Pasquale Festa Campanile Movies
Italian filmmaker and screenwriter Pasquale Festa Campanile penned his first screenplay, Faddija, in 1950. Prior to that he had studied law, worked as a newspaper journalist, and wrote short stories, plays and novels. His 1963 screenplay The Leopard received awards at Cannes. During the '50s he wrote numerous screenplays and began directing in the '60s. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide- 1984
Based on a real-life mystery in the newspapers after World War I, this conventional, straightforward story is about a poorly-dressed man who is brought into the police station in Turin for stealing flower pots from the cemetery. He is rather brutally interrogated, and then because he has no idea who he is or where he belongs, he is put into an asylum for the mentally disturbed. After his photograph is published in the newspapers, a woman shows up at the institution claiming that he is Professor Canella, her missing and wealthy husband. The news obtains the release of the amnesiac, but his claim is quickly and hotly contested by another family, arguing that the man is an imposter. As a result, his case goes back to court and in the meantime, the "professor" is put in jail. As the courtroom drama continues, there are various clues that suggest whether or not the amnesiac has been accurately identified and by whom. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ben Gazzara, Giuliana de Sio, (more)
- 1982
This ineffably bizarre drama stars Ben Gazzara as an American cartoonist who sees a beautiful woman named Nicole (Ornella Muti) being saved from drowning while he draws on the beach. He offers her a blanket, beginning a strange relationship with the obviously unbalanced woman which ends when she shaves her own head and walks into the ocean to die. Muti carries the film with an engagingly peculiar performance as the disturbed Nicole, who strips for bellboys, exposes herself to passing tourists, hallucinates insects in her bathroom, and goes into a coma after being raped in a mental institution. Mimsy Farmer co-stars as Gazzara's ex-lover and William Berger appears briefly as a bartender. Despite being blighted by a distracting Riz Ortolani soundtrack and a fundamentally lurid approach, Muti and director Pasquale Festa Campanile imbue this film with enough interesting touches to make it worthwhile. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- 1982
Like his more famous loin-clothed tree-swinging, yodeling counterpart, Bingo Bongo was raised in the jungle by apes. This Italian comedy follows his lively adventures after he is captured, caged and sent back to civilization. There he begins working with a pretty anthropologist who teaches him all he needs to know about speaking, eating correctly and falling in love. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Adriano Celentano, Carole Bouquet, (more)
- 1979
This Italian anthology uses the standard sex comedy format but lacks the subtle social commentary present in its predecessors. In the "Saturday" episode, a modest accountant is sent by his boss to entertain a visiting Japanese engineer who turns out to be a pretty woman (Edwige Fenech). In the "Sunday" episode, a truck driver (Michele Placido) has to help his suicidal neighbor (Barbara Bouchet) by posing as her husband when her Sicilian parents come visiting. In the "Friday" episode, a variety show owner (Adriano Celentano) tries to get back his star dancer who decided to marry a notorious gangster. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide
- 1979
A daring idea gets an ambivalent treatment in this typical Italian comedy about an unfunny subject. The teaching and events in the life of Christ are presented here from the viewpoint of the Palestinian thief who was crucified next to him. Among the miracles that Christ performs is curing the leprosy that afflicts poor Deborah (Edwige Fenech), a prostitute. Given the nature of the comedy, Deborah's attractive hide gets a lot more exposure than Christ's miracles, as the film vacillates between sexual innuendo and parody. Viewers unaccustomed to free-wheeling Italian spoofs may take offense at the way religious subjects are used for comic fodder. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Enrico Montesano, Edwige Fenech, (more)
- 1978
The director of an Italian milk company, Alberto, lost his beautiful American wife after he caught her having a shower with the plumber. He is fixated on women's breasts, but so is his psychiatrist, who calls his obsession a nostalgia for the mother's breast. One of his psychiatrist's other patients is a woman who found her cellist husband playing musical sex games with the family maid. In a protracted series of meetings, the two patients grow acquainted, and love grows up between them. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Johnny Dorelli, Barbara Bouchet, (more)
