Top Sensation

When I heard this was the film where Edwidge Fenech gets friendly with a goat, I thought she just fed it some oats, maybe gave it some fresh straw to sleep on. Boy, was I wrong! Although I guess she did feed it something...

This hugely daft pile of crazy nonsense called Top Sensation is yet another giallo set on a boat where the female cast lounge around in tiny bikinis. The entire plot of this one seems to be set around getting shy, possibly autistic son of an oil heiress laid to make him a man, but he just wants to play with his toy racing car (that's not a euphemism). Neri and her husband have hired Fenech to do the job but nothing's getting him interested.

Also, the heiress has CCTV in her boat so she can watch folks getting it on, but then Neri's husband can watch her getting it on with Neri (and he gets it on with Fenech). It's a sixties film. They probably all had crabs.

The boat of course crashes on a sandbank and that's when our mob of nymphs find a local goat herder, a lucky goat, and the goat herder's wife, who raises the interest of the heiress's son! It's about this time when Fenech makes a remark about how rough a goat's tongue is...Plus, they have to get that lady herder spruced up for the strange son...and Rosalba needs some sun cream rubbed on her chest...

Of course, this not being a hardcore porn film everything is implied and there's very little by way of nudity, and the plot kind of deviates away from all the sleaze (save for the last five minutes). It's an enjoyable film, not least due to the strange story and the actresses involved, and for a film involving murder, it's all so light hearted.

I wonder if Edwidge's grandkids have ever watched this one? And I also wonder if the subsequently made it illegal for Fenech and Neri to star in the same film (or put the moves on another woman at the same time - my blood pressure!).

Unlike what you may think going into this one, it only barely qualifies as a thriller and is more an erotic drama with some thriller elements. There's really no suspense generated at any point, even if the plot-line does move onto murder in its latter half. No, this one's focus is more squarely on other things for the majority of its screen-time. This is not exactly a bad thing though, as it means The Seducers is perhaps slightly less generic than a lot of its contemporaries. I was definitely brought to mind of Roman Polanski's psychological drama Knife in the Water (1962) though, with its group of unsympathetic characters playing out their melodrama and mind-games on a private boat cruise. But then again, I was also reminded of the outrageous Greek exploitation extravaganza Island of Death (1976) on account of that one's scene of goat-based bestiality – in The Seducers we move into a similar basic ball-park, albeit of a decidedly less disgraceful variety. Unlike in Island of Death where we have a male sociopath roger an unfortunate animal, here we have the lovely Edwige Fenech really only getting up close and personal with it. It's a mixture of the questionable, the erotic and the outright bizarre – a properly strange scene whichever way you look at it.

The story takes place on a luxurious yacht cruising in the Mediterranean. A wealthy woman of questionable motives hires three people – the seducers of the title - to deflower her mentally-deranged son. Add an innocent farm girl to the mix and you have the recipe for much sexploitation shenanigans.

This one is notable for both being a very early screen appearance from cult icon Fenech but is of additional note in that it pairs her up with another of the hottest actresses working in Italian genre films at the time, Rosalba Neri. In actual fact this film is owned by Neri mainly. Kitted out in a leather bikini, carrying a rifle and throwing dynamite into the sea, she is a bad girl par excellence in this one. I've seen Neri in a number of movies but this may very well be her definitive moment here, as her assertive sensuality is a perfect fit for this character. In any case, her and Fenech together in an erotic set-up is never going to be a bad thing, in actual fact they even at one point indulge in a three-way girl-on-girl-on-girl romp with the farm girl they bring on board.

All-in-all, this is a bit of an unheralded gem. I only saw it when a very kind fellow IMDb user sent me a copy which suffered from pretty ropey sound quality. It's definitely a movie, though, that is crying out for a proper transfer, it definitely deserves that kind of care and is one that Euro-cult enthusiasts will definitely lap up.

This movie was obviously an influence on the later, more notorious "Island of Death" with it's decadent European tourists despoiling an idyllic Greek island. But where the latter movie crosses the line into being repulsive and genuinely unpleasant, this movie is deliciously nasty, mainly due to the excellent acting of the three female leads. Maud de Belleroche is a hard-as-nails oil heiress who lures a greedy couple (the wife is Rosalba Neri) and a nymphomaniacal prostitute (Edwige Fenech)aboard her yacht (perversely wired with short-circuit cameras in every room) hoping that one of women will seduce her dimwitted son. It's hard to imagine Neri and Fenech not being able to seduce ANYONE but they are both so incredibly, over-the-top sexy here it's understandable that the kid wilts in their presence like a flower in blistering sunlight. He instead falls for an innocent shepherd girl (Ewe Thulin), so the two voluptuous golddiggers set their sights on seducing HER.

This movie is more genuinely erotic than 10,000 porn films. Rosalba Neri shows off her incredible nude body as usual, but she's just as sexy dressed up in a short-shorts and a halter, cruelly blasting away at goats with a shotgun (she has a similar scene in the equally delicious giallo "Amuck", and she really can shoot like a pro). Neri positively oozes sex and evil in equal measure. Edwige Fenech doesn't play a villain as well Neri but she has the most incredible scene in the movie which involves a goat and gives a new meaning to the term animal husbandry. (I don't know if the SPCA would have approved, but I'm sure the goat didn't mind). Then there's an amazing three-way lesbian scene between the two of them and Ewe Thulin that literally seemed to fog up the camera lens (or maybe it was just my eyeballs). What else can I say? Wow!

A sexy vixen Edwige Fenech stars as a prostitute hired by the overbearing,vaguely incestuous mother of a shy,mentally-retarded 20-year old named Tony. Fenech is meant to claim Tony's virginity on a sea cruise,also attended by sexy Paula and her slimy husband Aldo,who incessantly try to curry the wealthy mother's favor.Ewa Aulin shows up as an island girl who dies when the dull-witted Tony accidentally strangles her,leading her husband to board the ship,where he is quickly dispatched by the rifle-toting Neri."Top Sensation" is a perfect example of Eurotrash cinema.There is plenty of sleaze and fantastic lesbian sequence between Edwige Fenech,Rosalba Neri and Ewa Aulin.The film is cheaply made,but highly entertaining.Give it a look.My rating:9 out of 10.

Eurobabes Edwige Fenech (5 DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON) and Rosalba Neri (LADY FRANKENSTEIN) get wicked, kinky and naked in this bizarre Italian thriller. A rich, sicko socialite (Maud Belleroche) plays weird sex/mind games using a parasitical young couple (Neri, Maurizio Bonuglia), a golddigging prostitute (Fenech) and her own mentally disturbed son as pawns. Most of the action takes place aboard a luxury yacht cruising the Mediterranean. The games get out of control, resulting in murder when the yacht stops at a rustic island populated by sheperds. (The scene with Fenech and the baby goat is simply unbelievable.) Composer Sante Romitelli's interesting score is kitschy and groovy at the same time. The movie looks and sounds terrible on bootleg VHS... Positively screams for a widescreen DVD release!