If you go to the Wikipedia page for the original Pinocchio book, you will notice many entries in the Films and Related sections.
As the time of writing, there’s a notable omission, as in, The Erotic Adventures Of Pinocchio, made in 1971, directed by Corey Allen, one that i swore was in the Wikipedia page before, and one i knew about long before Wikipedia was even a thing.
One that i knew will have to eventually be featured here, and as much i pushed it back down the list for Pinocchiorama… i don’t wanna talk about it around Christmas (and/or equivalent festivies), and i promised some variety to this retrospective, so time to get soft… core.
I mean, let’s get this clear right away: this is a soft-core porn parody of Pinocchio, one that was bound to eventually exist anyway due to the character phallicular nosejobbery.
On the flipside, i don’t have to worry about blackboxing any of the screenshots, so…
For various reasons, one would expect what’s basically a porno spoof to reinvent the original material in a comedic und sexual fashion, though “reinvent” implies a level of creativity that might be a little above crap like Gums, the bar isn’t much higher but we can get lower, down to the abyss of the Super Hornio Bros movies (yes plural) or stuff that the Cinema Snob has reviewed in bucket loads, gaining the unenviable nightmares of a female ET or the cardiatic arrest of a Strokemon.
Knowledge isn’t always benevolent, after all, hopefully the aforementioned paragraph does not trigger any ‘Nam flashback in you, or sparks some morbose tendency.
Who can really say….
Pinocchio-meter:
So we have the gender reversal thingie, with Gepetto… being Geppetta, pulling a reverse-Franken Hooker, minus the killer spree and the pile o’ tits, since she’s a wood carver and creates her own perfect man, which is a bit Freudian, but also veers into The Golem territory, as to animate it Gepetta puts a pendant around his neck.
Unlike the German expressionist classic horror film, though, it doesn’t work, so the next logical course of action is trying to fuck the sentient wooden simulacra into autonomous movement, which doesn’t yield results, surprisingly so since this is a porn, so Pinocchio gets visited by the Fairy Godmother (played by Dyanne Thorne, here taking a break from nazi castration and SS sapphic sadism) that turns into a real flesh man, but warns of not misusing its sex.
Because that’s what makes his phallus grow longer, instead of the lying cum nose extension stuff.
Obviously he initially does not, leading the titular “sexanigans” that might or not have absolutely fuck all to do with the original novel, or mirror the situations in a sex driven world, like him being lead astray of marrying Gepetta by a sleazy brothel owner (which by the glasses i’d say it’s supposed to be the Cat, despite being called – i kid you not – Jojo and looking as a better Super Mario than the one in the actual porno spoof), having orgies, his knob growing so comically big that girls play ring toss with it, use it to joust and eventually having to carry it around on a baby stroller.
Or use it as a weapon against rapists, can’t say i’ve seen many porno films where “swordfighting” is not an euphemism but kinda is, then again, i haven’t seen Zorro The Gayblade, so…
All with no real showing of the coitus itself, but by using old timey comedy traditions like having chandeliers shake by the quake-like potency of the horizontal monster mash.
Real Boy Ratio:
In a rather kinda unexpected twist, this infamous Pinocchio porno spoof it’s actually more faithful to the original book than most would care to admit, not in terms of plot as it barely even tries to mimic or spoof the famous scenes (honestly it feels more like a Pygmalion retelling), more as in it’s still a formative story about a young boy that has to learn morality from scratch, naive to a fault that he’s lead astray by people that wanna use him, ignore the warning and advices by the behaving adults that want what’s best for him.
Heck, it also mirrors how in the original novel Gepetto didn’t carve Pinocchio because of his loneliness, but because he wanted to use if to rack up some cash by doing puppet shows, as this Pinocchio is basically whored out a male prostitute to unsatisfied wives… which was not in the novel, just putting this out there.
Though this spoof is a bit confusing in terms of adapting the whole manichean message in this sex centric world, since it’s surprisingly “progressive”, as in the resolution, the way Pinocchio here becomes a “real man” is by understanding the value of romantic love and faithfulness, achieving emotional maturity and crying of joy of being reunited with Gepetta so they can marry.
It’s not a bad message to give, but it’s kinda confusing as you wonder how much of this is intentional or randomly a byproduct of trying to adapt a fable in a softcore fashion, since it has a scene where he gets thrown at a couple of lesbians with a “Ms The Monarch” dub job, funny maybe not so much for the same reason it might have been back then, but less hilarious and worrying becaise The Lesbians TM are eventually cured of the “i eat cigarette packs” voices by Pinocchio’s endless attempts at joining in (and getting thrown back like it’s a wrestling match).
The 70s, i know, and probably wasn’t meant as anything more than a joke, in a movie that also has a comical “battle of the sexes” with Pinocchio waiting at the side of a boxing ring for women to fight-fuck him, but again, it’s kinda hard to believe that the movie meant to have a strangely “catholic romantic” example of the true love when its also throws around a lot of ideas about masculinity, then settles on that specific vision.
Again, not sure how much of it was intentional, like the whole subtext about reserve objectification of man (as in treating objects as men, not just swapping the genre of objectification), but in the end it’s a shame because while i think it’s kinda cute in how tongue-in-cheek The Erotic Adventures Of Pinocchio tries to be, it has to be said it’s also a hard watch, for all the wrong reasons.
It’s worth for curiosity’s sake but it’s undeniably boring, surprisingly boring, leaving aside the fact they could have gone with an actual “adventure” angle if the script was more daring….. it’s just a boring slog for the most part, one that’s also undecided on being either a softcore porn (there’s nudity, but never of the full frontal kind, so….) or an adult comedy/spoof, coming of as not really sexy and with the humour rarely landing, not helped by an overall lack of energy to the direction.
It feels overly long even just at 74 minutes, but manages to still feel rushed AND going through the motions, mostly wasting a cast that includes Dyanne Thorne as the highlights, the set designs feels very Edelweiss-y, as in this looks filmed near a mountain lodge in Austria, cheapish but fitting with the fable theme enough.
At the very least, i will never forget the dead eyed Pinocchio mannequin face, and i can’t say i’ve seen many movies where one man fights off rapists using the “One Sword Style” technique with his bare cock. So there’s something to it, but i wouldn’t quite recommend it, despite it’s curiosity status.
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