Quel gran pezzo della Ubalda tutta nuda e tutta calda

This film was the one which seemingly kick-started the commedia sexy all'italiana genre into hyper-drive, given its huge success at the box office. It's a sex comedy set in the Middle Ages about a half-witted knight who returns from the crusades to discover his gorgeous wife hasn't been true to him in his absence, so he is drawn to an equally gorgeous, bored miller's wife whose jealous husband isn't too impressed when he discovers the hapless knight's intentions.

I am pretty much guessing that this is par for the course in this genre of film, probably at the top end of its category. The production values are fairly decent with all the period detail and all the rest of it. The women - Edwige Fenech, Karin Schubert and Gabriella Giorgelli - are absolutely beautiful and in a state of undress pretty regularly. The erotic element is clearly the main selling point here and not the comedy, as when you weigh up the scenes of Edwige, Karin and Gabriella against the groan-inducing slapstick...well, there's clearly only ever going to be one winner.

This very old-fashioned slapstick comedy is like a feature-length Benny Hill skit -- full of grotesques, lame pratfalls, and gorgeous, teasing, undraped females. Its singular claim to fame is the presence of two top Eurotrash starlets in featured roles, both in their prime and both displaying their assets throughout the picture, including one lengthy slow-motion run through the fields for Edwige. As usual, Fenech shows lots of personality and humour, while Shubert's icy appeal was definitely more suited to her later hardcore roles. The denouement, in which the boys get their just deserts, is actually quite funny. There's really no need for dubbing or subtitles on this one.

Edwige Fenech is popularly known as the "Queen of Giallo," and watching her in the seven wonderful gialli DVDs available here in the U.S. (well, six really, plus one crime drama--1973's "Secrets of a Call Girl") was the high point of my film viewing in 2006. What a happy day for me, then, when I heard that the fine folks at No Shame had recently released two more Edwige titles. Ms. Fenech is also, astonishingly, the so-called "Queen of Italian Sex Comedies," and "Ubalda, All Naked and Warm" (1972) amply demonstrates why. She is both wickedly funny and (need it even be said?) amazingly beautiful in this film, and turns what is in essence a silly medieval sex farce into something truly special. The story here centers around a doofus knight named Olimpio (picture a melding of Jerry Lewis and Roberto Benigni!) who returns to his village (the aptly named Watch-the-Hole) after six months of war and is reunited with his hotty blonde wife, who's been fooling around despite being "locked" in a chastity belt. Olimpio is soon smitten by the similarly encumbered wife of his enemy, the miller, played by our Edwige. Both men devise all sorts of amusing schemes to get the other's wife out of her "iron panties," and much of the antics that ensue, despite the silliness, are pretty funny. But that Edwige...OMG! Whether running seminaked (and warm) through a sunlit field, stripping for an aged doctor or rolling around with any number of cuckolders, this spectacular Eurobabe does not disappoint. At one point in the film she is referred to as "perfection of perfections," and not too many men, I have a feeling, would care to disagree. The fine-looking DVD that I just watched also features many Edwige extras; I could watch the three-minute one entitled "Edwige's Groovy Sexadelic Reel" every day for the rest of my life. She's just that scrumptious.

A sex-starved knight returns from war and gets in a feud with the local miller, which both men try to resolve by attempting to seduce the other's wife (played respectively by Edwige Fenech and Karin Schubert). They are stopped, partly by a pair of locked steel chastity belts, but mostly by their own stupidity, as these contraptions certainly don't prevent practically every other man in town--the local stud, the lecherous priest, the horny doctor, and the crafty locksmith--from cuckolding them both repeatedly.

This period sex comedy was no doubt inspired partly by the German sex comedies lead Edwige Fenech had earlier appeared in, but mostly by "The Decameron" (probably the hit Passolini movie more than the classic Boccacio book). Owing to the "Decameron" influence, it's more pointed and satirical and thus little better than the moronic German movies--and the version I saw had the benefit of having subtitles instead of being clumsily dubbed into English by the usual gang of idiots. Still it's pretty tame. There is a lot of nudity, but it's all above the waist (fortunately, Fenech, Schubert, and their other female co-star Gabriella Giorgelli were all pretty impressive in that department).

Still it's a pretty slight movie--the most interesting thing about is the extras on the new DVD: There is a bizarre and trippy psychedelic montage of all Fenech's boob-bouncing nude scenes from the movie (which might save the weasel-milkers out there some time). There's some Italian trailers from Fenech's various "Sexy Schoolteacher" movies (which look even dumber than this one). And there is a strange excerpt from a longer interview with the still gorgeous Fenech where she gushes over Quentin Tarantino, which is not only ironic but kind of irrelevant here since this is probably the one genre of films she appeared in that ole Q.T. has not ripped off yet. (Give him time though). This is definitely worth a look for Edwige Fenech stalkers and Bocaccio completists, but for anyone else, well. . .

If your idea of slapstick comedy is a husband diving on top of his wife forgetting that he put a chastity belt on her before he went off to war, then this is just what you are looking for.

Olimpio (Pippo Franco) is a bumbling fool who has a gorgeous wife Fiamma (Karin Schubert), who has been cheating with everyone in town while he was away, despite her chastity belt. Nature will find a way.

When he returns, he sees Ubalda (Edwige Fenech) and spends his time and energy trying to bed her, despite a lurking jealous husband (Umberto D'Orsi).

There is plenty of sex jokes along with the slapstick, and, as you might imagine, plenty of luscious flesh on display.