La prof connaît la musique

One of the worst, but probably more typical example of the late

Italian erotic comedies of the Seventies, which anticipate the

American college and T&A movies of the early Eighties. This one stars the beautiful Edwige Fenech - probably the better

actress and the most beautiful of the several starlets that have

made this kind of movies in the period - as a music teacher, a

piano player, involved in a farsesque relationship with an aspiring

mayor of an Italian small town, Renzo Montagnani (a very good

actor that was wasted in such abysmal roles), but who becomes

the attraction of the house she has rent, before falling for the young

son of the housekeeper. Fenech shows her breasts several times and she is involved even

in a couple of showers (a requisite of this kind of movies), but the

story sucks from start to finish and the jokes are so bad that they

hurt. For Fenech's fans only (and they will get eyeful of their favorite)

Edwige Fenech is a piano teacher in Milan. She is carrying on an affair with Renzo Montagnani from Lucca. He says he loves her, but he lives with his aged, ill mother. So she moves to Lucca to surprise him. Everyone in the house thinks she is actually a call girl. On top of that, Montagnani is actually a married member of the Lucca city council, whose wife is paying for his run for mayor.

That's the basis for this comedy, and almost all of it consists of the various men in the apartment building trying to rape her, the boys drilling a hole so they can watch her naked, and so forth. Signorina Fenech is quite lovely, of course, but she was locked into this sort of sex comedy, even though, like other actresses locked into the bombshell category, demonstrated her ability to actually act.

This is the weakest of the "insegnante" (schoolteacher) series, at least of the ones featuring Edwige Fenech. (Director Tarantini did a virtual re-make of this movie a year later without the genuinely talented Renzo Montagnini and replacing the sexy and talented Fenech with the merely sexy Anna-Maria Rizzoli, which is definitely even weaker). Despite the title, Fenech here isn't really a teacher. I think she's SUPPOSED TO BE a piano teacher or something, but really she's just some sexy woman staying in a luxury hotel. She's the kept mistress of a wealthy politician (Renzo Montagnini) who neglects her(the idiot!). She is being pursued by the married manager of the hotel (Lino Banfi), the dimwitted bell-boy (Alvaro Vitali), and the manager's handsome son. They spy on her in the shower and engage in various hare-brain schemes to get in her panties, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out who she's going to ultimately end up with.

Obviously, the main appeal of these movies is Edwige Fenech and other various bella donnas appearing with or without all of their clothes. But I've seen a lot of these now, and they have a strange way of growing on you (not unlike some horrible fungus). They are also not all equally dreadful. It actually depends a lot on the director. Tarantini was a hack by anyone's standards and clearly inferior as a director to Marino Giralamo or Mario Laurenti, who directed several of the other "schoolteacher" films. Laurenti and Grirlamo were in turn inferior to the true masters of 70's Italian sex comedies like Pasquale Campanile Festa, Sergio Martino, and (believe it or not) Lucio Fulci.

Montagnini and Fenech were genuinely talented actors, but this a long way from being their best work. Even buffoons like Banfi can sometimes be funny and Vitali at least tolerable in the right movie--but this definitely is not the right movie. This movie isn't entirely worthless (never underestimate the appeal of Fenech's incredible breast and beauteous backside), but it's definitely pretty close.

School Teacher in the House, The (1979)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Third and final film in the series once again has no connection to the previous two outside the title and the star. This time out a piano teacher (Edwide Fenech) gets tired of playing the mistress to a Mayor so she moves closer to him. Various men start hitting on the teacher, which doesn't sit well with the Mayor and soon all hell breaks loose. This final film is pretty bland but I actually liked it better than the second one, although I'm sure this isn't saying too much. Once again the key to anyone watching this film is the presence of the beautiful Fenech who once again suffers through material below her. I'm really not too up to date on the history of Italian sex comedies but I'm going to guess there was some reason for her doing this film (and series). Fenech once again steals the film even though she's given very little to work with. Her nudity is the reason people are going to turn in and she's still extremely hot at this point in her career. The supporting characters are fairly bland without them giving too much to the film. Once again we get all sorts of dumb sexual jokes, which basically center on various men having the hots for Fenech. I will give the production credit for trying something new as there's very little "teaching" going on here and instead we get to see the teacher in her private life. In the end this is certainly for Fenech fans only.