La pretora (1976)

Director:

Lucio Fulci

Writers:

Franco Marotta (writer) &
Laura Toscano (writer) ...

Release Date:

5 November 1976 (Italy)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

Intransigent magistrate Viola Orlando is targeted by her rivals who hire her twin sister Rosa, a high-class...

Plot Keywords:

Twins | Sex Comedy | Sex | Beautiful Woman | Female Nudity

Cast

Edwige Fenech	...	Dr. Viola Orlando / Judge Rosa Orlando
Raf Luca	...	Esposito
Giancarlo Dettori	...	Alteri
Mario Maranzana	...	Bortolon
Carlo Sposito	...	Prosecutor
Walter Valdi	...	Zaganella
Gianni Agus	...	Angelo Scotti
Oreste Lionello	...	Francesco Lo Presti
Gianni Solaro	...	Magni, the lawyer
Piero Palermini	...	Car Salesman
Luca Sportelli
Galliano Sbarra
Pietro Tordi	...	Pavanin
Enrico Marciani
Michele Malaspina	...	Maitre d'hotel

Also Known As:

My Sister in Law (UK)
Mysisterai (Philippines: English title)

Runtime:

98 min

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

France:-12 | Italy:VM14

Company:

Coralta Cinematografica

Trivia:

Italian censorship visa # 69229 delivered on 28-10-1976.

Soundtrack:

Linda bella Linda

Meeting of Italian exploitation legends

I finally saw a English subtitled-version of this (albeit probably still a bootleg). Edwige Fenech plays two different roles. On one hand, she's a stern female magistrate who's prosecuting a hapless hustler who has been selling dog food as Hungarian goulash. The guy doesn't help himself much by crudely hitting on the severe but gorgeous judge on the way to courthouse (before he knows who she is), but he catches a break when he also her meets her twin sister(Fenech again, of course), a giggling nymphomaniac. After she shags him silly in a motel room, he decides to use the nymphomaniac sister to discredit the magistrate and save his own skin. He involves her in a hilarious porno version of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and distributes copies of a photo-play magazine with pictures from the movie around the courthouse. The hustler's scheme threatens not only the lady magistrate's career, but also her relationship with her sexually frustrated fiancée. But the two sisters have a few tricks up their sleeves too. . .

Naturally, Fenech has a lot of nude scenes in both roles, but that is par for the course. She's especially impressive here though in her acting (even if she was likely dubbed, even in the Italian version). Fenech is one of those actresses that was so gorgeous and so frequently undraped that she rarely got credit for her acting. But there was a reason she was the most successful of a whole pantheon of other Italian and European actresses of the era who were equally attractive and equally willing to disrobe.

The director of this meanwhile was none other than Lucio Fulci. Although he was known mainly for his gory horror films, Fulci was actually quite an accomplished comedy director, easily on par with Fenech's most frequent collaborator Sergio Martino. This is probably one of the weakest of Fulci's comedies that I've seen (his best is "The Eroticist"), but it's still pretty good. Fulci's most frequent comedy collaborator, Lando Buzzanca, is absent here. The guy who plays Fenech's fiancée looks a lot like him, but he is unfortunately a pretty poor substitute. Still this is the only film he made with Fenech, and the meeting of these two Italian exploitation legends should be reason enough to see this.