Osvaldo Will No Longer Be Yours

The second half of the 1980s were not kind to French actress Annie Belle. Besides old friend Aristide Massaccesi (aka Joe D’Amato), who brought her back into the fold for his magnificent erotic period drama, The Alcove (1985), Annie mostly survived off small television appearances and cameo roles given to her by ex-boyfriend Ciro Ippolito.

Most people know Ippolito for Alien 2: On Earth, a spelunking Alien imitation plagued by production issues that eventually forced the actor and producer of Neapolitan dramas to step into the director role to get the film completed. He continued in that role for much of the early 80s, even casting Annie as the female lead in several of his successful Neapolitan films. But Ippolito’s other claim to fame is directing two insane full-length features from the satirical musical comedy group, Squallor.

You can read up on Squallor elsewhere, but in short, they were an extremely popular, and extremely vulgar, Italian supergroup made up of four men—each a success in their own field: music production, composing, writing, and singing. For their second film, Uccelli d’Italia (which roughly translates to either The Birds of Italy, or The Dicks of Italy), Annie appears in this short segment entitled “Osvaldo Non Sara’ Piu’ Tuo,” a spoof on the slap-happy soaps of the time. In the words of the narrator: “The drama between the two women is a bit of a joke.” Nevertheless, there are “185 episodes” and they are airing “every Friday night on this network.” Are you tuning in?