The High School Student in the Repeating Class (1978)

Nice effects though.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Don't ask me why, but I have now seen about all of these. This one is probably the most like an American teen comedy in that characters are at least remotely believable as actual "lise" (high school) students. The teen plot, involving the sexy headline star Gloria Guida, is very dumb. Guida's schoolgirl character "Angela" is torn between two lovers--one, who tries to romance her in a straightforward manner, and the other who pretends to be severely injured in a car accident they have (while he is feeling her up). This hare-brained scheme does somehow get her naked and in bed with him, and it also provides some moments of frustrating coitus interruptus for the other guy when "Angela" starts thinking about the injured kid whenever he's about to score.Unlike with an American teen movie though, most of the comedy in these is provided not by horny teens, but by buffoonish adults, including all three of the ubiquitous Italian stooges--Lino Banfi, Alvaro Vitali, and Gianfranco D'Angelo. Banfi plays "Angela's" father (although it would violate all the laws of genetics for a guy that looks like him to sire a girl that looks like her). He owns a sporting goods store and pretends to be his athletic younger brother (with hair) in order to romance a sexy customer (the voluptuous Ria DeSimone). He also becomes the school track coach in his new identity. Vitali, has apparently graduated from being a horny student, and is now a horny music teacher. (There is a funny scene where he nearly hyperventilates while watching a slutty female student fellate a recorder). The short squat Vitali also turns out to be a great sprinter and poses as a student to run on Banfi's track team. D'Angelo is a windbag professor (and father of the malingerer)who at gets cuckolded three times in a row by his male students, who pretend to be him in order to take advantage of his kinky mistress (who likes him to pretend to be a cat burglar). Of course, this is patently ridiculous--a schoolteacher who looks like D'Angelo, having a mistress? C'mon! But let's be honest about the real reason anyone then or now would watch this: Gloria Guida gets naked once and Ria DeSimone strips down to her bra and panties. Bridget Petronnio (later to be much abused in Italian sleaze films like "House by the Edge of the Park") also has nude scenes and is good as a slutty brunette student. And there is a spying-on-the-girls-in-the-shower scene that anticipates "Porky's" by several years. But this is mostly just more of the same.

This mess cannot be saved by the presence and the spare nudes of my favorite actress of the Seventies, Gloria Guida, as gorgeous as ever (but less nude than other times): it is one of the worst of the Italian erotic comedies of the period, definetely not worth even a fast-forward view on your tape recorder