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Giovannona Coscialunga (Giovannona Long-Thigh)

"As you wish, we don't give a fuck."
Starring: Edwige Fenech, Pippo Franco, Gigi Ballista, Riccardo Garrone
Rating: 7/10
Directed By: Sergio Martino
Runtime: 94 minutes

As the great Ellery Queen once said, "prudence is the knowledge of things to be shunned as well as those to be sought." Again proving great minds think alike, that so happens to serve as this site's motto and I would like to think I am a prime example of prudence maximized. Like my fellow cybermonkeys, I strive to bring you only the best and shield you from the worst pop-culture foists on us every year but no man, no matter how much cool shit he's in to, can really keep up with it all, let alone review it all, and we know there's a lot of cool shit to be sought and some horrible shit to be shunned. Praise Cthulhu for well-mannered and supremely cultured like-minded individuals to help pick up the slack. In this case the individual in question, hailing from the great state of Minnesota, is one Leo Alberti. Leo is an award winning artist, a musician (see this article) and a school teacher who also happens to be one of my best pals. He introduced me to Pinky Violence (a stellar example for your entertainment here) and also graced our Magnificent site with our first poetry (Haiku reviews) but, more importantly, has impeccable taste in movies. He is versed in Miike, Park Chan-wook and other Asian genres, but can also chill to the relaxing images of Bogart and Lorre, Lugosi and Karloff, Powell and Loy, just to name a few. We conned Leo into a little more of his precious school-year free time and asked him to write down, in English this time, what the most awesome thing he's seen recently was. Much like my reviews, you never know what you're going to get except the desire to see that movie so what are you waiting for? Here's what you're renting next:




I should probably start this review by saying that I have a bit of a thing for Italian actress and sexpot Edwige Fenech. After a friend of mine lent me one of her Giallo films Strip Nude For Your Killer (Nude per l'assassino), I was instantly taken with not only her beauty but her ability to steal every scene clothes on or off. I began collecting many of her other Giallo films before learning that she was the queen of Italian sex comedies as well. The first of these films that I watched was Giovannona Coscialunga (Giovannona Long-Thigh) which actually ties into the Giallo genre, as director Sergio Martino also directed Edwige in what I believe was his best work, The Strange Vice Of Mrs. Wardh.

Starting with the DVD cover: I must say this is one of the ugliest pieces of artwork I have ever seen, and that's coming from an elementary art teacher. Whoever they chose to model for Edwige on the cover is certainly not Edwige but more like a tranny with the face of Reese Witherspoon after she dyed her hair and got knocked up by Ryan (me too) Phillippe. But that's neither here nor there.

Our movie opens in a sprawling country side with a new local judge doing a bit of fishing...but uh-oh, looks like the water is a bit on the polluted side. (Somebody get fucking Al Gore!) Who's the culprit; is it the Chinese? The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy? Polar Bears? Nope, it's the Straccolone Cheese Company. Michael Bay will never have the balls to open a movie with an evil cheese factory. Transform that, bitch!

Our favorite cheese factory is closed until the situation can be taken care of. Here is where our first two main characters come into play. Commander La Noce, the head of the Straccolone Cheese Company, and his assistant Albertini who has a terrible stutter and a nose that only Streisand could appreciate. Commander La Noce can only be described as the Italian doppelganger of Rodney Dangerfield, the only thing missing was a Triple Lindy.

Coming to the conclusion that the only way to solve the situation is to get an Honorable on their side, La Noce and Albertini find one by the name of Pedico who enjoys the company of other men's wives. Unfortunately the commander's wife is not going to work to snag Pedico, so Albertini is given the task of finding a hooker who can pose as La Noce's wife to seduce Pedico. While driving around he picks up the unbelievably hot but shy Coco, played by Edwige Fenech. This scene is something that should be looped at least 10 times to fully take in the beauty that is Edwige. Unfortunately her shyness wears off and she swears like a sailor (which is where my tag line came from for this review), leading Albertini to tell his boss "I was looking for a stunner, not a Nobel winner!".

Since Coco has so much trouble learning to speak without swearing, La Noce creates a number system for her that goes along with certain phrases, so when she says something like "I fucking love it" he holds up three fingers which means she should say "I'm Enchanted". During these lessons Albertini is sent away by his boss due to the fact that Coco is madly in love with him. This makes me think if a guy who looks like that can score Edwige then so can I, and I don't fu, fu, fu, fucking stutter either. Albertini runs into Coco's pimp Robertuzzo, who I will call Mr. Squeaky Shoes since you can hear him coming a mile away thanks to his cheap Italian loafers, and he's not too happy that his top talent is MIA.

So now you have Albertini, La Noce, Coco, Robertuzzo and all of their wives, mistresses and even one secretary for good measure in not so much a love triangle but a love hexagon. This leads to sex-gag after sex-gag at the Honorable's mansion where all of them eventually meet up. Something that really struck me is that the last 25 minutes of the film or so I had seen before in the 80's classic The Secret of My Success with Michael J. Fox. The nighttime escapades at the company retreat are almost identical to those in Giovannona. Everyone goes to "sleep" and then start wandering around the house trying to find the person they want to have some good ol' fashion sexual relations with. The difference being that Giovannona is actually pretty funny and this part actually has time to develop over the rest of the film vs. 6 minutes or so in TSoMS.

The hijinks end with a flurry of fighting at the estate's swimming pool that looks like a reel taken right out of a Benny Hill episode, complete with bouncing boobs. Our squeaky shoed pimp Robertuzzo becomes the spokesman for Pedico and the Straccolone Cheese Company, who are back in business, while Albertini becomes Coco's new pimp.

All in all I really enjoyed Giovannona. The gags were funny, although you have seen many of them ripped off but not as well done. Edwige has more sex appeal in one finger then any current actress, and since this is an Italian exploitation film it has more to it then your average American Pie. With that said, it's pretty tame for some of the other films put out in this genre, especially Edwige's School Teacher trilogy which I am two movies into at the moment. But make no mistake, she is nude a lot and that alone is worth the price of admission.