Pinocchi-O-Rama #12: OcchioPinocchio (1994)

Pinocchi-O-Rama comes to an end with a movie that will absolutely say nothing to anyone outside of Italy, despite being technically released in the US i seriously doubt there’s a solid stratum of english language coverage on OcchioPinocchio, which isn’t surprising since in time the film has not gotten much of a revaluation, heck quite the opposite, even by people that discovered it unaware of its messy production history or the figure of Tuscanian comedian and director Francesco Nuti.

While i’m not gonna over how a primer of Nuti’s work as there’s no time and i’m far from the right person for the job, the movie itself did hit all the snags while in production, expected to be in theather for Christmas 1993, shot in Texas and Louisiana, nowhere ready by the expected date, with a budget of 13 millions (pretty luscious for an Italian production at the time) that, due to the death of one of the distributor’s namesake founders, balooned to 25-30 millions.

Worse, as the dwindling relationship between Nuti and the production company had the set being stripped, he eventually had to sue the producer to try and make shooting proceed, which didn’t stop Nuti having to fork out 2 millions out of his own pocket to get the thing done and released by 1994.

All for a movie that basically nuked any goodwill and expectations left for Nuti as a creator, not only marking his creative crisis but also being a huge flop, bringing in 5 millions in box office.

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Pinocchi-O-Rama #11: Pinocchio AKA The Erotic Adventures Of Pinocchio (1971)

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….

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Pinocchi-O-Rama #10: Pinocchio’s Revenge AKA Bad Pinocchio (1996)

This is one i KNEW would have to be featured on Pinocchiorama from the very start, because it’s both peculiar but also really easy to see why it keeps slipping back into obscurity regardless.

After all, you gotta love the more common name this movie (also known as Bad Pinocchio) goes by, Pinocchio’s Revenge, which really tells you the kind of shit you’re about to see.

It’s that kind of stupid title that already confuses you, as in, who the hell could be Pinocchio be taking revengeance on? The Cat and Fox either get arrested, punished or get actually miserable endings regardless of what version or adaption of the story, Lampwick dies of being worked to death as a donkey, so to whom he has to break the rules of nature?

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Pinocchi-O-Rama #9: The Adventures Of Buratino (1975)

For this month’s issue of Pinocchi-O-Rama, we’re going back to a “combo mix” of sorts.

We’ve seen live action adaptations, we’ve seen adaptations of the russian version of the novel, The Adventures Of Buratino/The Golden Key, we’ve seen musical adaptations.

So yeah, time to squish them all together for this 1975’s forgotten cult classic Soviet live action children musical TV movie adaptation of Buratino/Pinocchio shenanigans, made by Belarusfilm and released as a 2-parter, because media trends are cyclical after all.

Thankfully there’s no waiting for the climax as it’s almost a 50 yo adaptation, a fairly obscure one that thankfully can be found with hardcoded english subtitles on Youtube (fittingly spit in 2 parts, as well), and at the time of posting still is.

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Pinocchi-O-Rama #7: Gepetto (Manwha)

If we’re talking about comics, we all known where Pinocchio comes to mind, though indirectly, as “The God Of Manga” Osamu Tezuka was inspired by Disney’s adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s book, and wanted to create a “reverse 21^th Centhury Pinocchio”, a robotic boy already created to be as close as possible to perfection. I really don’t need to introduce Astro Boy, do i?

Tezuka would eventually do his own manga adaptation of Pinocchio, which would be interesting, but maybe too obvious, so we’re not reviewing that or Astro Boy.

Nope, we’re going for something far more recent, and pay visit to what i feel it’s an underestimated country in terms of comics, South Korea, that while it did get inspired by Japan’s anime/manga style and legacy, managed to create something distinct or similar but possessing its own personality and soul, dubbed as “manwha” for shorthand.

Though one could be forgiven to think that mostly it’s a matter of where its coming from instead of the content itself, given we had many distincly “manga” series come out from european or non-japanese artists (an easy example is Tony Valente’s Radiant), and the more successful/publicized often are aimed to the same age demographic as shonen mangas, or belong to popular genre trends.

But for each “God Of High School”, we have more unique work, like Hyung Min-woo’s western horror themed Priest, inspired by Monolith Productions FPS game BLOOD.

While a number of manwha series were and are given print editions in many countries (including Italy and France), the most common way to consume and access manwha in both its country of origin and international is “the internetz” and sites like Webtoon.

And indeed one can read the entire manwha we’re talking about today, Gepetto by Jewon Yeon, english translated on Webtoon, for free.

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Pinocchi-O-Rama #6: √964 Pinocchio (1991)

Have i gone completely insane, spotlighting this one for a Pinocchio-inspired retrospective?

