Stella l'Italienne

In August 1996 Joe D'Amato outdid himself, ripping off two film classics back-to-back in his quest to produce as many hardcore "epics" as humanly possible. Results have gotten lost in the marketplace, but are worth examining for the record.

IMDb has both films, VIRILITY and THE LAST SICILIAN, dated 1995, but I'm attempting to correct that.

VIRILITY is alternately titled THE LEOPARD, a nod to the classic novel and equally revered Luchino Visconti movie. Unfortunately his hardcore version has little to do with the source material.

It's basically a one-note effort that might have been more comfortable in the hands of a genius of Italian Comedy like Germi or Risi. The Prince (played stolidly by Valentino) can't get his wife to put out in bed. Stella (lovely Monica Orsini) maintains that carnal desires are a mortal sin, so she remains celibate, forcing Fabrizio (the Prince's given name) to go to a local brothel for servicing. A new girl named Fanny from Paris gives him what he wants. She's played by distinctively short-haired D'Amato regular Nicolette.

Upstaging Orsini is her sister Maria (the buxom and beautiful Cindy Scorsese, of course no relation to the goodfella guy). She's as sexually active as Orsini is uptight, first seen outside servicing the gardener, a bald, beefy young guy who comically reminded me of Vin Diesel (!).

Visiting from Palermo is the Prince's nephew Tancredi (overworked D'Amato regular Hakan Serbes), who wastes no time in having stand-up sex with Maria. To kill time, D'Amato has a balding (but too young to be convincing in the role) actor of his XXX stock company appear as Maria & Stella's dad, shtupping the housemaid.

Next time at the brothel, the Prince visits Fanny and finds her with Tancredi, cueing not outrage but rather an instant "all in the family" threesome to permit the auteur's patented double penetration action on dear Fanny.

As per his contract, Hakan as Tancredi services Maria another time, notching another money shot on his belt. Four servants, including fake Vin, have group sex in the kitchen and finally young Francesco Malcom does the deed with Stella. Her idea of breaking the ice is to go straight from celibacy to anal sex, this being a D'Amato film.

Not to be outdone, Valentino as the Prince has sex with his sister-in-law Maria, and the happy ending of course is the broken-in Stella now acceding to servicing her husband.

This wall-to-wall nonsense has nice location photography, though it fails to present a Sicilian atmosphere -might have been shot in Hungary for all that matters. All the women wear thick black stockings, and the period atmosphere is ruined by a terrible musical score that veers from strip-house accompaniment to disco tunes. The English dubbing is pitiful.

Companion film THE LAST SICILIAN has the temerity to take on Francesco Rosi's brilliant SALVATORE GIULIANO, with Hakan in the title role. Is nothing sacred?

Unlike lucky kids nowadays, yours truly didn't grew up in an era where pornography was freely available all around the internet. Heck, there wasn't even "the internet". So, I reckon I did what every more or less normal teenage boy in the 90s did, and that was snooping around in parents' closets for dirty movies. We also had a subscription to a sort of paying film-channel, and after midnight they would air X-rated movies that I then secretly taped. "The Leopard", although I had no idea what the title was back then, was such a dirty little secret, and for several reasons I always considered it to be one of the best adult movies ever.

Since I didn't remember the title, or any of the cast members names, I spent years looking for this film. When I finally found it, it was quite a surprise to see Joe D'Amato's name listed as the director. Now, I know he made dozens of adult films especially in the last 10-15 years of his career, but he'll most remain infamous for the extremely gross and vile horror/exploitation films he made during the 70s and 80s, like "Antropophagus", "Beyond the Darkness", "Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals" and "Death Smiled a Murder". Since I recall this to be a rather elegant and stylish adult movie, I never expected D'Amato to be the director.

Well, maybe I must put the "elegant" and "stylish" into perspective a bit. There's still quite a lot of perversity going on here, like incest, prostitution and priests breaking their sacred oaths. The main plot is about a castle owner whose beautiful but frigid wife doesn't want him to touch her anymore. So, instead, he seeks his carnal pleasures elsewhere, like in the local brothel or with his sister-in-law. Meanwhile, counts and countesses are messing around with the household staff, nephews climb on their aunts, and the frigid wife seeks help in the arms of a priest. What I always remembered, though, is that the women are genuine and natural beauties that wear little shorts instead of G-strings, and that the sex-sequences are relatively short but very arousing. Throughout the history of the adult film industry, I sincerely doubt if there ever were actresses as ravishing as the ones here, like Cindy Scorsese or Nicoletta.