Even Edwige Fenech (and her breasts) can't salvage this
26 September 2008
The blurb on the back of the recent DVD claims that these "scholastic" Italian sex comedies were forerunners of the American teen comedies of the 80's. While anticipating such 80's teen classics as "Private Lessons", "My Tutor", and "They're Playing with Fire" isn't necessarily something to brag about, this is not really true anyway. Aside from being set ostensibly in high schools, these films are nothing like their American cousins (for instance, the "students" are about thirty years old on average and far more interested in pulling juvenile pranks than losing their virginity). They are actually pretty typical of 70's Italian sex comedies in general, and pretty much the bottom of the barrel of that particular genre (which was never too far from the bottom of the barrel itself).

These "scholastic" sex comedies (for lack of a better term) consisted mainly of two series--the "Insegnante" series where Edwige Fenech plays a sexy teacher who drives men of all ages crazy with lust, and the "Liceale" series where Gloria Guida plays a sexy student who does pretty much the same. The two actresses were actually little more than five years apart in age, but it's all relative really since they're BOTH obviously younger than most of the male "students" in these flicks. Strangely, while both of these series shared common directors (i.e. Mariano Laurenti, Massimo Tarantini) and comic male actors (i.e. Lino Banfi, Alvaro Vitali), the "Insegnante" (Fenech) never did meet the "Liceale" (Guida) on screen. This is unfortunate because the woman are BY FAR the best thing in any of these movies.

The plot of this particular one involves a wealthy industrialist (Renzo Montagnini) and his assistant (Lino Banfi) who are hiding out from kidnappers in a provincial Italian town. The industrialist hires the new local school teacher to give him foreign language lessons (for reasons that eluded me). Meanwhile, the industrialist's son and his fellow male students (including Alvaro Vitali, once again playing the world's oldest teenager) plot to get into their sexy teacher's panties. Fenech has only a couple of nude scenes (the best is a fantasy sequence where she strips for her class). She really is one of the sexiest women in the history of cinema (the DVD blurb is right about something at least), but frankly she's had a lot more nude scenes in A LOT better movies. And even if Fenech and Guida had ever appeared together in any of these movies, it still probably wouldn't have salvaged the stupid plots and painfully unfunny comedy. Fenech, by herself, certainly doesn't manage it here.
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