La pretora (1976) User Reviews

Meh

[Groverdox · 5/10 · 20 August 2019]

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.

Fulci and Fenech!

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 17 June 2021]

Lucio Fulci was born in Trastavere, Rome 94 years ago today. The son of a single mother from a Sicilian anti-fascist family, he was raised by her and a female housekeeper who encouraged him to be a lawyer, but he ended up going to medical school. After dropping out, he worked as an art critic before apprenticing at the Centro Sperimentale.

While he's become known as the Godfather of Gore, Fulci didn't start making his most famous horror work until 1979, a full 21 years after he wrote his first script, Toto in the Moon. He worked with the famous Italian director Steno on several of Toto's films before directing the films of Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia (How We Robbed the Bank of Italy, The Swindlers).

His career covers nearly every genre. Westerns (Massacre Time, Silver Saddle, The Four of the Apocalypse), giallo, both before and after Argento (Perversion Story, Don't Torture a Duckling, The Psychic, A Lizard In a Woman's Skin), poliziotteschi (Contraband), post-apocalyptic science fiction (Warriors of the Year 2072), peplum by of Conan (Conquest) and even family fare (White Fang, White Fang to the Rescue).

So while Fulci may be known for his eye-popping horrors - and rightfully so - I wanted to celebrate his birthday by checking out another genre he covered, the commedia sexy all'italiana.

If you're making one of those movies, you need an attractive female lead. And this movie boats perhaps the finest example of an actress in the genre, the French-born Edwige Fenech, who like Fulci also had a Sicilian mother. While she's known for her work in giallo such as The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, All the Colors of the Dark, The Case of the Bloody Iris and Strip Nude for Your Killer, Fenech also found her greatest box office success in this very Italian sex comedy genre, making appearances in movies like Ubalda, All Naked and Warm; Giovannona Long-Thigh; Poker In Bed; Confessions of a Lady Cop; The Schoolteacher and many more.

La Pretora, which translates as My Sister In Law, stars Fenech in two roles. She's Judge Viola Orlando, a tough arbiter of the law who is feared in the Veneto regions (which includes Venice, in case you wonder where this takes place). She's made plenty of enemies, who soon learn that her sister Rosa is a woman of loose morals who appears in adult magazines. They hope to confuse her images and reputation with that of our protagonist.

Beyond dealing with an outraged populace who can't believe that a judge could appear nude in a magazine, Viola is also dealing with her love life - or lack thereof - with her fiancee, who wishes that she was as open as her bad seed sister.

Working from a script by husband and wife Franco Marotta and Laura Toscano(, who also wrote the original Inglorious Bastards, this movie finds Fulci not working with an unfamiliar crew, such as cinematographer Luciano Trasatti, who was the director of photography on And God Said to Cain.

However, Fulci had plenty of experience with editor Ornella Micheli (Dracula in the Provinces, Operation St. Peter's, Don't Torture a Duckling) and would work with assistant director Roberto Giandalia on The Psychic, Zombi, Contraband, City of the Living Dead, The Black Cat, The Beyond, House by the Cemetery, The New York Ripper, Manhattan Baby and Murder Rock.

I understand that these movies were made so that guys could ogle Edwige Fenech - seriously, there's a moment in this movie where men literally become Tex Avery wolves with their eyes bugging out so much that Fulci had to just be dying inside with the need to smash or pierce them - many don't take the time to notice just how good she is in these films, able to master comedy that transcends the time and language barrier.

As for Fulci's work here, the movie looks great, but if only knew him from his 1979 and beyond - pun unintended - films, you may never guess that this was him. He also made another sex comedy, The Eroticist, that I want to check out. And it's pretty amazing when you think about the fact that more than a quarter of his films were comedies.

My favourite Fenech

[Chip_douglas · 8/10 · 10 February 2005]

Professional sleaze bag Esposito (Raf Luca) tries to pick up Judge Viola (Edwige Fenech) on the way to court, not realizing who she is. His fat lawyer Bortolon (Mario Maranzana) explains how the entire town lusts for the new Pretora but hates her hard measures. Flanked by Il Advocato and Il Chancelore, part of Viola's job involves censoring dirty movies (while lots of people sneak into the projection room to see the uncut version). Ironically, La Pretora was the subject of censorship herself, and was released in two versions, one with slightly less nudity than the other.

On to the meat of the story: at a party with her nerdy love interest Count Alteri (Giancarlo Dettori), Viola gets a phone call form her floozy sister Rosa (more Fenech!) who has just broken up with an hotel owners son. This second Fenech forgets her troubles as soon as she hears a jaguar pull up, which turns out to belong to Espostio from the beginning. At first he is startled to see La Pretora wearing a bikini top made up out of nothing but two margarita's, but after she devastates him in the sack he realizes they must be twins. They leave the hotel bill for her 'smarter' sister to pay as Esposito starts thinking of ways to take advantage of Rosa's sexual appetite, their combined lust for money and to take revenge on Viola all at once.

First he gets local crooks to pay heavily for an evening with Rosa, leaving them to think they have La Pretora in their back pocket, only to find out the hard way. Next up is a pornographic Snow White photo shoot. Luckily Viola has send her sissy boyfriend over to put a stop to this. The dirty mag still turns up in court, ironically when Viola is about to pass judgment on the director of the pornographic film she was watching in the first reel. Disgraced in front of the entire town of Bellignano, Viola is ready to thrown in the towel without a fight, but the procurator urges her to stay on (after fantasizing about her for a bit). Although it's nice to see Fenech stretch her acting and comedy chops in two completely opposite parts (told apart by different voices and hairdos), the two sisters remain rather undeveloped (though obviously well endowed). There are some hints that Rosa is not quite as dumb as she lets on, yet it remains unclear why she would get her sister into so much trouble, or why Viola is willing to take the blame for everything. Fenech only shares one scene with herself that fails to explain anything at all.

The judge urges Rosa to come and stay at her house (to keep an eye on her). Immediately the naughty one starts putting the moves on the Count with the mustache while the nice one begins to take advantage of being mistaken for her sister. Naturally the meek Alteri gets emotionally torn between the twins. Scumbag's next idea is to take discriminating pictures of Rosa with the little Advocato (Oreste Lionello) who has been leering at Edwige since the opening credits. Viola gets out of this on a technicality that everyone with half a brain can see coming from miles off, but still decides to move to another town with her gullible boyfriend.

Obviously the nonsensical story is just an excuse for a double dose of undressed Fenech, who had not done this amount of screen nudity since her earliest Tiroler comedies. Unlike her other authoritarian figures La Poliziotta, L'Insegnante and La Soldatessa, Edwige only made one Pretora, making this one extra special, though it does make you wish she would have made it a trilogy like the others. Still, in many ways this is the ultimate Edwige Fenech film. She carries the picture, supported by a cast made up almost exclusively of men (the only other actress of note being an uncredited Marina Hedman making a brief appearance as the Evil Queen to Edwige's Snow White).

8 out of 10

A visual feast for fans who are hungry for some Edwige!

[pike100 · 10/10 · 25 February 2008]

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.

Meeting of Italian exploitation legends

[lazarillo · 21 June 2009]

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.