Femmine insaziabili (1969)

User Rating:

6.3/10   

Director:

Alberto De Martino

Writers:

Lianella Carell (screenplay)
Alberto De Martino (screenplay)

Release Date:

14 August 1969 (Italy)

Genre:

Thriller

Plot:

Paolo, giornalista, è apppena arrivato a Los Angeles dall'Italia per un nuovo lavoro quando viene assalito...

Plot Keywords:

B Movie

Cast

Dorothy Malone	...	Vanessa Brighton
Robert Hoffmann	...	Paolo Sartori
Luciana Paluzzi	...	Mary Sullivan
Frank Wolff	...	Frank Donovan
John Ireland	...	Richard Salinger
Roger Fritz	...	Giulio Lamberti
Romina Power	...	Gloria Brighton
Nicoletta Machiavelli	...	Luisa Lamberti
Ini Assmann	...	Salinger's secretary
Rainer Basedow	...	Donovan's henchman (as Reiner Basedow)
Elena Persiani	...	Clelia
Mario Chiocchio
Rosemarie Lindt	...	Patty
Antonietta Fiorito

Also Known As:

Beverly Hills
Exzess (West Germany)
Le insaziabili (Italy) (working title)
Mord im schwarzen Cadillac (West Germany)
The Insatiables (UK)

Runtime:

99 min

Country:

Italy | West Germany

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | Italy:VM18

Filming Locations:

Cinecittà Studios, Cinecittà, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Company:

Empire Films

Soundtrack:

I Want it All

Terrific 60's Fun

"The Insatiables" (which is the English-language release title of "Femmine Insaziabili") is a marvelous treat from beginning to end. The plot steers itself from drama to comedy to adventure to thrills to suspense, and so on and so on, to say the film is insatiable is not an understatement.

Robert Hoffmann (in a terrific performance, much better than his work in "The Lonely Violent Beach" the following year)stars as a man who at first hides his best friend from the hoods who are out to get him, and suffers a violent beating as a result (this is the first film I have seen where vomit was carefully considered in the color schemes). The friend is eventually killed nevertheless, and Hoffmann spends the rest of the film searching for answers. Along the way he is distracted by potential female love interests of all ages and constantly finds himself in physical and romantic danger.

Bruno Nicolai's score is a major asset to the success of the film, bouncy, sugary, yet thriving and pulsating at the appropriate moments. The female cast is as eye-catching as the score is ear-catching, with Lucianna Paluzzi showing lots of skin and 60's chick Romina Power doing what she does best, playing a zonked-out, swinging rich-hippie girl, and the psychedelic orgy/film sequence where her character is introduced takes on a life of its own and steers the viewer momentarily right back to the late 1960's. To cap it off, the film takes the viewer on such a delirious ride that it is terrific to discover that the film wraps up in a satisfying, not-terribly-clichéd ending.

Watching this fun thriller makes it all the more puzzling how the same director could make 1972's "Scenes From a Murder", aka "The Final Curtain", with Telly Savalas and Anne Heywood, which is so mind-numbingly boring and bland it is hard to stay awake through to the end; the opposite is true of "The Insatiables" -- you won't want it to end.