Il gatto mammone

A classic Italian comedy from the 70s, when the sexuality was getting more explicit and usually mixed with funny misunderstandings. It's the story of a man (Lando Buzzanca) whose wife cannot get pregnant, so they decide to "adopt" a mother girl and to ask her to help them...you can imagine how. It's a funny comedy overall, not better and not worst from the Italian comedies of the time, whose cultural and social contents typical from the 50s-60s were replaced by explicit (and sometimes unappropriated ) sexuality. What i can tell you is, it's 4.44 am here in Italy, i am watching this movie in the TV. If you ever find yourself in my situation, without sleep and without nothing to read, watch this movie....it's OK for a night like this.

First of all, RIP Lando Buzzanca, gone today. I immediately remembered this movie, which is possibly my fav one with him, I looked up on IMDB and saw the vote ? 5.9 ? Why ?! It's too low imho...this is comedy gold, raunchy at times, but downright hilarious !

Gloria Guida is extremely sexy as always (can't make up my mind who's better looking between her and Edwige Fenech, honest !), and the plot was very original at the time - exploring but even mocking the typical male "superiority" attitude !

Buzzanca is looking for a way to have a son, since his wife could not give one to him, so he picks up a young girl, Gloria Guida, who was already a mother in the movie, so... surely able to conceive a son for Lando, right ? .... nope !

And when the tables are turned Buzzanca won't look happy at all :)

The scenes where the "giant ghost father" shows up are just hysterical ! But the whole movie has some of the funniest moments I have ever seen in an otherwise typical italian sexy comedy.

So I suggest this movie to everybody (well, ok, everybody above 14 years old at least LoL !), and I don't give 10/10 only because of a couple extreme situations which I don't think many out there will like, but for me it's a full 10 !

Lando Buzzanca plays a man desperate to father a male heir. However, his wife (Roseanne Podesta) is apparently barren. They decide to use a surrogate mother, which, since this was in the days before artificial insemination, means Buzzanca will have to impregnate the surrogate the "old-fashioned" way. After a mishap involving a VERY unattractive but fertile widow, Buzzanca sets his sights on young girl (Gloria Guida) at an orphanage for unwed mothers (who has already given an illegitimate child up for adoption). They hire her as a maid, but she is under the impression they're going to adopt her, leading to some quasi-incestual misunderstandings. But after the fertile Guida eventually fails to conceive too, the plot takes a pretty predictable but pretty funny ironic turn. . .

Lando Buzzanca was one of the best (perhaps THE best)Italian male comedy actors of the 1970's, playing hapless buffoons in films like Lucio Fulci's "The Senator Likes Women", "The Slave", and "Il Domestico". Gloria Guida is, well, Gloria Guida, and she has a long shower scene, which provides pretty much all of the movie's on-screen sex and nudity. But if you've ever seen Gloria Guida take a shower, you know you probably won't be too disappointed. Besides, this is pretty funny and entertaining as far Guida sex comedies go (usually she was paired with the even more buffoonish, but generally less funny actors, Lino Banfi and/or Alvaro Vitali).

Some things here are perhaps not too believable, like Buzzanca is having sex six times a day with his adopted "daughter" while trying unsuccessfully to procreate (only six times a day?--c'mon!), but these movies are not exactly known for their realism after all. Buzzanca, Guida, and third lead Roseanne Podesta are all good, and that and the sexy, absurd story (with Buzzanca also playing the role of the ghost of his deceased father) make this a pretty worthwhile Italian sex comedy.