Compared with British sex comedies of the same era, Giovannona Long-Thigh has a greater emphasis on political and corporate corruption and, rather surprisingly for such a deeply Catholic country, complicity on the part of the Church. Everyone also talks a 100mph. When the Sicilian Straccolone Cheese Factory is ordered shut after it's discovered that it's been polluting an adjacent river, company president Commander La Noce (Gigi Ballista) conspires with bumbling accountant-secretary Albertini (Pippo Franco) to find a way out of the scandal and get their factory back into operation.

With the help of a prominent local monsignor they decide to blackmail an influential politician, Camelo (Vittorio Caprioli, looking very much like an Italian John Le Mesurier), who has a weakness for his fellow politicians' wives. Albertini hires one knock-out of a streetwalker, Coco (Edwige Fenech), to pose as La Noce's wife and allow herself to be "seduced," thus providing the cheese factory president the leverage he needs to keep his factory doors open. Trouble is Coco (whose nickname is "Giovannona Long-Thigh") would make a sailor blush, using four-letter words the way others use "a," "an," and "the."

In classic farce style, things get increasingly complicated with the addition of myriad other characters and subplots, including the introduction of Coco's coarse pimp, Robertuzzo (Riccardo Garrone), Camelo's matronly but horny secretary Eufemia (Adriana Facchetti?) and, especially funny, an insane Maserati thief (Sandro Dori).

NoShame Films' presentation is preceded by a title card explaining that the translation has been adjusted slightly in an effort to preserve the irony of the humorous wordplay and local dialects. This was a smart way to go because even where the humor doesn't exactly translate its intention is always very clear. Amusingly, this is most apparent when a pair of minor characters turns up in the form of elderly American tourists who speak Italian with bad American accents.

The comedy is gleefully smutty in its attitude but, as writer Richard Harland Smith notes in the DVD's booklet essay, it's "more sizzle than steak," with not nearly the amount of nudity that's suggested by the DVD's jacket. Not that it matters -- Edwige Fenech certainly doesn't have to strip to be incredibly sexy. She's surely one of the most astoundingly gorgeous women ever to grace the screen. This reviewer doesn't usually act like a Tex Avery's cartoon wolf over such sexpots but, Mama Mia! That Fenech's performance is also utterly charming and exactly right, a perfect balance of Jayne Mansfield-like obliviousness and innocence while simultaneously innately sensual, says that the actress was a lot more than just a prop the way Mansfield generally was.

The other performances are equally amusing. Franco is a fast-talking rubber-faced patsy very much in the Roberto Benigni mold, while raspy-voiced Ballista is terrific as his incorrigibly corrupt boss. Particularly good is the bouncy score by the prolific Guido and Maurizio De Angelis that puts the material (and the audience) in a receptive mood.

Video & Audio

Giovannona Long-Thigh 'scope process isn't credited, but likely is Techniscope or something comparable. Remastered from the original 35mm vault negative, the film shows some damage here and there and the title elements aren't the best, but overall the 16:9 enhanced presentation is very good. The mono audio (Italian only as the film was never exported to an English-speaking market) gets noticeably distorted during the last 10 minutes then pops back into clarity about a minute before the end. One glitch on this reviewer's player occurred at the 1:06:45 mark when a subtitle appeared but then "froze up" and wouldn't proceed to the next line; hitting the stop button and play again fixed the problem. The disc is region-free.

Extra Features

The disc has several fine extras beginning with Smith's aforementioned essay in NoShame's eight-page full-color booklet. There are two pages each about the genre, director Martino, and star Fenech (with good selected filmographies), all of which lean heavily toward the actress, which is understandable.

Fenech herself appears in a 16:9 interview, Days of Being Wild. At 58, the actress (now primarily a producer whose credits include the Al Pacino Merchant of Venice) is still incredibly beautiful and looks at least 15 years younger than she actually is. Fenech's comments are interesting though the segment is statically shot and features graphics straight out of a hard-core porno film.

Besides the usual trailer, there's an Edwige Fenech's Sexy Comedy Trailer Collection, with 16:9 enhanced trailers likely to whet viewers' appetites for more. Revenge of Edwige's Groovy Sexadelic Reel is a pointless montage of scenes from the film cut together by some mad editor with a chroma key fetish.

Parting Thoughts

Though not exactly a comedy classic, Giovannona Long-Thigh is both sexy and pretty funny and just for the chance to see what made Italian audiences laugh 30-odd years ago makes the film worthwhile. NoShame deserves a round of applause for making available such pictures. Thanks to DVD American audiences have in the last few years been able to experience heretofore unknown comedies from such diverse film industries as the Soviet Union, France, and Hong Hong. Now if we can just find a distributor for Las Vegas Free-for-All and Salaryman Chushingura....

Film historian Stuart Galbraith IV's most recent essays appear in Criterion's new three-disc Seven Samurai DVD and BCI Eclipse's The Quiet Duel.