Nos Tempos do Cinto de Castidade

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.

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.

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.

First of all I have to confess that for me this film would be worth it just for the title and the presence of Edwige Fenech.

Surprise, surprise though, the film really does have a certain charm as well as lots of nakedness, perhaps a little too much male incompetence and tomfoolery but is actually very amusing and sometimes very funny.

Both the actions and dialogue are effective and because I knew that the central theme included wives in chastity belts I did fear there might be rather protracted unfunny bits alluding to this, but no.

Well worth a watch and now I want to see more of these Canterbury Tales spin-offs.