1970's Italian sex comedies tend to be pretty much the same, but to the extent that this one breaks the mold, it does so to its own detriment. The main problem with this is that it is somewhat mean-spirited with no really likable (or especially funny) characters. The plot is about a trio of medical residents in their late 20's/early 30's who nevertheless like to play all kinds of juvenile pranks on each other and everybody else (like pretending to be a mortally injured patient in an ambulance in order to score a freebie from a prostitute). The ring-leader is (of course) Alvaro Vitali playing his usual aggressive and ridiculously horny man-child (anticipating Adam Sandler's "Billy Madison" character). Vitali pretty much always played an unsympathetic buffoon, but his cronies here are no better--one feigns a rare, fatal illness just to get close to a sexy female doctor (Karin Schubert) while the other cruelly abandons his fiancée at the altar. Their nemesis meanwhile, an older doctor, is a pompous boor engaged to Schubert, but even he doesn't deserve being the butt of some of these cruel jokes.
These movies are all horribly sexist by today's standards, but a lot of them greatly mitigated this with strong female protagonists, most notably Edwige Fenech or Babara Bouchet, but also to a lesser extent actresses like Gloria Guida or Nadia Cassini. The above-the-line female star here Karin Schubert,however, was more of a sexy blonde "ice queen" who definitely lacked the comedic chops or charismatic warmth of someone like Edwige Fenech (she eventually became an XXX porn star). The voluptuous Orchidea DeSantis plays a sexy, voluptuous nurse named "Italia" (making for all kinds of lame jokes). It's nice to see DeSantis, both in and out of her nurse's uniform; unfortunately, her character is pretty pathetic and receives a lot of cruel treatment that kind of leaves a bad taste in the mouth. She is coerced into sex with the elderly head doctor while everyone watches on close-circuit TV and she is later abandoned at the altar by her fiancée. The best female character by far is the molta sexy Ely Galeani as Vitali's gold-digging tease of a girlfriend. She won't put out, but drives him to hysterical distraction changing in and out of a skimpy bikini (easily the highlight of the movie). Later he finds out that she and her bisexual friend are working as escorts and he has to pay them for a three-way (mercifully, off screen--NO ONE wants to see Vitali in a three-way) to finally seal the deal.
Although it had Italian opening credits, the version I saw of this was dubbed into Spanish for some reason with English fansubs that were so confounding I pretty much had to ignore them and try to understand the Spanish. As Italian sex comedies go, I've certainly seen worse than this, but I've also definitely seen better. . .
