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Back in June of 1986 I was doing archaeology in Sardinia -- our team was staying in the central town of Marcomer, which is also an Italian Navy base (for training) and we students decided to see an Italian porn film.

Now, we had all see the Italian porn comics on sale at the train station (gross outs) and expected to spend the time going "Eeeuu!" Mostly we expected to watch the Italian boys leer at the screen. We were going 'cultural anthropology.' Our concierge said the film was dirty.

The movie is about an overweight Italian girl who runs an anti-clerical radio station in an Italian hill town who pines for a young man who ignores her. She wins a trip to Anita Ekberg's New York fat farm, where in many grunting scenes the fat suit is removed. Ekberg's male aid clearly has his eye on her.

Fat Girl returns home as a stacked American blond and discovers that her younger sister has been seduced and abandoned and left pregnant at the altar by the idiot boy she had originally had a liking for.

The rest of the tale is her revenge. And no, it isn't something from Elizabethan theater. The movie is funny and sweet and I would show it to a nine-year-old.

And no, we didn't feel like we had been gypped either.

Years ago the very first SF magazine I ever saw had a knight battling an alien -- it was Astounding SF with "The High Crusade." For a kid it was a great adventure, reading as an adult it is truly hilarious. Poul Anderson handled comedy and tragedy equally well. Had they filmed the book they would have had a hit. Rick Overton would have been a perfect Sir Roger, John Rhys-Davies is worth watching even if he isn't very 'parvus (ie. 'measly.')They clearly did not have the budget for the cast that would have been required The best lines are the ones taken from Anderson's book, such as the 'negotiation' scene. My recommendation, if you have time to kill Rhys-Davies is always worth watching as is Overton. The novel was recently brought out again by i-Books in a cover evidently modeled on the movie. Add the book to your collection and enjoy. Really, it's a very good book and someone should make a movie out of it.

George R. R. Martin, writer of "Beauty And The Beast," and a well known professional SF writer ("Tuff Voyaging" is heartily recommended) came up with this pilot for an alternate universe adventure show some time before Sliders, but Tracey Torme's version was the one that became a series. Ignore the disparaging remarks and watch it -- George Newbern goes well beyond the bounds of 'male ingenue (sp?)' and Kurtwood Smith delivers two good performances (conceivably he could have been the Kenny of live action TV, a comment you will need to watch it to understand, if the series had made it.