The Seducers (1969)

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

It's a familiar story. Not this tale of Tony, who is apparently mentally handicapped, and his mother Mudi (Maud de Belleroche) and friends' attempts to rid him of his virginity, amidst exotic, sun-kissed locations. I mean the story of a film with a certain reputation presumed lost - or woefully incomplete - found and meticulously reconstructed, proving to be ... mostly unspectacular.Not since Godzilla trudged out of the water to confront a shabby Japanese King Kong have two more mighty icons shared screen-time together. Seeing two mighty giants of giallo films - Rosalba Neri (Paola) and Edwige Fenech (Ulla) - sharing screen time together is an almost surreal scene, and it is this pairing that probably ensured interest in 'Top Sensation'. The result spends vast amounts of its running time exploring the tremendous environment and the equally tremendous star players.Visually, it is great. The locations are incredible and lend themselves entirely to the casual paradise in which these rich layabouts live their lives. It goes without saying Fenech and Neri are masters of their craft: naturally beautiful and exuding casual confidence and a sense of presence, it is a pity this is the one and only time they are billed together. There's a scene featuring Fenech and a goat that is as mind-boggling as it sounds.Mudi is pretty fixated on her son's plight, going to the lengths of implanting hidden cameras in the yacht and copping off with Paola's husband Aldo (Maurizio Bonuglia). The stinger here is that Tony, despite being surrounded by such wanton temptation, falls for uncorrupted local farm girl Beba (Ewa Thulin). Only then do events turn particularly strange and nasty, and the shift from mild sex-romp to drama becomes apparent. This interesting development almost feels tacked on, it arrives so late, but is still very effective and unexpected.The final scene leaves things open-ended but fairly gloomy, which is a good contrast to the sunny, carefree hi-jinks earlier on.

This is a very sexy movie, for two main reasons: the statuesque Rosalba Neri and the curvy Ewige Fenech. The X rating, I imagine, was slapped-on due to the brief depiction of incest between the mother and son characters. The year was still 1969, and Italian cinema would continue to get sleazier in the coming decade. It isn't all sleaze (but mostly) - there's a fairly interesting story complete with a satisfyingly tragic ending. I never felt bored, as everyone plays their part appropriately - most notably Eva Thulin and Maud Belleroche, who's characters can be summed up as 'the light' and 'the dark' respectively. Maurizio Bonuglia's character is the douche-bag you love to hate (mostly cause he gets to roll-around with Neri and Fenech). Salvatore Puntillo's dim-wit of a character gets his satisfactory comeuppance. And finally the Lynch-pin is Ruggero Miti, who plays the mentally handicapped son (and inadvertent tragic hero of our story). There's enough to enjoy with this vintage piece of trash-cinema.

I haven't posted a review in a while because I haven't seen anything worth reviewing, but this little 1969 masterpiece from Ottavio Alessi, TOP SENSATION, hit me on the head like an anvil when I stumbled across it this morning. Maud de Bellroche, looking like a butch dominatrix on the run from Nazi hunters, plays Mudy, an oil Baroness who has taken her demented pyromaniac son out for a pleasure cruise with a couple of swingers and their prostitute girlfriend, the impossibly beautiful Edwige Fenech. They toss sticks of dynamite into the ocean and drop acid and drink whiskey and screw each other, all in the hopes of creating an ambiance that will get Tony, the Baroness's weirdo son, to pop his cherry. Eventually they run into a sandbar and explore an isolated island where Tony falls for a virginal and equally impossibly beautiful goatheardress who shines in brilliantine contrast to the frivolousness of mom and her crew of golddigging pals. All while Rosalba Neri, the other sexpot from the ship, wanders up into the hills to blow the brains out of the peasants' goats.Of course, things go terribly wrong….Beba the goat girl and her oafish brute of a husband meet their proletariat demise aboard the ship, and later Tony strangles mother dearest: the girl he really wants to lose his virginity to. In the end, the boat sails off into the sunset with Mommy's Little Madman at the helm. Capital has remained in the hands of the decadent ruling class, and Tony steers his crew of hustlers and murderers towards their next plunder-rich target. Sounds like Antonioni a bit, or even Lina Wertmuller, just a lot more entertaining. In fact, being a filthy, elitist libertine never looked like so much fun.

It isn't really even a giallo ... Its just a rather lame sex film that the director hangs a thriller plot on to try and grab both audiences ...I've only seen it in the English dub which is so bad that its hysterical ... How can you call this a giallo/thriller when there isn't a second of tension... There are some ridiculous costumes and nudity and dancing ... But no ingenious deaths and the plot twists that you see coming from a mile off ... Rosalba and Edwich gets their kit off as usual ... But lets be honest, they made their living doing that and its nothing to get excited about This comes across more as a comedy these days ... And the older woman lead is the sort of Ilsa of soft porn A very silly little film that many see as a huge letdown after such hyping up ... "Interabang" was similar and both leave you with this sort of so what and why feeling