L'erotomane (1974)

User Rating:

3.0/10   

Director:

Marco Vicario

Writer:

Marco Vicario (writer)

Plot Keywords:

Sex Comedy | Female Nudity | Italian Sex Comedy | Beautiful Woman | Italy

Cast

Gastone Moschin	...	Rodolfo Persichetti
Janet Agren	...	Ciccia' Persichetti - Rodolfos Wife
Isabella Biagini	...	Dott.ssa Bonetti
Silvia Dionisio	...	Claretta
Milena Vukotic	...	Cleofe
Vittorio Caprioli	...	Onorevole
Jacques Dufilho	...	The Psychiatrist
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Neda Arneric
Franco Beltramme
Maria Antonietta Beluzzi	...	Gertrude
Ettore Bevilacqua
Salvatore Billa
Carla Brait
Filippo De Gara
Ugo Fangareggi	...	The Plumber
Jimmy il Fenomeno
Luigi Antonio Guerra
Jacques Herlin	...	The Surgeon
Gino Milli
Paolo Paoloni
Giacomo Rizzo
Paola Senatore	...	Onorevole Belloni
Rosita Torosh
Mauro Vestri
Eugene Walter

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Company:

Atlantica Produzioni Cinematografiche

Good movie, especially as far as Italian sex comedies go

This is one of these odd, but usually enjoyable, Italian films that combine ribald sex comedy with with black comedy and satire. These films probably emerged from the Bocaccio/"decamerotici" tradition, but they are updated to modern times with a lot of criticism of modern capitalism and religion, and often with a lot trendy Freudian psychology thrown in. This film somewhat resembles Pasquale Campanile Festa's "The Libertine", but is probably most similar to the Lucio Fulci comedies "The Eroticist" and "Young Dracula".

Like the Fulci films, this movie focuses on a powerful Italian captain of the industry (the petroleum industry in this case) with severe sexual neurosis. He is unable to actually have sex with either his beautiful young wife (Janet Agren) or his luscious college student mistress (Silvia Dionisio). His neurosis manifests itself in other ways, however--he has bizarre, ear-twitching erotic fantasies that cause him among other things to all-but-rape his sexy maid (Neda Americ) on the roof of his villa (while about a hundred teenage girls and a pair of nuns at the Catholic school next door look on), or attack his virginal secretary while she's taking "dictation". He gets involve with a female boardmember of his company, who turns out to be even kinkier than he is. The funniest scene though is when he lets loose a litany of sexually-related "Freudian slips" while addressing the entire board. A crackpot psychiatrist suggests his neurosis may have been triggered by guilt he feels from manipulating the nation's oil reserves (thus the satire of capitalism), but really stems from an incident in his childhood where he had an unfortunate encounter with spikes on a fence while spying on a female cousin while she was being seduced by a plumber. The ridiculous Freudian "cure" involves him watching his wife and mistress as they have sex with other men, which lead among other things to a hilarious wife-swapping scene involving a senator and his very LARGE wife--a scene that is at once erotic, disgusting, and hilarious.

The director of this movie is definitely not in the class of Festa or Fulci, and the French star Gastone Moschin is certainly no Lando Buzzanca (who was in the two Fulci movies). Still this movie gets a lot of mileage out of the lively script and sumptuous female cast. The women are not all used to equal effect, however. Fans of Swedish actress Janet "City of the Dead" Agren will certainly not be disappointed as she has a meaty role and lots of nude scenes. Neda "Shaft in Africa" Almeric has a smaller but equally memorable part. I would have liked, however, to see a lot more of Silvia "Wave of Lust" Dionisio (and a lot less of her clothes). And future porn star Paola Senatore makes only a very brief appearance (but continues to bat 1000 when it comes to getting naked). Regardless though, I'd recommend this, especially as far as Italian sex comedies go.