Not bad, but not very interesting either
20 June 2008
A man (Nino Castellneuvo) takes a gardening job at an isolated estate on the island of Elba, working for a widowed woman (Anita Sanders) and her teenage daughter (Gloria Guida). Both women tease him mercilessly.The mother takes off all her clothes in front of him for some reason, but then pushes him away when he tries to embrace her. The daughter practically dry-humps him on a crowded bus, does a bizarre dancing strip-tease for him through an open window,and nearly causes an accident by giving him a "foot-job" while he's driving. A fourth character also appears for some reason in the form of drunken lecherous local fisherman who also lusts after the Guida character. He does a bizarre courtship dance (while apparently masturbating) outside her window. Finally, our hero consummates his relationship with one of the women, resulting in a completely implausible turn of events and tragic consequences for all involved.

Director Silvio Amado made two excellent and sexy gialli, "Amuck" and "Smile Before Death", before falling into to more routine potboilers like this and "Peccati di Juventud" (also with Guida). These latter movies were just generically dumb rather than deliciously absurd like his earlier gialli and thus exponentially less interesting.

Gloria Guida, along with Ornella Muti and Jenny Tamburi, was one of three main "lolitas" of Italian exploitation films of this era (although it should be said that none of the three was actually underage in real-life as was the case in many high-brow French "art" films of the era). Guida was the least talented of the three--this movie doesn't hold a candle to "Smile Before Death" or Fernidand DeLeo's similarly themed "La Seduzione", not because Guida isn't as easy to look at as the star of those two films, Jenny Tamburi, but because the latter runs rings around Guida acting-wise. Guida herself would get a lot better in movies like "Being Twenty", "Blue Jeans" and even "Peccati di Juventud", but here she has all the sex appeal of your run-of-the-mill beauty pageant contestant (she was Miss Teen Italy of 1974). Of course, there is the one memorable scene where she runs off into the woods leaving a trail of clothes behind her. . .

This is not bad movie, but it's not very interesting either. (I also should mention that the IMDb info. given here is incorrect--Kirstin Baker, the American actress from "Friday the 13th Part II, is NOT in this movie. Nor is Rosemary Dexter or Corrado Panni as far as I can tell).
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