Cattivi pensieri

OK, it's a B-Movie, lots of little mistakes, weird cuts, funny camerawork. But if you want to see original seventies: decor, humour, even sex - totally liberated, of course - that's the place to look for it. Some of the scenes are so absurd, you don't believe they meant it seriously... Good Fun, Edwige Fenech is gorgeous in every single picture and a nice collection of (meanwhile) vintage cars should be enough reason to see this film.

I saw this under the title 'Who Mislaid My Wife?', but the Italian title "Bad Thoughts" makes more sense as the plot revolves around the central character's nightmare fantasies regarding his wife's infidelity. The film could be described as a sex comedy as certain parts of it are clearly played for laughs; but it's not as blatant as some of the other films in this genre and while Italian comedy has gone over my head in the past, I would have to say that this film seems to have a serious side to it. As mentioned, it's the lead character's jealousy that makes up the backbone of the plot. Lawyer Mario Marani is married to the beautiful Francesca Marani. They live the high life amongst other socialites; but their private life is an issue for the husband as he can't help but think his wife is playing away. He continually imagines her in various situations with various men but has no evidence to back up his imagination. That is until he finds a man hiding in the closet inside their home and his jealousies increase further.

Naturally the main reason I saw this film was due to the fact that it stars the beautiful Edwige Fenech. She actually keeps her clothes on for most of this film, which is unfortunate, but her performance is good and the film does at least involve her in several provocative scenes. Ugo Tognazzi (also the film's director) stars alongside Edwige and provides a convincing performance as the jealous husband; while the film also has room for cult star Luc Merenda in a small role. I do have to say that the film is a bit too long and the plot does start to become a bit tiresome in places. The film has a fragmented structure and often skips from one place to the next, which can become a bit confusing at times also. Still, there's usually enough to keep interest high (Edwige Fenech is usually enough on her own!) and the film is constantly amusing. We do get some ironic shocks at the end which are quite funny too. Overall, I wouldn't recommend anyone goes out of their way to see this film (with the exception of die hard Edwige Fenech fans!) but if you do manage to find a copy, it is at least worth seeing.

it is a real strange film if you expect a nice Italian comedy using the old recipes. because the humour is heavy and the fears / obsessions of Ugo Tognazi character are far to be amusing or comfortable. the large use of explicit erotic scenes are , maybe, not the most inspired option for a film about trust, vulnerabilities, marriage and a sort of cruelty . the only good thing is the performance of Edwige Fenech , who saves a film about a neurotic/paranoid advocate and his long trip. the worst part- the end. fake, melodramatic, proposing a moral lesson after a confuse run across hypothesis and clichés.

Ugo Tognazzi is a lawyer whose flight to New York is canceled due to extreme fog and he goes back to his house, only to find a man hidden in the closet while his wife appears to be sleeping. Actually, he just sees the man's feet but he doesn't bother to find out who he is (if he did, this whole cockamamie story would be over before it started); he locks the room, goes back to bed with his wife as if nothing had happened and spends the rest of the movie fantasizing about whom the guilty party might be, while in real life each and every one of his "suspects" turn out to have solid alibis. Admittedly, I saw a poorly dubbed version of this movie, titled "Who MisLaid My Wife?", so perhaps something has been lost in the translation. What does come through, however, is a dismal, monotonous "comedy", with alternately ridiculous and tasteless (and sometimes both) fantasy sequences. Edwige Fenech looks GORGEOUS in this film, but her role is very demeaning; she is continuously insulted, publicly embarrassed and, at one point, nearly raped. As for her nudity, it is limited to those fantasy scenes, and it is rarely arousing. (*1/2)

There are really two kinds of 1970's Italian sex comedies. There are the really silly ones featuring the buffoonery of actors like Lino Banfi and Alvaro Vitali, which are the ones actress Edwige Fenech usually appeared in. Then there are the darker and/or more satirical ones like Lucio Fulci's "The Eroticist", Salvatore Samper's "Malizia", and "Romanzo Popolare", a film very similar to this that also featured lead actor/director UgoTognazzi. These latter films were a little more arty and usually tended to feature actresses like Laura Antonelli or Ornella Muti. Whether arty or silly, however, almost all of the 1970's comedies were horribly dubbed into English and given stupid, often inappropriate titles (like "Who Mislaid My Wife?") This didn't really hurt the ones that were already silly to begin with, but it definitely does in the darker, more clever ones like this.

A lawyer (Ugo Tognazzi) comes home from a cancelled business trip to find the naked feet of a man standing in his closet. He suspects the man is the lover of his wife (Edwige Fenech), but instead of confronting her, he locks the closet door, turns up the heat, and drags her out of town on an extended working vacation, playing a kind game of "chicken" with her to get her to admit to the presence of the man in the closet. This is indeed a pretty ridiculous conceit, but this IS still a comedy after all (and it's really no more ridiculous than Alvaro Vitali playing a high school student in all Fenech's "Schoolteacher" sex comedies). As they travel around Italy, the lawyer begins to imagine who the mysterious man in the closet might be. He has vivid fantasies of his wife's adulterous affairs and possible lovers. He also has darker fantasies (or "evil thoughts") about returning to the apartment and finding the dead body of the "lover".

I won't give away the ending, but it's quite clever with some nice ironic twists. Of course, Fenech has her usual plethora of nude scenes. This actually might be the most explicit film she ever appeared in—in one of the fantasy sequences she goes for a full-frontal nude swim with a bunch of guys with giant erections, in another she gets turned on watching graphic scenes of horses mating. Still the movie, while very dark in its humor, was in generally good taste and I didn't think Fenech was "demeaned" at all. As for Tognazzi, he basically plays a bourgeois version of the working-class guy he played in "Romanzo Popolare". Here he's married to Fenech, and in that he was married to the equally incredibly gorgeous (if somewhat younger) Ornella Muti. Either of these situations would probably drive just about any man mad with jealousy!