Cara dolce nipote (1977)

There is neither a teen nor severe naughtiness in this 1977 low-budget erotic comedy starring one-time actress Ursula Heinle, and genre favourite Femi Benussi (Strip Nude for Your Killer, Adolescence pervertie).

Much of the story feels like a pastiche of ideas the writers director, and producers had already visited in other films – often in far darker context – but Naughty Teen is essentially about ‘teenage’ Daniela (twentysomething Heinle) visiting her uncle Corrado, and the unrest she stirs due to her utterly uncanny resemblance to her uncle’s long-deceased wife. The first thing little Daniela does is raid her dead aunt’s armoire for frilly clothes, teaser her uncle in the shower using nothing but soap, water, and her bare bodkin, and taunt the so-called pilot who rents an adjacent loft from uncle Corrado.

Daniela’s presence stirs up an old rivalry between her uncle and pilot Franco, and while jealousies bubble to the surface, her inevitable departure for hairier male pastures causes a rapprochement between the two bickering men, sewing the seeds of healing, harmony, and landlord-tenant bliss.

The basic plot feels awfully similar to occult oddity Sex, Demons and Death [M] (1975) – a young ‘teen’ visits her ‘uncle’ and stirs up trouble between himself, the sexy maid, and her wandering off to fraternize with ‘kids’ of her age – and the large house used for both films seems may be the same lot and furniture, but without any danger elements in the script, director Andrea Bianchi (Strip Nude for Your Killer) and writer Piero Regnoli (Blue Jeans) are left with teasing scenes that at best show off the considerable physical beauty of Heinle and Benussi. Heinle poses well, and perhaps with a few more roles she would’ve evolved into a minor, marginally emotive erotic icon, but there isn’t much for her to do or say in the film.

The bulk of the dialogue is reserved for the bickering men, whereas Heinle’s been completely overdubbed to cover her (presumably) German accented English lines. Whatever the actress said on set seemed to have been an approximation of the script, as the Italian dubbing and the corresponding translation use a whole different verbal toolbox. The dubbing itself is beyond loose, however; no one seemed to have cared much about staying close in sync, and the music cues by Elsio Mancuso tend to repeat bland porno-Muzak and pseudo Morricone lounge styles.

The only reason Naughty has any merit is Heinle; replace her with a generic sexpot, and the film is pretty much bottom-barrel material; unremarkable, if not mildly teasing.

One 7 Movies’ print is adequate, but it’s been sourced from perhaps a TV print where two watermarks on the lower right & left corners have been blurred, and the digital compression is fairly active. The two fuzzy rectangles are constant after the main title sequence, and the end credits were either non-existent, or lopped off. The English subtitles must be engaged in advance, and some of the translations have a few typos. As with several prior films in the label’s erotic film series, the cover art bears no resemblance to the actual film.

Most of the creative crew soon worked on this film’s cousine terrible, the completely insane and morally Wrong Malabimba (1979), , which writer Regnoli later ripped off in the rather inept Satan’s Baby Doll / A Girl for Satan / La Bimba di Satana (1982).