- A boorish, snobish toothpaste factory owner, Constantino Nicosia, gives his wife and everyone a hard time having let success and wealth go to his head. But after the superticous Nicosia has an encounter with an elderly gypsy aunt, and a business trip to Romania results in another encounter with a suave vampire, named Count Dragalescu, Nicosia returns with blood-sucking like qualities which makes him re-examine his life and existence.—Anonymous
- Costante Nicosia (Lando Buzzanca) is a boorish, irascible, man having married for wealth. He is the new boss of a recently inherited toothpaste factory and the owner of a local Rome basketball team which the film opens during a game. "The only reason I own this bunch of dippy dribblers is to push toothpaste to those sports nuts out there," says Nicosia to his hunchbacked side-kick Peppino (Antonio Aliocca). He is also extremely superstitious. Peppino is less of a friend than a good luck charm as far as the insensitive Nicosia is concerned. He believes that it brings good luck to rub a hunchback's hump so that his basketball team will win the game.
The signs and omens are all against this wealthy rat: a black cat crosses his path, and worst still he breaks a mirror in his apartment. Superstition demands that he persuade a virgin to urinate over the broken shards of glass in order to halt the tide of bad luck. Abusively, he passes a decrepit old spinster who lives next door to him mistakenly assuming that she has never done the deed. Nicosias relationship with his wife Mariu (Sylva Koscina) is scarcely more convivial for he states to her, "I always have good luck with things that rhyme with the letter U, except you!"
Reluctantly bowing to family pressure, Nicosia employs his loafing brother-in-law into a menial post at the factory. But he fires him the following day after catching the man asleep on the job, snoring loudly. That evening at a family gathering at his apartment, he is accosted by his ungrateful in-laws who try to shame him into giving the feckless mans his job back. Instead of acquiescing to family practice, he bursts into an escalating tirade of rudeness against the singers figure of his Great Aunt Maria (Grazia Spadaro). The old woman finally responds to his cynical remarks by uttering a curse. Nicosia spits with derision at first, that is until the old hag threatens of pour oil onto the floor; this heavy duty bit of magical business breaks Nicosia's nerve, and he recants in a babbling panic. But its too late as Nicosia grovels for the curse to be lifted, and the old woman has the last laugh.
A few days later, Nicosia is on a plane to Bucharest, Romania where he expects to attend a business conference. A tall, gaunt, suave man seated nearby introduces himself as Count Dragalescu (John Steiner), and after some small talk, he invites the troubled industrialist to visit him at his castle while in the region. Upon arriving at the hotel, Nicosia discovers that the conference has been postponed, leaving him stranded at the hotel for the entire weekend. Another businessman, named Meniconi (Franco Nebbia), tells him that there are no prostitutes to be had in the region, and that he has failed to seduce any of the local women, even after buying sexy lingerie to bribe them. He confides to Nicosia that he has taken to wearing the lingerie, brand name: 'Hot Night in Havana' himself.
Rather the spend the weekend in this wretched resort, Nicosia decides to call on the Count. Upon arriving in a taxi, Nicosia sees that the castle is very much what one would expect from a Romanian nobleman's abode, complete with lighting and thunder to amplify the Gothic effect. Count Dragalescu greets his guest in the cavernous dining hall. Suddenly, a gay bunch of revelers stagger down the large staircase into the dining hall. The Count introduces his companions (three women and a man) to the wary guest. The women greet Nicosia in a lavish, tactile manner. When Boris, the screaming camp male of the party, tries to greet Nicosia too, he backs up nervously away and declines.
Laughing, the Count sends Nicosia up to his room to prepare for dinner. When Nicosia later comes back down the stairs, well dressed in a tuxedo, he finds himself overdressed for the occasion. "Dinner in Transylvania's always in the nude!" purrs Dragalescu. The evening gets even more debauched when Nicosia has a little too much to drink, strips off too, cavorts with some of the assembled throng, and then passed out cold. The next morning, he wakes up in his bed with the mirthfully grinning Dragalescu to his side. Running away half-dressed and in horror from the castle, Nicosia catches the first plane back to Italy.
Back at his little toothpaste empire, Nicosia is rather tense and uptight. He greets all his employees with who speak to him with a clenched, furious, "Up yours! Up yours!" While overseeing his basketball team at practice, he is knocked off balance when the coach tells the team, "you've got the big one!" Nicosia repeats the phrase "big one" over and over, and then collapses in the locker room when he sees a row of naked men's bottoms in the showers. Nicosia goes to his physician Dr. Paluzzi (Rossano Brazzi) who suggests that he try making out with his mistress, and if he can't do that, the doctor adds that he must have been "deflowered while drunk." This attempt to re-establish his heterosexuality fails, however because the tormented Nicosia feels compelled to bite her with and suck blood out of her neck.
Even more stricken, first with anxiety and then with abject self-pity, Nicosia calls on Great Aunt Maria to beg her to remove the curse, which he assumes, is responsible for his misfortune of homosexuality and blood craving. However, she claims that she had nothing to do with his urge for blood. She recommends that he visit the Magician of Noto (Ciccio Ingrassia) in Sicily for help and he complies in desperation. Upon arriving at the Magician of Noto's residence, Nicosia clearly sees from the posture and tone of voice, the magician is clearly a fake. But Nicosia accepts his advice: the curse on him will be lifted only if he re-employs his brother-in-law. Nicosia leaves, where its revealed to the viewers that the whole thing was a deliberate stunt organized by his in-laws into tricking Nicosia into giving his brother-in-law's job back. Returning home far from being cured, he responds to his needy wife's sexual advances by plunging his fang-like teeth into her bare bottom during foreplay. All seems lost to the once arrogant entrepreneur.
Over the next few months, Nicosia adopts a devil-may-care aggression; he re-fires his lazy brother-in-law, arranges to visit prostitutes to satisfy his urge to bite, and isolates himself from family and friends. Finally he satisfies his craving for blood by setting up a blood-bank at his factory-site and compelling all employees to attend. Just as he seems to have surrendered to total cynicism, his wife arrives at the factory with a baby, his newborn son that was conceived that night of their passion.
In the final scene, Nicosia throws a party to celebrate his son's birth. Rejoicing at his proof of his potency, Nicosia throws off the shackles of his superstitious paranoia and goes to greet and hold his baby son. Only to discover that the baby sports a protruding pair of fangs...
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