Trama

When a Russian spacecraft is lost in space with two cosmonauts on board, the KGB authorities abduct two petty criminals, Franco and Ciccio, to launch them into space and have them return to impersonate the lost cosmonauts, only to have the real cosmonauts, Paradowski and Borovin, return; misunderstandings with the two duos abound.—matt-282

When Russian cosmonauts Colonel Paradowsky (Franco Franchi) and Major Borovin (Ciccio Ingrassia) to missing in space, the Kremlin refuses to concede the fact, afraid of losing face with the Americans in the so called "space race". Instead, they set about searching for lookalikes to be fired into space in a second rocket, who can then be passed off as the missing cosmonauts when they return, thus saving the Kremlin and Soviet government from embarrassment.

Sonia. a woman working for a Soviet spy ring in Rome, Italy, spots two Sicilian thieves, named Franco Messina and Ciccio Cacase (Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia in dual roles), currently in the newspapers after bungled robbery, who are identical to the missing cosmonauts. Springing the duo from prison, the Russians take them to their safe house in Rome which is a female health space run by the fearsome Comrad Lemidova, aka 'Madame Reno' (Linda Sini). The two dim-witted Italians attempt to escape by disguising themselves as women, but are re-captured and fired into space in the second rocket.

Meanwhile, Paradowsky and Borovin are found alive having made an emergency splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, and they are soon not pleased to discover that on their safe return the two Sicilian goons have been sent for a quiet recuperative vacation with their Russian wives, Nadia Paradowky and Anna Borovin. The wives are puzzled by their "husbands" odd behavior but put it down as "space sickness" and hope that they will eventually return to normality.

Everything comes to a head during a night of chaos and confusion when both the Russians and the two Sicilians hop in and out of bed with the bewildered wives. At last, the two Sicilian goons and the Russians meet face-to-face for the first time, in which Franco and Ciccio are sent back to Rome. However, in a twist of comic relief, the wrong two persons were deported. In the final scene, Franco and Ciccio must now ply their criminal trade in the snowy streets of Moscow despite them not knowing how to speak or understand the Russian language.