CANNON MONTH: Superfantagenio (1986)

Sergio Corbucci may have made some of the most violent Westerns of all time, but his brother Bruno made comedies like the Nico Giraldi series with Tomas Milan — starting with The Cop in Blue Jeans — and Miami Supercops with Bud Spencer and Terence Hill.

This take on Aladdin stars Luca Venantini as Al Haddin and if that makes you laugh, well, this is for you. It kind of makes me wistful that Janet Ågren (Eaten Alive!City of the Living Dead) plays his mother. That said, he lives in poverty with her and his grandfather before finding a lamp in the antique shop he works in. He rubs it, Bud Spencer appears as the genie and we have a movie.

The wishes that Al gets help him win over the love of his young life, Patricia O’Connor (Bud’s daughter Diamy) and help her cop father when the genie just busts into a building, shrugs off point blank bullets and brings in the mob guys that he’s been trying to arrest. Of course, Al’s mother works in a mob nightclub, so she gets kidnapped and her son has to save the day.

The end of this movie makes a sharp pivot, the kind that makes sense when you realize that it is both Italian and a Cannon movie. The genie is nearly dissected because people think he’s an alien and the police chief — of what I assume is Miami — demands that one of the wishes to be taking out all the military power of the world so his police force can rule the world. This sounds nightmarish and Al and the genie wisely jump on a magic carpet and go throw the lamp in the Bermuda Triangle. I have no idea where any of this came from.

Spencer did TV after this, not appearing in another movie until 1991’s Un piede in paradiso AKA Speak of the Devil. Directed by Enzo Barboni and written by Enzo and Bud’s sons Marco Barboni and Giuseppe Pedersoli, it was also shot in Miami and has Carol Alt in its cast.

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