Cattivi pensieri

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!

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)

A lawyer finds his wife's lover and locks him in a room but cannot see his face. He spends the next few days trying to figure out who he is but his suspicions all have an alibi. I don't know whether to call it a poor drama or a very slow thriller but it's certainly not a comedy as it is said in the description.

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.

The great Ugo Tognazzi is the director and main actor of an ugly movie that is not comic but highly erotic, at the limit of the hard-core. This can obviously hurt all the spectators expecting a typical Italian comedy as in Tognazzi's tradition. The numerous male and female integral nudes and the explicit sex scenes are offered in a patinated but psychologically disturbed way. Only the solar presence of Edwige Fenech, at the utmost of her extraordinary sex-appeal, smoothes the sick and maniac atmosphere crossing all the movie. The plot is simple: Ugo Tognazzi (Mario Marani) is a lawyer of Milan who is obsessed in thinking to be betrayed by his splendid wife Francesca (Edwige Fenech). After one hundred minutes of evil thoughts, he will have evidence that his wife is faithful, while he is taking the plane together with his secretary and lover (Verushka).