It is listed in some places as pornography but if that’s your thing don’t bother - ‘The Benny Hill Show’ is far racier.
We open at a New Year’s party for 1940 in Venice. The fascists are on the rise, and so no slow viewers fail to follow this plot point, the party is attended by Mussolini himself. Frank is more interested in the booze however, and playing grab ass with his shapely, but slightly frigid, wife. She doesn’t like his public displays of affection and insists on being taken home. She’s not so shy however when she is caught short and raises the level of the canals with a street piss that would make a race horse blush.
Frank is quite excited by this and gets all affectionate when they get home. An efficient lover, Frank is five pumps and done. Elsewhere Frank’s daughter is joining the Fascists and her fiancé is having designs on Franks wife, a situation that turns Frank on, and makes him jealous at the same time.
Too shy to talk of such matters Frank starts to write a diary about all his seedy thoughts and leaves the key to his desk lying about so the wife can have a look. Of course she does and soon she is losing her inhibitions as she acts out Filthy Frank’s fantasies. Frank also gets hold of the world’s first Instamatic camera and, after drugging his wife, he gets lots of candid shots of her for his diary. The beast.
The wife is horrified by this invasion but also happy that he’s using the photographic skills of her daughter’s fiancé to develop the photos - that instant camera film was seemingly too expensive for Frank. The wife starts to take control and writes her own diary which Frank laps up, amongst other things.
All the excitement is causing Frank medical issues and his doctor says he needs to knock off the sex and drinking. Poor Frank he’s a ten a day man - and he likes a drink too! Unfortunately for Frank his wife’s blossoming is almost complete and, when she starts ordering him to wear her underwear we know things aren’t going to end well for him. Probably took the mortician half an hour to get the smile off his face though!
This was a strange film and you have to wonder what market it is designed for. Clearly the marketing is for those who like their erotica but it’s really tame stuff. I also doubt that those who want to watch a nuanced film about a woman’s sexual awaking set against the backdrop of war aren’t going to be reaching to the top shelf.
The dialogue is half in English and half in Italian so a lot of the time you have no idea what’s going on. You do get helpful narration from Frank but it’s hard to take that filthy bastard seriously - especially when he dons the suspenders.
The setting of Venice is well used and you see a lot of the city and people pissing on it. There are no familiar faces in the cast apart from Frank and it’s hard to tell if anyone is any good given they are all horrendously dubbed.
It may be the version on Amazon Prime is heavily cut but if it saved me half an hour of my life I’m grateful to them - plenty of other places to find your smut without having to listen to earnest dialogue about feelings. So I’ve heard.
Overall it was a worthless piece of whimsy trying to be something meaningful and failing badly. That said, it rumbled along fine with a few unintentional laughs to keep you entertained.
THE Tag Line : Frank Finlay Does Rocky Horror 53%
