Il succo del sesso

I didn't know of the existence of this ultra obscure Joe D'Amato movie until I read about it in the book "Luce Rossa - La Nascita E Le Prime Fasi Del Cinema Pornografico In Italia" (Franco Grattarola & Andrea Napoli, 2014). The book quotes Donatella Donati, according to whom the film was not produced by D'Amato's company, but was commissioned by a certain Francesco Stradella for a company called Promo Film.

The copy I saw (the only available on the web so far) has a false opening credits, stolen from the Italian release of a film produced by Erwin C. Dietrich and named "Esperienze Erotiche Di Una Ragazza Di Campagna"! However, the book tells of a VHS released in the second half of the '80s, wich includes the original credits sequence. The name credited as director is"Gilbert Damiano", a strange pseudonym used in a period in which Aristide Massaccesi signed his porn titles as "Alexandre Borsky". Also weird is the fact that the director of photography was not Massaccesi, as usual, but a certain Antonio Benetti. Quite intriguing...

Shot in the Summer 1981, the movie is recommendable to those who are into porn with a plot. The story is about a woman called Hélene Vlady (Pauline Teutscher) who hires a detective to find her sister Kathy (Maria Cafiero), who has been missing for three months. The investigations reveal that nothing is what it seems, tough, and the ending brings some twists.

I found the film well directed for what it is, although the atrocious quality of the print, full of scratches and jump cuts caused by missing frames, doesn't help at all. An aspect that may bother some viewers are the dialogues that for some weird reason use an artificial language. I never saw something similar before.

Sabrina Mastrolorenzi has a brief softcore scene, what is strange, given that she mostly appeared in hardcore performances. The cast also has Guia Lauri Filzi, who engages in two torrid lesbian sequences with Maria Cafiero, the latter not a regular presence in XXX Italian films of the period.