Marina e la sua bestia

I liked this movie very much and I dare to say it is a small masterpiece (of porn, at least).

Too much controversy has been made regarding the "zoophilic" content of this movie, but it was too much noise for nothing, given that the legendary scene between Marina Hedman and the stallion Principe is totally fake. I can't believe that there were people naive enough to believe that silly gum cock was real. Also fake is the "scat" element during a scene o sodomy. The only "extreme" fetish here that is real is the double pissing on Marina's face.

One could ask what is the sense of doing extreme porn with false extreme performances? In "normal" cinema the simulation makes sense, but in hardcore pornography? 🤔 The real bizarre thing is that this and other fake zoo porn made in Italy during the '80s are are kind of banned, with some titles available for download in copies with the "zoo" scenes cut! This polically correct world never stops surprising me. 🙄

Giving the fraudulent nature of the transgressive factor, one could ask me why I still consider MARINA E LA SUA BESTIA a masterpiece. And my answer is: the visionary approach of its auteur Arduino Sacco. Usually, porn movies are tedious due to the repetitive and mechanical way that the sex is featured, but Sacco adds an unusual vitality through his avant garde technical language. I love his anarchical style of shooting and editing, what compensates the lack of a solid narrative with an unique and delirous visual scheme.

Of course that MARINA E LA SUA BESTIA has its flaws, like the typical use of library music that doesn't fit what is being featured in the images, the repetitive use of the same recorded moaning sounds during the sex scenes (very irritating) or the performers who look at the camera etc, but the movie offers something that is rare to find in the genre: INVENTIVITY. That is the key to make any work, porn or not, to stand out. And it is precisely the lack of inventivity that makes the hundred of porn flicks made by Joe D'Amato in the '90s so boring, for example.

The plot of MARINA E LA SUA BESTIA is extremely simplory. Marina, playing herself, wants to retire, but not before she makes a last movie where she has sex with her beloved stallion. She then asks screenwriter Giuliano to prepare the script. It is the way Sacco turns this silly premise into images that prevents us of getting bored. If directed in a conventional way, it would be just another tedious porn.

Perhaps, what prevents this film of being taken seriously is the aforementioned fake nature of its main theme. The narration of Marina all the time creates a big expectation for the final scene that would show her being "penetrated" by Principe, but the expectation is sabotaged. Thus, those who look for the movie only interested in that scene will be very disappointed.

Arduino Sacco had the potential for being considered an underground auteur, as has happened with many exploitation filmmakers in recent years, but the fact he worked almost exclusively in porn will never allow it, even less in this era of extreme moralism.