El periscopio

A very strange kind of sex comedy, a very mixed bag. Some of its plot elements are bizarre, some are clever, some exploitative, and some are pretty daft.

On the daft side, we have a horny teenage boy who wants to spy on his female next-story neighbours, and who - wait for it - builds a periscope for this purpose, something he conveniently just learned in school. The neighbours in question are two bisexual (sic!) nurses who are usually in their kinky underwear (or even out of it) whenever our voyeur has a look. It happens every day, doesn't it?

On the clever side, there is a subtle side plot involving his mother. She is getting gifts from her lover including a glamorous fur coat. Trouble is: how to explain this to her unsuspecting husband? Well, she comes up with a pretty good idea, introducing the coat as a lucky find, collected by her son. It doesn't quite work out as she intended though as her son finds another use for the coat. This part of the plot works very well and would have deserved to be in a better film.

The comedy is similarly patchy, some bits make you laugh, others make you want to bang the writer's head on the wall.

As the previous reviewer said this is a strange and very uneven European sex comedy. Some things are relatively clever such as the opening scene where the youthful protagonist gets involved in a prostitution scam, or a sub-plot where the protagonist's unfaithful mother tries to get a fur coat her lover has given her past her dimwitted husband by pawning it and claiming she found the pawn ticket in a cab (tragicallly for her, she trusts her equally dimwitted son to pick it up). Unfortunaely though, the main plot is pretty stupid: an adolescent boy buys a periscope so he can spy on the two swinging, bisexual nurses that live above his family's apartment (one of whom is played by exploitation legend Laura Gemser), and, well, that's about it. There's also some REALLY stupid scenes, even by Euro sex comedy standards, like the one where the kid wakes up from a wet dream with a great "pain in his groin" and his clueless parents actually call Nurse Gemser down to manually "relieve" him.

This movie (also called "Malizia Erotica") was probably somewhat inspired by the successful Laura Antonelli film "Malizia" where a disturbed adolescent spies on and eventually sexually blackmails his maid/step-mother-to-be. This movie though is much more silly and not nearly as dark or perverse as that one, and it's not particularly funny either. Gemser definitely has her charms, but she's not in the acting class of the other Laura. This movie was directed by Jose Larraz, who made some very decent horror movies in Britain ("Symptoms", "Vampyres")and some interesting Eurotica ("Coming of Sin"), but is kind of out of his element doing comedy.

The cut I saw was equally strange. It was very tame in places, but then would have brief jarring close-ups of female masturbation or something (I suspect it at one time had had hardcore inserts added and then clumsily removed). The masturbation inserts are not Gemser I'm sure (who never did hardcore), but she has plenty of nude scenes, as do the two Spanish actresses who play Gemser's roommate and the protagonist's mother. Like ALL Larraz and Gemser films I've seen, it definitely doesn't disappoint in that department. You could do worse I guess.

Directed by José Ramón Larraz, who gave us classic 70s erotic horror Vampyres, and written by Sergio Garrone, whose nazisploitation flick SS Experiment Camp comfortably made it onto the official video nasty list, And Give Us Our Daily Sex is a silly sex farce made notable by the presence of cult Euro sleaze actress Laura Gemser, and the unexpected inclusion of a couple of explicit close-ups amidst the predominantly soft-core shenanigans.

Gemser plays one of a pair of sexy bisexual nurses living in an apartment building one floor up from a middle-aged couple and their teenage son Albert, who is only too happy to have the randy rug-munchers in the apartment above: whilst gorgeous Gemser is getting it on with her equally luscious lover, Albert is busy putting his new science project—a periscope—to good use by spying on the lingerie-wearing lovelies.

Meanwhile, Albert's mother is being even naughtier than her precious little boy, sneaking off for some extra-marital sex while her hair-obsessed husband is at the salon, having his follicles tended to.

Garrone's script is mostly uninspired and often dreadfully unfunny, although the scene in which nurse Gemser is called in to relieve a mysterious pain in Albert's nads is enjoyably daft (and also features the first unexpected close-up: a blink and you'll miss it 'nob' shot), whilst a little invention is eventually displayed in a sub-plot which sees the mother devise an ingenious scheme to bring home an expensive fur coat—paid for by money from her lover—without raising the suspicion of her husband.

4.5 out of 10, very generously rounded up to 5 for the gratuitous, badly spliced, x-rated inserts.

José Ramón Larraz will be best known to film fans for his lesbian vampire film Vampyres, as well as a handful of nasty exploitation films such as The Violation of the Bitch and Black Candles. And Give Us Our Daily Sex is a rather more light-hearted effort from the director, and it's a rather good little film too - though the plot does have a few problems. The film could be described as a sex comedy, although a lot of it is not really played for laughs. The English translation of the original title is "The Periscope" and it's the lead character's periscope that provides the main plot point. Our main character is a young lad that lives in an apartment building. Two young and sexy nurses move into an apartment above his, and as he is experiencing his 'sexual awakening'; it's not long before he starts to want to spy on them; and so builds himself a periscope to do the job. Adding to the central plot are sub plots involving his hair-obsessed father and adulterous mother.

Laura Gemser may not be the greatest actress of all time, but she certainly is one of the hottest; and the material here is not exactly heavy enough to show up her lack of acting skills. Gemser really does what she does best; although the film could have used a bit more skin. I don't know if this film was intended to be a comedy; but if it was then it's not very successful as most of the film is not very funny; only a rather bizarre sequence that sees Laura Gemser give the lead character a hand job would fit into the comedy genre. The central plot is rather well handled and is generally subdued enough to be sexy without becoming exploitative; which would have spoiled what the film was aiming for. The sub-plots are fairly interesting too; the boy's father is moderately amusing while the mother's scheming leads to one of the film's key moments. This is a film that is likely not to appeal to everyone; it's not as hardcore as what Gemser fans will be used to and not as exploitative as what Larraz fans will be used to; but it's not bad for what it is and it's worth a look if you can find a copy.