WHEN WOMEN LOST THEIR TAILS (1972) * ½

Last week, I watched the excruciating Italian caveman comedy When Women Had Tails to eulogize the late, great composer Ennio Morricone.  As bad as that movie was, it still had the charms of the luscious Senta Berger to make it bearable.  Her presence was the only reason I decided to give this lamebrained sequel a chance.  Oh, and Morricone also provided the score once again, although I suspect they just reused his music from the first movie.  

Right away, you notice that the production values are much better than the original.  Instead of filming the flick in a jungle somewhere, the producers actually sprung for a studio, and the art directors managed to come up with some halfway cool looking caveman digs.  (I liked their hollowed-out dinosaur house.)  The main inspiration this time seems to be The Flintstones as there are domestic scenes where Berger uses a parrot as a kitchen appliance.  Now, I know the “a woman needs to stay in the kitchen” rhetoric is outdated and only a Neanderthal would dare to suggest it, but you have to understand, we are dealing with actual Neanderthals here, so take that into consideration.  

Anyway, Senta is eking out a meager existence as a housewife to the five chucklehead cavemen from the first film.  A conman caveman comes to the tribe and realizes he’s sitting on a gold mine.  He then proceeds to bilk the thickheaded cavemen out of their money, home, and land; all the while making time with Senta.  (You see, she likes him because he’s apparently the only caveman who’s heard of foreplay.)  

This is just as stupid as its predecessor, but the upside is Senta looks even hotter than she did in the original.  In that film, they tried to make her look like a legitimate cavegirl by covering her in mud and filth, mussing her hair up, and making her wear unflattering animal pelts.  Here, she flat-out looks like a cheesecake model doing a prehistoric photoshoot.  Her hair is well-coiffed, her make-up is just so, and her ample cleavage is on full display in her form-fitting cavegirl attire.  It’s almost expected the caveman humor is going to be painfully unfunny, so at least the copious eye candy helps take away some of the sting.  

Yes, the humor is painful, but that’s nothing compared to the odd subplot about the sole gay caveman who is so depressed that he doesn’t have a mate that he pays one of his friends to kill him.  Just when you think you’ve seen everything.  In an appropriate setting, this scene might’ve been touching and sad, but it feels sorely out of place in a stupid Italian caveman sex comedy.