Lilli Carati was born as Ileana Caravati in 1956, in Busto Arsizio, Italy. Her career in films seem to have kicked off when she won the title of Miss Italy in 1975 which led to roles in a bunch of silly sex comedies of the kind we up here don't understand. Most notably of all her '70s movies is perhaps Fernando di Leo's To Be Twenty (1978) which is about the erotic escapades of two sexy hitch-hikers played by Carati and leggy Gloria Guida (incidentally Miss Italy 1974). The film is infamous for its last scene (or first, depending on which print you're watching) where the two girls are molested, gang-raped by a dozen of hillbillys and left for dead. A scene which is in extreme contrast with the innocent tone of rest of the film, which also includes musical numbers. But then it's also directed by a specialist in such cruelties.

During most of the '70s Carati otherwise switched genres very frequently and 1977 seem to have been a particularly busy year. There was a few more crime-films like Stelvio Massi's Highway Racers (1977) and Alberto Marra's police obscurity Gangbuster (1977) against Ray Lovelock and Mel Ferrer. There was the supporting roles in two entries in the endless series (more than ten films made) about Serpico-wannabe Nico Giraldi (who else but Tomas Milian). In the first of the two, Hit Squad (1977) directed by Bruno Corbucci, Carati played the girlfriend of oddball Giraldi and spends most of the time sun-bathing at her home. In the sequel Swindle (1977) she, for some reason, played a different part than in the first one. Apparently she seemed more comfortable in the numerous sexy comedies, as in Michele Massimo Tarantino's La Proffessoressa di Scienze Naturali (1977) and Mariano Laurenti's La Compagna di Bianco (1977), both starring comedy sleazeball Alvaro Vitali. Then Copenhagen Nights (1977), directed by French specialist Claudio De Molini, was a return to the kind of erotic potboilers she did best, playing a female gigolo working in a sex-shop. Lastly Conrad Brueghel's grim hostage melodrama Women Against Women (1978) showed that Carati also could also handling a rifle, although the film is mainly a naughty action/exploitation exercise.

For this writer's money Carati was, however, on the height of her looks in Marcello Aliprandi's sex-romp Skin Deep (1980), a film which also stars Olga Karlatos and future porn-superstar Cicciolina as a Norweigan girl who speaks a few words in tolling Swedish. Carati, who seem to spend the entire running time butt naked, plays a girl jealous upon her boyfriend and tries to commit suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. In retrospect a rather sad film if one is familiar with the direction Carati's career soon took. Nevertheless the film is actually cute and has a great score by Pino Donaggio which gives it a touch of class I guess. Skin Deep followed Pasqualle Festa Campanile's silly Il Corpo Della Ragassa (1979), about an eccentric scientist, and De Molini's C'E un Fantasma ne Mio Letto (1980), about, well, another nutty scientist.

Carati then seem to have been absent from the scene for a few years (but what do I know) until she in 1985 kicked back with two of her most popular performances in Joe D'Amato's The Alcove (1984) and The Pleasure (1985), looking better than ever before. In the first film she plays the bored wife of Al Cliver, an officer who returns from the front, bringing with him a souvenir shaped like favorite regular Laura Gemser. The Alcove is still director D'Amato's most popular title on video and for a good reason. The Pleasure is set around the same period, the '30s, and concerns a man who is seduced by his own stepdaughter. Judging by the surprisingly kinky love-scenes that Carati is involved in here, the only surprise is that she didn't appear in porn films already and by the time she starred in D'Amato's Peep Show (1986) she looked slightly tired and worn out. It's about a man who has his own peep show at home, so he can watch his wife (Jenny Tamburi, another remain from the early '70s) get it on with his friends. Carati's equally small appearence in the back-to-back film Lust (1986) was slightly more worthy, as she played one of the women who retarded aristocrat Martin Philips daydreams about having sex with.

The career seem to have declined drastically soon after these films in the mid/late-'80s and the drug-problems must have become critical. As so many before her Carati took the step over to hardcore porn. Although one shouldn't rave about personal tragedy, the perhaps most "interesting" titles from this period are (for pornhounds anyway) a couple of titles starring American actress Tracey Adams such as Una Moglie Molto Infedele (1987) and The Whore (1989) and perhaps Le Fantasie Perverse di Lilli (1991) and Desiderio Proibiti (1991). Presumably finding it hard to compete with all those so much younger girls in this business, which exploded about this time, Carati eventually and wisely decided that enough was enough, quit the drugs and confessed her past sins on national TV. However, reliable sources claims Carati hasn't done any film in the '90s. Another tragic tale of wasted youth. Another stunning face of Italian cinema has disappeared. But, of course, that's why God created video.