit Hard Women, Alfred Vohrer’s 1970 detective semi-transploitation film, I’m brought to this: A film is a kind of archive. Don’t worry, I’m not going to start citing Derrida at y’all, promise.

A film is a kind of archive, because it contains within it traces of not only cultural ideas and histories, but human lives. Documentary is often evoked as a historical record, because ostensibly documentary sets out to, well, document. Putting aside whether that’s true (it’s a whole ‘nother essay)--narrative film also documents. Which brings me to the film as a kind of transploitation. Hard Women is, I think it’s fair to say, a transploitation film, ostensibly centered around the death of a trans sex worker, and more interestingly, featuring actual trans actresses—more on that in a moment. Somehow, despite that, there’s very little transness to grapple with here. Trans women do figure here as sexualized vessels for deviant desire, but, well, I’ve seen hornier, especially in the ‘70s.

Anyway: Hard Women is about a detective archetype named Perrak, played by Horst Tappert, a German actor most known for playing cult-favorite Detective Stephan Derrick in the TV series Derrick. Much of his filmography was detective/cop types, and oh, in 2013, after his death, it was discovered he’d been an actual Nazi officer. I’m not going to dwell on that here, but it is worth noting–another of the histories caught on 35mm tape, layered underneath the storyline and cinematography. Perrak gets involved in the murder of a trans woman sex worker named Toni, and typical crime-y detective-y shenanigans ensue. There’s rival gangs at play, blackmail, a secret brothel for the sexually deviant posing as a Nunnery…you know, crime stuff. Perrak’s investigation takes him through a well-known “transvestite bar,” where he meets a cast of working trans women, including Pinky, played by the wonderful Angie Stardust, a Black American trans starlet who moved to Germany, where there were more opportunities for a Black trans woman who find success as a performer.

I can’t say I enjoyed Hard Women; Perrak is unlikeable even without the affect of the actor’s history at play, and most of the movie revolved around a cast of white men I could not, gun to my head, tell apart. Even the salacious, sexy trans bars and brothel bits, heavily played up in the film’s original English advertising, are relatively boring. It’s transploitation—there’s plenty of sexualizing of trans women afoot, particularly the corpse of poor Toni. And hey, dead trans sex workers are the bread and butter of transploitation. But we get so little screen time with the trans women, and so much time watching Perrak just…talk to different people while crime stuff happens in the background, that the sexualization of the trans women characters doesn’t really…stick out. Which is a weird thing to be…critiquing? Did I want this film to be way more horny and exploitative?

Well, yes. Kind of. Sorry?

But let’s go back to Toni. Her death is the inciting incident—the discovery of her corpse by a stock drunkard houseless man kicks us off. The reveal that she’s trans is set up to be a shock. The houseless dude definitely reads her as a cis woman, as does her hapless former landlord when Perrak comes to investigate. This gives Perrak multiple opportunities for the reveal: the classic twist, when the audience gasps because oh, that beautiful woman is actually a man!!!!

To the point that Toni’s body is neatly disassembled for the camera. Here, Perrak pulls her wig off (classic). Here, Perrak exposes her breast form, cracking a joke about the quality of her fake tits. There’s a glee to these revelations, humor implied at the juxtaposition (how could beautiful woman be… MAN??!?!) that feels pretty typical of the transploitation genre (and honestly, depictions of trans women more broadly.) More interesting is that Toni’s death is unrelated to her transness– and her being a sex worker, to a degree. Transness and sex work seem pretty par for the course for Perrak, who is almost friendly with the various delinquents rounded up in his police station. He’s even pretty tolerant of the brothel née nunnery.

What does a film like Hard Women document about transness, then? There’s the obvious: trans women existed, had lives, but that’s not particularly revelatory, since transploitation narratives like this date as far back as the existence of pulp crime novels. Instead, it’s the trans actresses I’m taken by: Angie Stardust, who I mentioned, as well as Ramonita Vargas. (I’ve seen a third woman, Mikel Sugar, credited—but this may have been another name for Angie Stardust.) From German Wikipedia, their presence seems to have been part of the film’s marketing, even—though I can’t read German enough to find archived press for the film.

Films about transness and particularly trans women have been around, oh, since the invention of film (the 1914 A Florida Enchantment comes to mind) but films with trans actors are rarer. Paul Morrisey, for instance, is often credited as one of the first film directors to cast a trans woman in his film with Holly Woodlawn in Trash, which came out the same year as Hard Women, coincidentally. While Stardust and Vargas don’t lead by any means, they’re present, alive within the film. We see them move and speak and perform as trans women. The living trans workers are afforded a surprising dignity in Hard Women, considering its focus on deviant sexuality via the brothel—sure, they’re mostly misgendered, at least in the English version, and of course lots of humor to be had at their “deceit.” It’s 1970. Whatever. There’s still a playfulness involved, like they’re in on the joke too. And listen–given how successful Stardust was, all things considered, maybe she is.

Hard Women doesn’t provide a clear history of transness in Germany. It doesn’t give us easy answers, or “representation,” a topic that would take me 50 more articles if I tried to delve into it here. Is it a good film? Eh—who’s asking?

Instead, what Hard Women does is offer a layered reflection of transploitation and trans performance in 1970s Germany. It captures a number of well-worn clichés, studied enough to be tropes in their own measure, for depictions of trans women/sex workers/trans sex workers. It also captures well-known and less well-known trans performers that were out there, performing as trans women, whose histories are fascinating and well worth knowing. Delving into those histories makes Hard Women worth a view, in my opinion. And while you’re at it, give your money to the American Genre Film Archive so they can continue to restore and, well, archive, more films like Hard Women.