Conviene far bene l'amore

There is no power in Italy, so a professor feels that by using power given off by sex, they can light Italy up again. I don't know what you're thinking, but just hearing that, it sounds like a stupid film. And it is. It's just a stupid excuse to have sex on the screen.

The Italians know how to make 'em. I rented this movie wary about whether I would just see a silly, stupid sex comedy and I found otherwise. Very amusing, Professor Coppola discovering that energy from sex is a viable way to solve a serious energy (as in power supply, electricity fuel, etc.) problem. Then, not just the government gets involved, but the church--its great.

Once the basics, the experiment, are accomplished, what is are the grander goals--how much sex gives how much power? What are the parameters for goals, what can be done with it? The government licks its chops. The churchman asks, don't we need love as well as sex? What are the role of gang bangs, perversions, whatever? OK, the latter two are just thoughts not action, and that is good--just part of the wit. A lot of that is present here. There are mainly one stud and two gorgeous leading ladies, but the professor also discovers his wife is cheating on him. Great fun and lighthearted--you'll enjoy it.

The most important aspect of this film, is hidden at the beginning. Only after the half of the movie has gone, you discover that you are challenged to take a position on an underlying social problem. The position that the church takes on the fact that for the survival of the human race and the glory of the government, "the people have to make ONLY sex and not make any children". And of course, the church complies with the idea, discarding all the writings. And this is good. That's how the church, any church should behave. For the good of the human race and not for it's own good.

I thought this was a pretty good film, although I was 13 years old when I saw it. So chalk it up to gushing hormones. This was the type of movie, along with "Black Emanuelle," etc. that would appear on Showtime at about 2 A.M.

"The Sex Machine" is an Italian sex comedy. The film taks place during an energy crisis; all the oil and electricity are gone. A scientist invents some kind of transducer which converts orgasms into electricity, thus providing a new source of energy.

I remember that I really enjoyed watching the nurse character.

Worth staying awake for, if it ever comes on again!

I have seen WAY too many bad Italian sex comedies, so it's always nice to see one that is relatively clever, satirical, and entertaining (without skimping on the naked Euro-lovelies that make even some of the bad ones worthwhile). During a worldwide energy shortage, a scientist (Gigi Proietti) is trying to harvest the power of sexual passion as an energy source. He is ably, um, assisted by his two gorgeous nurses (Eleanora Giorgi and Adriana Asti), but he seems to get his best results from a couple (Agostina Belli and Christian De Sica), who end up in a hospital room together after they are both injured and whisked away by the scientist's fake ambulance. Both are married to other people, however, so their relationship does not go very smoothly. The movie takes the usual satirical swipes at Catholicism--the slender Belli has a laughably ridiculous number of kids, and the whole project becomes embroiled in the typical Vatican intrigue.

The director Pasquale Campanile Festa directed quite a few superior sex comedies like "The Libertine" (with Catherine Spaak) and "Body of a Girl" (with Lili Carati) as well the superb giallo/terror film "Hitch-Hike" (with Franco Nero, Corrine Clery, and David Hess) and the interesting melodrama "The Girl from Trieste" (with Ben Gazarra and Ornella Muti). This is another superior effort. The two male actors are good, especially Proietti as the scientist who is so obsessed with his sex experiments that he neglects his own beautiful, busty wife (who has to seek the attention of male prostitutes). DeSica basically has the same role he had in "Giovanino"--sex scene after sex scene with beautiful women (must have been tough).

What really makes Italian sex comedies though--both the good ones and the not-so-good ones--are the actresses. Agostina Belli and Eleanora Giorgi, perhaps due to this movie, are often confused in the IMDb pages, but they are definitely two different people. It was Belli who came closer to international stardom with a role in "Bluebeard", the lead in the original Italian "Scent of a Woman", and an appearance with Kirk Douglas in "Holocaust 2000". Giorgi was less well-known, but she had an important part in Dario Argento's "Inferno", and she managed to almost overshadow Ornella Muti when the two of them appeared together in the little-seen "Apassionata". Needless to say, both actresses spend a lot of their screen time here in the all-together. And if there really WERE a "sex machine" like the one in this movies, these two could no doubt light up a good size metropolis all by themselves! Good movie. Recommended.