On a demandé la main de ma soeur

I wanted to like "La Pretora" more than I did. Lucio Fulci, known as the Maestro of Gore, was an underrated auteur who made some superb films in the early part of his career before heading straight for bargain basement horror garbage in the '80s. He was also remarkably versatile; his film "The Eroticist", far from being typical commedia sexy d'italliana fare, is actually a razor sharp satire that was condemned in Italy not for its sex or violence but its depiction of the Catholic Church.

Being that "La Pretora" came after that one, I was hoping for something similar, but I was a bit disappointed. It doesn't have to be as potent a satire, but it's also not as enjoyable or interesting. The movie features the "queen" of Italian sex comedies, Edwige Fenech, playing a dual role. She is an icy and aloof judge in a small Italian town, and the judge's sister - a ditzy porn starlet who will gladly sleep with anyone who asks.

Fenech the judge is liable to condemn a conman to a lengthy incarceration, so he heads off to some resort or other where he meets Fenech the porn starlet. Seeing his chance, he procures photographs of her porn career - after making love with her, of course - with the aim of misleading people into thinking that the judge is the porn star.

We see footage - though no sex - from the set of the porn movie, in which Fenech plays Snow White, and a group of g-string clad dwarves hang around the set waiting for their "cue". I'm actually kind of glad that we didn't see too much of the action from that one.

I didn't pay attention for much of the flick, because it was muddled and confusing and I didn't care about it. Fenech gets topless quite a lot and even fully naked a few times. She wasn't crowned the queen for nothing - she is a sight to behold.

I didn't really get the ending - or the movie. It's doubtful I'll remember much about this one.

I will say that it is much better made than the average Italian sex comedy. These were generally so bad as to be unwatchable. Fulci was an artisan. And Fenech wasn't too bad of an actress - she uses a totally different voice for each role, but I admit she was more believable as the porn star than the judge.

The version of La Pretora that I bought did not offer English audio or subtitles, but that was only a small disappointment. The other reviewers have more than adequately described the plot, so on to the important stuff - the skin! (Does anyone actually buy or rent an Edwige Fenech movie, or any of the similar Italian-made "Sexy Comedy" films for that matter, for the writing & the acting?)

I have seen about 8-9 of Ms. Fenech's movies & this incredibly beautiful actress had more quality nude scenes in this film than in any of her other titles that I have viewed to date. As opposed to many of her other films in which she has only 1-2 brief topless scenes, this title provides the viewer with a copious amount of lengthy & well-lit nude scenes (including abundant FFN) in order to sate the voracious appetites of Edwige's legion of fans.

I finally saw a English subtitled-version of this (albeit probably still a bootleg). Edwige Fenech plays two different roles. On one hand, she's a stern female magistrate who's prosecuting a hapless hustler who has been selling dog food as Hungarian goulash. The guy doesn't help himself much by crudely hitting on the severe but gorgeous judge on the way to courthouse (before he knows who she is), but he catches a break when he also her meets her twin sister(Fenech again, of course), a giggling nymphomaniac. After she shags him silly in a motel room, he decides to use the nymphomaniac sister to discredit the magistrate and save his own skin. He involves her in a hilarious porno version of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and distributes copies of a photo-play magazine with pictures from the movie around the courthouse. The hustler's scheme threatens not only the lady magistrate's career, but also her relationship with her sexually frustrated fiancée. But the two sisters have a few tricks up their sleeves too. . .

Naturally, Fenech has a lot of nude scenes in both roles, but that is par for the course. She's especially impressive here though in her acting (even if she was likely dubbed, even in the Italian version). Fenech is one of those actresses that was so gorgeous and so frequently undraped that she rarely got credit for her acting. But there was a reason she was the most successful of a whole pantheon of other Italian and European actresses of the era who were equally attractive and equally willing to disrobe.

The director of this meanwhile was none other than Lucio Fulci. Although he was known mainly for his gory horror films, Fulci was actually quite an accomplished comedy director, easily on par with Fenech's most frequent collaborator Sergio Martino. This is probably one of the weakest of Fulci's comedies that I've seen (his best is "The Eroticist"), but it's still pretty good. Fulci's most frequent comedy collaborator, Lando Buzzanca, is absent here. The guy who plays Fenech's fiancée looks a lot like him, but he is unfortunately a pretty poor substitute. Still this is the only film he made with Fenech, and the meeting of these two Italian exploitation legends should be reason enough to see this.