Move Over, Hollywood Queens

We had all but given up hope when Quentin Tarantino and director Eli Roth triumphantly announced during last year's Venice film festival that yes, the real queen of international cinema, Edwige Fenech, has agreed to return to the silver screen. The coming summer the First Diva will be seen in a small but crucial role in Roth's sequel to his successful "Hostel", looking every inch the ultimate movie star she always was. For those way out of step this is the time to get fully into the Fenech phenomenon.

So, as you aficionados of disco-rabilia should be asking by now, what has this Italian-Algerian-French film star to do with music, how come we never came across any of her records? If those guys at Chez Youri's of Paris can't whip them out from the top shelves (where the most expensive and desirable vinyls like the Arpadys albums are kept ) she can't have been a chanteuse of any sort, let alone an underground disco sensation, right? The thing is while Edwige was never a singer, she is still of definite interest to anyone into the eurodisco aesthetic. She defined The Look. You girls watched as she sashayed across the room in dramatic black, shadowing you all with her massive hairdo. Boys gasped as her eyes flashed at them, heating them up and melting the tender flesh off their cheeks. Edwige would grab one guy with both hands, force him down and thrust her cleavage foward, only to quickly toss him aside, electrified by a furious bongos-and-organ groove from the hi-fi stereo. Throwing her hair wildly and respecting no limits in films like Mario Bava’s "Cinque Bambole Per La Luna D'Agosto / Five Dolls For An August Moon", she really was eurodisco personified. An skillful actress, Edwige could also be seen as a nun or a victimized plaything at the mercy of the sleaziest pimps in the history of cinema, until payback time of course.

For La Fenech at her most fabulous, as well as for Italian exploitation film making at it’s frenziest, check Giuliano Carnimeo’s "Anna – Quel Particolare Piacere", out as region 1 dvd (NoShame label) ridiculously renamed "Secrets Of A Call Girl". A caleidoscope of over the top tearful melodrama, tough action scenes, copious nudity and serious fashion statements, this is choice entertainment from the unrepentant seventies. The widescreen film kicks off with a brutal robbery sequence set to a scorching Shaft-style soundtrack, and moves on swiftly to introduce Edwige as Anna, a salesgirl blackmailed into a life in malavita, a digitally remastered underworld in the shadier side of Cinecittà. There’s nude dancing to an Amanda Lear-style pop disco tune, vicious fistfights, car chases and slow mo running along a beach at sunset, hand in hand. Forget everything they show in the multiplex – with the exception of "Grindhouse" of course – and rush out to buy your copy, and all other dvds with Edwige.