Bohr weiter Kumpel (1974)

Egon Kappes is a down-to-earth, thoroughly honest Ruhr Valley sort who works hard underground as a coal miner. He and his four buddies hope to hit the jackpot one day, since they have been a close-knit lottery syndicate for years. One day, Fortune really does smile on them: the winning numbers mean they have matched five numbers plus the bonus number, and a handsome windfall is on its way. But Egon is a scatterbrain—he has misplaced his lottery ticket. Since his buddies are counting on the winnings, they have already run up expenses and bought countless consumer goods. To tide themselves over until the prize money is paid out, they have also, to their misfortune, fallen into the clutches of a loan shark, the master butcher Noppenei. He is certainly not willing to wait any longer than agreed for repayment of the loan, with a hefty usurious markup. Now they are strapped for cash on all sides, and since Egon is no longer having sex with his wife Erna as regularly as she demands, given all these worries, she goes to work at Frau Dose’s brothel to get them through their financial squeeze. Erna, however, wants to earn extra money for very mundane reasons. She was going to use Egon’s share of the lottery winnings to buy herself a whole new wardrobe, and since that hoped-for windfall is currently unavailable, she spends her earnings as a prostitute on—what else?—new shoes, as well as groceries. Given Erna’s tendency to spend money with a generous hand, the other buddies’ wives begin to suspect that Egon has in fact collected the lottery winnings but is refusing to share any of them with his friends. The confusion eventually goes so far that Egon ends up in the loony bin, where, thanks to the full-body attention of the shapely nurses Monika and Veronika, he remembers where he put the lottery ticket. It was last in the kitchen, on the draining board, and, without thinking, he had given it to his wife because she needed a piece of paper. He rushes out of the clinic and runs home, but Erna has just lent the wig in which she had used the ticket as “padding” to her friend Trude. Egon sets off with his buddies to find Trude, but tracking her down is no easy task. After a long chase, they finally get the ticket in their hands, hurry to the lottery outlet, and collect the long-awaited winnings.