But then again we never talk about some good ol’ japanese cyberpunk body horror… and i guess today is no different because we’re talking about 964 Pinocchio.

Also called “Screams Of Blasphemy” for its UK release. Whatever.

And no, i still have no clue if the numbers in the title mean anything aside indicating that there were other 963 “pinocchio/sex slaves” manifactured before him, since he’s got that tattooed on his back, branded like an utility.

Honestly i wasn’t sure about including this one, but for variety’s sake, fuck it, i’m not reviewing Pinocchio In Space. Despite the obvious allure.

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Pinocchi-O-Rama # 5: The Adventures Of Pinocchio AKA Un Burattino Di Nome Pinocchio (1972)

Don’t let the deceptive and common international title that’s often attached to many Pinocchio films, or the fact it came out in 1972, the same year as the popular italian TV miniseries of the same name (later edited as a compilation film) by acclaimed director Luigi Comencini.

This is actually a different adaptation, originally titled “Un Burattino Chiamato Pinocchio” ( lit. “ A Puppet Called Pinocchio”), that’s also the more recognized work of italian animator-director Giuliano Cenci, whom at the time was hailed as the “italian Walt Disney”, and he almost was if the distributors didn’t fuck him over, with a fuckin mess of indipendent regional releases that basically doomed financially the film.

It was so badly handled that at a time, in Florence, it was seen playing in a red-lights cinema called Arlecchino, which of course wasn’t where families went for a movie time with the kids.

To say nothing of how the movie managed to reach Egypt as an unauthorized bootleg they pilfered from the Italian Embassy. XD

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Pinocchi-O-Rama #4: The Golden Key (1939)

While reviewing Pinocchio: A True Story, we touched upon the fact Tolstoy created his own take on the story of Pinocchio when introducing it to russian children in 1936, calling it The Golden Key Or The Adventures of “Buratino” (taken from the italian “burattino”, a term lifted from the commedia dell’arte and that indicates a wooden doll/puppet), which also became an iconic piece of children literature during the Soviet Union and it’s still remembered in Russia to this day.

So of course there were film adaptations of the “Russian rejigged Pinocchio”, and today we’re taking to task the first one ever, done in 1939 by the legendary soviet director and stop-motion master animator Aleksndr Pthusko, which fellow “MSTies” might remember for his later fantasy epics and adaptations of popular russian (and finnish as well with the Kalevala based “Sampo”) fairytales, from The Stone Flower to Sadko (absurdly retitled The Magic Voyage Of Sinbad) and of course Ilya Muromets (there’s a Fate joke here, but i ain’t touching it).

Without forgetting the more well known film that often overshadows this one, The New Gulliver, released 4 years priors, which got Pthusko praised by fellow legend animator Ray Harryhausen.

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Pinocchi-O-Rama #3: Geppetto (2000)

Yes, we’re doing a Disney Pinocchio movie, but not the ones you might think of, since we’re travelling back to the dawn of the millennium for the kind of Pinocchio film that’s actually more common than you’d think: the musical. One of them, anyway, we’re doing some of the more intriguing ones later this year, today we spotlight a fairly forgotten made-for-tv musical starring Drew Carey and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, simply called “Geppetto” and released in 2000.

The idea – as exemplified by the title itself – is a nice variation on terms of how to retell the story of Pinocchio, because one could reasonably argue how odd that the narrative prioritizes following a character who’s personality basically was “pre-loaded” since “birth”, while leaving mostly in the background the only character that has past and would feasibly benefit from an arc.

At least, that’s what a superficial analysis might lead one to believe, but there is some truth to it regardless, because Geppetto is important to the narrative, and after all he’s the one who wanted so badly to be a father, albeit not in the way the story does.

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Pinocchi-O-Rama #2: Pinocchio: A True Story (2021)

Let’s get the “meme boy” one over so we can kill any mystique it could possible accrue in time, by tackling one of the more recent adaptations, the Russian 2021 one that pretty much nobody would have cared about if the english dub had Paulie Shore delivery such a stock effeminate – and most importantly out of place – performance as the titular Pinocchio, especially notable in the clip you’ve seen of him talking to Gepetto of how he wants to see the world on its own, as he ready for it.

Tybald being Pinocchio’s horse, which he never had in the original story, but then again, it bound to be expected from your movie when it can’t even have the gall to call itself “THE true story”.

Just one of the many. Whatever.

I guess someone finally saw Tangled and wanted to have a funny horse character, so much it presents the movie as a story he’s telling you about, giving the basic gist of Pinocchio being carved by Geppetto, dissing the “growing nose” thing and then actually… preseting more than actually narrating the whole thing. Liar. And odd as a Jiminy Cricket replacement. Sort of. Not really.

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