Malicious

A provincial widower hires a young, attractive housekeeper to keep his household in order, and her arrival quickly unsettles the family's routine. The father and two of his sons each react differently to her presence, turning polite flirtation into a string of awkward, comic attempts to win her favor. The film sets most scenes inside the family home, leaning on situational comedy, sly looks, and competing schemes rather than overt melodrama. It keeps the tone light while making the domestic tension the engine of most scenes, and it avoids shocking endings in favor of humorous complication.

Released in 1973, the film was directed by Salvatore Samperi from a screenplay credited to Alessandro Parenzo and Ottavio Jemma. The cast includes Laura Antonelli as the housekeeper Angela, Turi Ferro as the widower Ignazio, and Alessandro Momo as one of his sons, with Tina Aumont and Lilla Brignone in supporting roles.

On release the picture drew strong audience interest in Italy and rode the wave of popular sex comedies of the era. It did well enough at the box office to be considered a notable example of early 1970s commercial Italian comedy, helping to sustain similar productions that mixed humor with risqué themes.

The movie helped raise Laura Antonelli's profile and is often mentioned when people talk about 1970s Italian popular cinema. Its imagery and comic set pieces turned up in contemporary press and retrospectives, and the film still comes up in conversations about how Italian comedies treated desire, class, and family roles during that period.

Audiences have kept returning to the picture, shown by its solid user rating of 7.273/10 from 342 votes. Viewers and critics tend to praise the performances and the film's knack for awkward humor, while modern viewers often discuss its approach to gender and power, weighing the laughs against changing social attitudes.