- 1978
Famed scholar, writer and rogue, Giovanni Giacomo Casanova de Salingalt (1725-98), known as "Casanova," is best known for the romantic exploits he claimed for himself in his memoirs. In this film, he is waiting to find out whether the authorities will allow him to spend his final years in Venice, the city of his birth. While he waits, the penniless late-middle-aged lover is approached by an acquaintance who invites him to stay at his country estate. Adding piquancy to the invitation is that his host's wife was one of his many conquests in earlier years. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Giulio Bosetti, Mirella D'Angelo, (more)
After becoming a minor cult figure with his role as Krug Stullo in the notorious Last House on the Left, actor David Hess found himself typecast in minor variations of the role for the rest of his career. In this bloody thriller from director Pasquale Festa Campanile, Hess stars as Adam Kunitz, ringleader of a group of vicious bankrobbers who terrorize bickering vacationers Franco Nero and Corinne Clery. There's action, violence, and hard-edged sexual tension aplenty, although Hess' famous fireside rape of Clery is optically censored in some versions. The film, based on Peter Kane's novel The Violence and the Fury, and well scored by Ennio Morricone, still comes across as an attempt to capitalize on Hess' cult status, prefiguring his even more violent Italian films such as La Casa Sperduta nel Parco and Camping del Terrore. Ignazio Spalla and Monica Zanchi also appear. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- 1977
During the five years he was in prison, Alfredo's (Johnny Dorelli) wife Adelina (Agostina Belli) and son have gone to live with a stable, non-criminal man -- a taxi driver. Now that Alfredo is out, he wants her again. After a series of failed attempts even to meet with her, she finally meets up with him as he attends his dying mother. Despite his past betrayals, his vast charm and the numerous examples of his devotion to her warm Adelina's heart to him again, and she begins a series of secret "liaisons" with her own husband. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Johnny Dorelli, Agostina Belli, (more)
- 1976
Spaghetti Western icon Bud Spencer (They Call Me Trinity) stars in this sword-and-sandal adventure-comedy from Italian director Pasquale Festa Campanile. The comedic hijinks center around a medieval mercenary named Ettore (Spencer) as he travels around Europe plying his warrior skills to the highest bidders. When he comes across a group of rude Frenchmen laying siege to a Spanish castle, Ettore decides to help the underdog Spaniards defeat the invaders -- and save themselves from their own bumbling ineptitude. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bud Spencer
- 1975
This sex and science fiction comedy is based on the equation of sexual energy and energy in general. Electrical fixtures have run out of steam, but a love-making pair demonstrates that through the power of their orgasms alone they are able to generate electricity to operate first a light bulb, then a street lamp, then the entire hospital where they are being scientifically observed and ultimately all of society's gadgetry. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Agostina Belli
In this comic sequel to When Women Had Tails, a group of prehistoric men and women experiment with the recently discovered phenomenon of sex. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- 1970
- R
This situation sex comedy falls somewhere in between vulgarity and burlesque. Ulli (Giuliano Gemma) and his six cave-dwelling cronies try to learn all the conveniences of their era -- like building fires, using the wheel, and perfecting the use of tools and weapons. A fire engulfs their tiny island and the men are forced to take a raft to the unknown mainland. There Ulli meets Filli (Senta Berger), and he spends his time trying to make her his monogamous girlfriend by discouraging others who desire her for their own. Ennio Morricone provides the music to this feature, which was a surprising box-office hit in Italy. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Giuliano Gemma, Senta Berger, (more)
- 1968
The literal translation of this Italian title is "He's My Husband, I'll Kill Him When I Please." A young woman is married to a man in his 70s. To make sure his wife is taken care of after his death, the husband tries to arrange her marriage to a friend of his. When the young bride discovers this, she plans to hasten his imminent demise. She takes up with a beatnik and goes about planning her husband's murder as if she were merely making out a grocery list of needed items at a convenience store. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Catherine Spaak, Hywel Bennett, (more)
