Michele Gammino Movies

The title of the Italian At Last, At Last refers to sex. In fact, virtually every line of dialogue in this domestic comedy has an erotic tinge. The plot concerns a newlywed couple's attempt to cure the husband's impotence. You guessed it: "outside specialists" are brought into arouse hubby's libido. Carroll Baker, Edwige French, Renzo Montagnani and Ray Lovelock star. Originally titled La Moglie Vergine, the film has also been released as The Virgin Wife and You've Got to Have Heart. Though At Last, at Last couldn't get it up on American TV screens, it stood firm and proud on cable television, where it premiered in 1987. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Proof of the success of French filmmaker Edouard Molinaro is the fact that several of his home-grown hits have been remade as American films. The most recent example of this is 1996's The Birdcage, a highly profitable reworking of Molinaro's La Cage aux Folles (1978). The director's 1973 comedy A Pain in the A... also went the Cage aux Folles route of enjoying worldwide popularity, then undergoing an Americanization process. In the Molinaro original, Lino Ventura plays a friendless hit man who holes up in an Italian hotel room, awaiting the opportunity to knock off his target, a mob witness. No sooner has Ventura drawn a bead on his would-be victim than he is interrupted by the comically suicidal Jacques Brel, who wants to jump from the open window in the assassin's room. The banter and byplay between Ventura and Brel is priceless, especially when veering towards the "sick" humor that Molinaro handles so well. Based on a play by Francis Veber, Pain in the A... was remade by Billy Wilder as Buddy Buddy (1978), with Walter Matthau as the hit man and Jack Lemmon as his unexpected guest. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A mild-mannered police commissioner (Martin Balsam) is frustrated at every attempt to capture a political crimelord with legal means, so he is forced to turn to vigilante justice to get his man. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide