The Father of Ursula

DVD aficionados insist on "extras" with their films; otherwise they will rant about what a gyp the product is. So folks like the untalented Federico Caddeo (and his English-speaking counterpart David Gregory) churn out these short interview featurettes to fill out the running time. What results is "gee-whiz", uncritical ramblings from bottom-of-the-barrel would-be filmmakers for a dumbed-down modern audience of would-be film buffs whose value system is completely inverted, in the campy Tarantino & Waters-led "bad is good" ethos. This is the set of clowns who keep companies like Severin, Blue Underground and Something Weird in business.

Writer-director's Miloni's self-serving comments, lasting a mind-numbing 31 minutes here, are immediately suspect as he leads off with a probably fabricated tale of "the one that got away". He would have us believe that he had interested Dirk Bogarde and Valentina Cortese in a serious project, but that the producer insisted he make a "commercial" (translated: PORN) film first, and then another (QUELLO STRANO DESIDERIO) and never got around to giving him money for the intended major film set in Venice, site of Bogarde's earlier Visconti triumph. Since Miloni pegs this anecdote to Cortese's then-current nomination for an Oscar (in Truffaut's DAY FOR NIGHT), it means early 1974, but the pair of porn features were made in 1978 and 1979, making his claims a fraud or merely delusions of grandeur. Ultimately he had no career, only returning behind the camera to do a Lucio Fulci-sponsored quickie a decade later, and...OUT! Recall this is a 10-year time frame when hardworking devils like Franco and D'Amato managed to direct 75 and 50 films respectively (and subsequently D'Amato directed another 120 films in the final decade of his life, 1990-1999). So Miloni's unemployment is particularly dramatic.

What is most irritating about this fake documentary is when Miloni stops talking about himself and has fatuous remarks about his colleagues. His tale of tragic Marc Porel, the "hero" of THE SISTER OF URSULA, is again self-serving, and the viewer can only come away with the familiar feeling that with friends like Enzo, Porel might have been better off with enemies (i.e., the director is proud of indulging Porel's heroin addiction during the filming (euphemistically giving him time off to "get himself together" periodically), but he's not there to help him later when he falls off the wagon and dies mysteriously in Morocco. I had to laugh out loud when Enzo talks of his "talented" actresses (watch the film and you'll see their talent for disrobing), and keeps wondering over & over why they "disappeared". Hey Enzo baby, you stunk and so did they - porn talent is a dime a dozen and that's why they didn't get interesting further assignments or have lengthy careers on-screen. We're not talking Laura Antonelli or Monica Bellucci here.

The scariest thought is that 30 years from now we will have latter-day Federicos and Davids tracking down America's current no-budget video horror & porn makers and interviewing them about their glory days of working with Debbie Rochon and Darian Caine. OOPS -it's already been done!