Review of La gorilla

La gorilla (1982)
Pretty OK Italian nudie comedy
19 December 2010
This is a latter-day version of one of the innocuous Italian nudie comedies that were big in the 70's with actresses like Edwige Fenech and Gloria Guida. The lead here is Lory Del Santos, an Italian model/actress, who is perhaps most well-known today for a tragic incident where the child she had with rock star Eric Clapton fell out of the window of a high-rise apartment in New York City (commemorated in the 1990 Clapton song "Tears in Heaven"). This movie was made well before all that though. Del Santos plays "Ruby", the very physically fit daughter of Italian stooge Gianfranco D'Angelo. D'Angelo owns a gym where all his muscle-head clients lust after his shapely daughter (and spy on her in the shower). She wants nothing to do with any of them, however, but instead hires herself out as a "gorilla" or a bodyguard to various weirdo clients.

"Ruby" falls in love with a shy photographer. Her father in turn falls in love with one of the photographer's nude models (Franca Stoppi).There's a whole weird plot where "Ruby" and the photographer are trying to get incriminating photographs of a rich eccentric guy for a client, and for some reason, her father brings the nude model to this same guy's villa to fool around. The usual amount of hilarious ribaldry ensues.

Del Santos doesn't really have the comedy chops of Edwige Fenech or even Gloria Guida, and she's perhaps not too convincing beating up hulking guys, but these films aren't exactly known for their great acting or their realism after all. Gianfranco D'Angelo makes even his fellow Italian comedy stooges like Lino Banfi and Alvaro Vitali look positively handsome--his wife in this movie must have REALLY been something to allow this guy to sire a daughter that looks like Del Santos. It's weird seeing Franca Stoppi in a goofy comedy like this since she was usually in much sleazier Italian fare like "Beastialita" (which is about just what you think), several "nunsploitation" and women-in-prison films, and perhaps most famously, she was the maid in Joe D'Amato's notorious gorefest "Beyond the Darkness". The strangest thing about this movie though might be an uncredited bystander who appears in several scenes; this is none other than the now-famous Italian comedy actor Roberto Begnini! I wouldn't go too far out of your way to see it, but this is pretty OK.
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