Cicciolina e Moana 'Mondiali'

This movie is a tribute and testament to the careers of two of the most iconic Italian pornstars of the 80s, the titulars 'Cicciolina' (née Ilona Staller) and Moana Pozzi. In Italy VCR recorders started to become available in the 80s but it's only from 1985-onwards that they became commonplace. With a video- recorder in (almost) every household porn movies came out of sleazy, disreputable "red light" cinemas and poor-quality 8mm 'stag films' and became little by little more common and (in a sense) "accepted". At that time the Italian B-movie industry (which was specialized in 'Giallo' Thrillers, Tough Cop movies, Spaghetti Westerns, Horror movies and ripoffs of 'Conan' and 'Escape from New York') was reeling back, no longer being able to keep the pace with the increasing costs of making genre movies (FX were getting more and more expensive) so many producers and directors switched to porn for which costs were extremely limited (just some locations and a bunch of performers). That means that Italian porn movies of the 80s were shot more masterfully than the average u.s. or German porn fare, since their directors and cameramen and assistants had actual cinematographic experience and they also tended to be more 'scripted' with actual stories, a far cry from 'modern' porn which usually contents itself to show a series of sexual acts. Female performers like 'Cicciolina', 'Moana Pozzi', 'Ramba', 'Miss Pomodoro' became minor pop icons in their own right a feat later equaled only by Rocco Siffredi (who made his debut in a Moana Pozzi movie, btw). This movie was one of the last released before the death of Moana Pozzi (deceased in 1994 due to cancer) and sees both herself and co-star Cicciolina engaged in a Campy Sex-Comedy where the duo, on behalf none the less of the Italian Football Team have to 'sap' the strength of other teams competing in the 1990 FIFA World Cup through sexual tour-de-force, allowing the Azzurri to easily surpass the opposition on the field. Eric Price, Sean Michaels and porn superstar in the making Ron Jeremy double for famous footballers of the day (Jurgen Klinsmann, Ruud Gullit and Diego Armando Maradona) and the degree of cinematographic skill put in this product is evident during the 'training sequence' in which Jeremy is directed to replicate with an high degree of realism the stretching sequence Maradona used to do to initiate his training sessions. The movie was an huge success and its pirated copies circulated widely among students and teenagers up until the mid-90s when the heyday of the Internet started to change the habits of the porn-consuming public.

This porno came out in the wake of the soccer world cup 1990 in Italy. The story is simple: the Italian team is not good enough to do it on their own, so the services of Moana Pozzi and Cicciolina (Ilona Staller) are enlisted to weaken the strength of the opposition.

The teams our two leads are targeting are Holland, Germany, and Argentina. The one remarkable thing about this flick is the casting of Ron Jeremy as Maradona. Not only is there a certain general resemblance, they are similarly stockily built, and in one (footballing) warming-up session we see Ron performing some stretching exercises that are an almost exact copy of corresponding footage that exists of Diego Maradona.

For the footballing scenes some stock-footage of the 1982 world cup was used, and in some scenes France (which has a similar outfit if we ignore the socks) was used as a stand-in for Italy.

Set against the garish glow of late-'90s adult cinema, Cicciolina e Moana "Mondiali" emerges as a curious artifact of its era-a film that oscillates between audacious satire and indulgent excess. Directed by Mario Bianchi and Riccardo Schicchi, the movie leans into the magnetic personas of its stars, Ilona Staller (Cicciolina) and Moana Pozzi, whose real-life fame as political provocateurs and erotic icons bleeds into their on-screen dynamic. The duo's chemistry is both a strength and a distraction: Cicciolina's whimsical libertinism clashes with Pozzi's detached irony, creating moments of unexpected humor and tension. While the film's attempts at political commentary-mocking Italy's media-saturated culture and hypocritical morality-feel uneven, its visual flair (lush Mediterranean backdrops, kitschy Euro-disco aesthetics) and self-aware tone elevate it above typical genre fare. However, pacing drags in scenes that prioritize gratuitous spectacle over narrative cohesion, and the thin plot struggles to balance satire with sincerity.