- 1968
This romantic and sometimes ribald historical farce finds nobleman Guerrando (Tony Curtis) knighted in the days before the Crusades. He inherits a castle, tax-collecting rights, first choice of all the fair young maidens of the region, and a draft notice from the King. Boccadoro (Monica Vitti) is the liberal-minded forest woman who catches the eye of the young nobleman. Courtship, love and marriage follows, but the wedding night is interrupted by a call to arms. Guerrando and Boccadoro are unable to consummate the marriage, and a chastity belt is used to insure her virginal status. The young bride follows her husband's troop at a distance hoping to get her hand on the coveted key to the lock. Comedy ensues as the key changes hands several times before Guerrando ultimately regains possession and is able to unlock the passions of his love-starved wife. This overlong film can best described as a punchline in search of a joke. One gets the feeling that the producers had wanted to title the film A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Crusades. As it stood, On My Way to the Crusades, I Met a Girl Who... was too unwieldy for most theater marquees, necessitating the film's title-change to The Chastity Belt. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tony Curtis, Monica Vitti, (more)
- 1968
When Catherine Spaak's husband dies, she discovers a hitherto hidden room on their estate. The room is surrounded by mirrors and curious sexual devices; when Spaak takes a peek at hubby's diary, she learns he was carrying on a secret life that made Sacher-Masoch and Krafft-Ebbing look like pikers. Deciding that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, Spaak begins to conduct her own kinky sex life. Doctor Jean-Louis Trintigant, who sincerely loves Spaak, tries to deflect her from whips, boots and handcuffs, but before long he too succumbs to the seductions of aberrant behavior. Libertine was originally released in Italy as La Matriarca. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Catherine Spaak, Jean-Louis Trintignant, (more)
- 1967
Set in Italy during WW I, this war drama centers on the off-beat relationship between a Bavarian general an a peasant girl after they both end up captured by a bungling Italian soldier. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Virna Lisi, Rod Steiger, (more)
- 1967
In this Italian comedy set in the 16th-century, a prince and a princess marry. Trouble ensues when a rumor that they have not consummated their marriage is circulated. The prince's father is most concerned, as a virgin marriage means he will have no heirs. He insists that the marriage be annulled. He then requires his son to marry another, but his current wife's family will not agree to the annulment until the prince proves he is a capable lover. The prince refuses to cooperate until his father threatens to cut him off financially. The prince then is paired with a virgin, and eventually passes his test. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1966
A betrayed wife decides to teach her philandering husband a lesson in this riotous farce. Marta (Catherine Spaak) discovers that husband Franco (Nino Manfredi) has been stepping out with her own best friend (Maria Grazia Buccella), and gets revenge by inventing an imaginary lover. Franco takes the bait, leading to improbable but hilarious complications. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- 1965
"White Voices" is a vernacular term referring to Italian Castrati of the 18th century Vatican Choir. The Castrati were male children who were castrated so that they could retain their beautiful soprano singing voices into maturity. Paolo Ferrari plays a Roman youth who isn't keen on being gelded and bribes his way out of it. Even so, he trains with the choir and becomes an habitue of the houses of the rich and famous, using his supposed lack of male essentials to his advantage--especially in bed. Ferrari comes a-cropper when he impregnates a girl and is forced to go under the knife to establish an alibi! It is very, very hard to write about White Voices without making a wisecrack, so we'll cut this short (oops!). The film, a French/Italian coproduction, was originally released in France as Le Sex Des Anges and in Italy as I Castrati. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paolo Ferrari, Sandra Milo, (more)
- 1965
When Prince Don Vincenzo Gozanga (Vittorio Gassman) decides to remarry after his divorce, the father of the bride-to-be demands proof of the Prince's virility. Soon the whole town is talking about the Prince and what will become of his royal command performance before the prying eyes of his future father-in-law in this costume comedy drama that takes place in 15th-century Italy. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
