Summaries

Synopsis

Costante Nicosia (Lando Buzzanca) is a boorish, irascible, man having married for wealth. He is the new boss of a recently inherited toothpaste factory and the owner of a local Rome basketball team which the film opens during a game. "The only reason I own this bunch of dippy dribblers is to push toothpaste to those sports nuts out there," says Nicosia to a local reporter who interviews him. Born and raised in Sicily, Nicosia is very religious and extremely superstitious for he considers his hunchback sidekick and personal assistant Peppino (Antonio Alicocca) more of a good luck charm then a friend. The insensitive Nicosia believes that it brings good luck to rub a hunchback's hump so that his basketball team will win the game.

The signs and omens are all against this wealthy rat. While driving home with his wife Mariu (Sylva Koscina), a black cat crosses his path in the road, and worst still he breaks a mirror in his apartment. Superstition demands that he persuade a virgin to urinate over the broken shards of glass in order to halt the tide of bad luck. Abusively, Nicosia passes a decrepit old spinster who lives next door to him mistakenly assuming that she has never done the deed. Nicosia's relationship with Mariu is scarcely more convivial for he states to her, "I always have good luck with things that rhyme with the letter U, except you!"

Reluctantly bowing to family pressure, Nicosia employs his loafing brother-in-law into a menial post at the factory. But he fires him the following day after catching the man asleep on the job, snoring loudly.

That evening at a family gathering at his apartment, Nicosia is accosted by his ungrateful in-laws who try to shame him into giving the feckless mans his job back. Instead of acquiescing to family practice, he bursts into an escalating tirade of rudeness against the singers figure of his Great Aunt Maria (Grazia Spadaro). The old woman finally responds to his cynical remarks by uttering a curse. Nicosia spits with derision at first, that is until the old hag threatens of pour oil onto the floor; this heavy duty bit of magical business breaks Nicosia's nerve, and he recants in a babbling panic. But its too late as Nicosia grovels for the curse to be lifted, and the old woman has the last laugh.

A few days later, Nicosia is on a plane to Bucharest, Romania where he expects to attend a business conference. A tall, gaunt, suave man seated nearby introduces himself as Count Dragalescu (John Steiner), and after some small talk, he invites the troubled industrialist to visit him at his castle while in the region. Upon arriving at the hotel, Nicosia discovers that the conference has been postponed, leaving him stranded at the hotel for the entire weekend. While having a drink in the hotel lounge, another Italian businessman, named Meniconi (Franco Nebbia), tells Nicosia that there are no prostitutes to be had in the region, and that he has failed to seduce any of the local women, even after buying sexy lingerie to bribe them. He confides to Nicosia that he has taken to wearing the lingerie, brand name: 'Hot Night in Havana' himself. Rather the spend the weekend at this wretched hotel, Nicosia decides to call on the Count.

Upon arriving at the Count's castle in a taxi, Nicosia sees that the castle is very much what one would expect from a Romanian nobleman's abode, complete with lighting and thunder to amplify the Gothic effect. A hideous hunchback man named Battai (Ugo Fangareggi), whom is the Count's personal assistant, lets Nicosia into the castle. Just as the electric lights come back on, Count Dragalescu arrives and greets his guest in the cavernous dining hall. Suddenly, a gay bunch of revelers stagger down the large staircase into the dining hall. The Count introduces his companions (three women and a man) to the wary guest. The women greet Nicosia in a lavish, tactile manner with kisses. When Boris, the screaming camp gay male of the party, tries to greet Nicosia too, he backs up nervously away and declines. Laughing, the Count sends Nicosia up to his room to prepare for dinner.

When Nicosia later comes back down the stairs and enters the dining room, well dressed in a tuxedo, he finds himself overdressed for the occasion. "Dinner in Transylvania's always in the nude!" purrs Dragalescu. Very awkward, Nicosia sits down at the opposite end of the table across from a very naked Dragalescu and his trio of naked women. The evening quickly gets even more debauched when Nicosia has a little too much wine to drink, strips off most of his clothes, cavorts with the three women of assembled throng, and then passed out cold. The next morning, he wakes up in his bed with the mirthfully grinning Dragalescu to his side. Running away half-dressed and in horror from the castle, Nicosia catches the first plane back to Italy.

Safely back in Italy and running his little toothpaste factory, Nicosia is rather tense and uptight. He greets all his employees at the airport with who speak to him with a clenched, furious, "Up yours! Up yours!" While overseeing his basketball team at practice, he is knocked off balance when the coach tells the team, "you've got the big one!" Nicosia repeats the phrase "big one" over and over, and then collapses in the locker room when he sees a row of naked men's bottoms in the showers.

Nicosia goes to his personal physician Dr. Paluzzi (Rossano Brazzi) who suggests that he try making out with his mistress, and if he can't do that, the doctor adds that he must have been "deflowered while drunk." In an attempt to re-establish his heterosexuality, Nicosia drives to the country house of his mistress Liu (Christa Linder) to try to make out with her. But while chasing her through an open field behind the house, she trips and falls, and the tormented Nicosia feels compelled to lick her blood from a wound on her leg. Liu becomes offended and tells Nicosia to leave.

Even more stricken, first with anxiety and then with abject self-pity, Nicosia calls on Great Aunt Maria to beg her to remove the curse, which he assumes, is responsible for his misfortune of homosexuality and blood craving. However, she claims that she had nothing to do with his urge for blood. She recommends that he visit the Magician of Noto (Ciccio Ingrassia) in Sicily for help and he complies in desperation.

Upon arriving at the Magician of Noto's residence, Nicosia sees from the posture and tone of voice, the magician is clearly a fake. But Nicosia accepts his advice: the curse on him will be lifted only if he re-employs his brother-in-law. After Nicosia leaves, it is revealed to the viewers that the whole thing was a deliberate stunt organized by his in-laws into tricking Nicosia into giving his brother-in-law's job back. Returning home far from being cured, he responds to his needy wife's sexual advances by plunging his fang-like teeth into her bare bottom while she is taking a bath. All seems lost to the once arrogant entrepreneur as Mariu throws him out.

Over the next few weeks, Nicosia adopts a devil-may-care aggression; he re-fires his lazy brother-in-law, arranges to visit prostitutes to satisfy his urge to bite, and isolates himself from family and friends. Finally he satisfies his craving for blood by setting up a blood bank at his factory and compelling all employees to attend. Just as he seems to have surrendered to total cynicism, his wife arrives at the factory with news that she is pregnant. Mariu claims that their baby was conceived that night of their passion, and Nicosia is overjoyed.

In the final scene several months later, a new and improved looking Nicosia throws an outdoor garden party to celebrate his son's birth. Rejoicing at his proof of his potency, Nicosia throws off the shackles of his superstitious paranoia and goes to greet and hold his infant son. Only to discover that the baby sports a protruding pair of fangs....