The Wild Eye

A POLICEWOMAN IN NEW YORK

Aka La poliziotta a New York
1981
Original running length: 91 mins
Italy
A Nuova Dania Cinematografica production
Director: Michele Massimo Tarantini
Story: Luciano Martino, Francesco Milizia
Screenplay: Jean Louis, Francesco Milizia, Alberto Silvestri, Michele Massimo Tarantini
Cinematography: Giancarlo Ferrando
Music: Berto Pisano
Editor: Alberto Moriani
Cast: Edwige Fenech (Gianna Amicucci), Alvaro Vitali (Alvaro Tarallo), Giacomo Rizzo (the turk), Edith Peters (Mamie, Pupa’s maid), Enzo Andronico (dialogue coach), Galliano Sbarra (Gianna’s father), Fidel Bauna (Gideon), Jacques Stany (the commissioner), Renzo Montagnani (Maccarone), Aldo Maccione (Big John), Ennio Antonelli (Gianna’s friend), Paolo Merosi (a mafioso), Lina Franchi (hospital patient)
Uncredited: Giovanni Cianfriglia (one of Big John’s men)

Another in the series of Italian films released by the apparently barmy MYA label - quite who do they think their market is for this stuff! - A Policewoman in New York is a 1981 sex comedy starring Euro-exploitation favourite Edwige Fenech.   It was actually the third and final entry in a popular series of Italian films featuring Fenech as a feisty female cop called Gianna, all of which were directed by Michele Massimo Tarantini and produced by Luciano Martino (the preceding entries being La poliziotta fa carriera (75) and La poliziotta della squadra del buon costume (79)). There was also an earlier film, La poliziotta, which featured Mariangela Melato as a feisty female cop called Giovanna, but this had absolutely no connection to the series whatsoever… beyond being an ‘inspiration’ to Martino and Tarantini, of course.

FBI agent Maccarone (Renzo Montagnani) is on the trail of a New York pizzeria owner and suspected major-league criminal called Big John (Aldo Maccione), and he comes up with a cunning scheme to get his man.  After liaising with his associates in the Italian police force, he discovers a couple of Roman coppers, Gianna (Edwige Fenech) and Alvaro (Alvaro Vitali), who just happen to be the exact doubles of Big John’s main squeeze and deadly bodyguard.  And if they can be ’swapped’, Gianna and Alvaro should be able to gather all the evidence needed to put him away for a long period of time.  The only problem with his foolproof plan is that Gianna and Alvaro turn out to be two of the dizziest cops in the whole of Italy, and just about everything they become involved with turns into chaos.

Nonetheless, they’re soon firmly ensconced in place, and nobody seems to suspect a thing. The only problem is that Big John has just become embroiled in an escalating turf war with a rival gangster, the Turk (Giacomo Rizzo), who has issued orders that Big John and Joe should be killed at all costs.  And, surprise, surprise, it doesn’t take long for the Turk to develop a considerable crush on Gianna as well.

For a silly Italian sex comedy, this isn’t too bad.  Gianna was one of the genre’s most popular characters, and it’s not hard to see why: as a policewoman, she has plentiful opportunity to dress up in outrageous costumes, beat up inadequate men and play the temptress to possible suspects by showing a bit of leg.  Of course, it’s still entirely predictable, extremely dumb and full of people gesticulating and shouting wildly, but the dialogue isn’t bad, the characters are entertaining and the performances are pretty good.  As always, a lot of the slapstick falls flat - or, a more generous interpretation, doesn’t translate particularly well - but some of it is mildly amusing and there are a couple of running gags that provide some politically incorrect laughs (especially Alvaro having to fend off his double’s big, black boyfriend).

Renzo Montagnani and Edwige Fenech in A POLICEWOMAN IN NEW YORK

From a technical perspective, it’s nothing special, but at the same time it’s not a complete mess.  By this time Tarantini was a master of the genre, and in fact he seemed more at home doing this kind of stuff than straight, action based movies like Napoli si rubella (77) and Poliziotti violenti (76).  Although the production values aren’t high - they do stretch to a couple of location sequences shot in New York, but not a great deal more - it does look a little more filmic than some of it’s type, and there’s even a car chase thrown in for good measure.  However, the pacing does drop off and it all runs rather out of steam in the last half hour, mainly due to the story and humour becoming rather repetitious (again, not unusual for the genre).  Furthermore, considering this is supposed to be a sexy comedy, it’s all surprisingly chaste; there’s not even much of the nudge, nudge, wink, wink type nonsense that usually powers these things, and at no point does Gianna actually become involved in any kind of sexual activity beyond a kiss.

I guess at this point Ms Fenech was such a star that she didn’t really need to exploit her physique as much as she had done even when she was making thrillers in the early 70s.  And she’s very good too; even, apparently, doing her own stunts.  There are also some neat supporting turns from the likes of Edith Peters (a former singer) as Pupa’s ballsy maid - who sounds suspiciously as though she was actually dubbed by a man on the English language print - and a stuttering, idiotic Giacomo Rizzo, who seems to be trying to be Terry-Thomas.

Si muore solo una volta

Aka Mike Gold operazione Eva (original working title)
1967
Original running length: 80 minutes
Italy / Spain
Produced by Giancarlo Romitelli for Centauro Film (Madrid) and ASA Cinematografica (Rome)
Distributed by Italcid
Director: Don Reynolds [Giancarlo Romitelli]
Story: Augusto Caminito, José Luis Dibildos, Joaquin Romero Hernandez, Don Reynolds
Screenplay: Augusto Caminito, José Luis Dibildos, Joaquin Romero Hernandez, Don Reynolds
Cinematography: Carlo Carlini, Aldo Greci, Julio Ortas Plaza
Music: Carlo Savina
Editor: Magdalena Pulido
Art direction: Jaime Pérez Cubero
Cast: Ray Danton (Mike Gold), Pamela Tudor (Ingrid), Marco Guglielmi (John Malsky), Julio Pena (Ackerman), Silvia Solar (Jane), Dada Gallotti (Silvia), Fernando Cebrian (Manuel), Francesca Rosano (Alina Duran), Mirella Pamphili (Eve), Rossella Bergamonti (Gloria), Daniele Dentice (Winston), Don Reynolds (Rabat), Gilberto Galimberti (Ruby), Mario Landoni (Archeopoulos), Mario Sabatelli (Kemal)
Uncredited: Mario Brega (Galante)

Here’s one I reviewed a while back for The Eurospy Guide, but seeing as a new, fan-dubbed version has become available through The Wild Eye Forum, it seemed like a good opportunity to give it another look.  In all, my original opinions about it - that it’s an entertaining if not particularly original genre entry - still hold true, although being able to see a decent print and understand the minutae of exactly what’s going on inclines me to be even more positive about it.  Perhaps, also, the fact that I’m not wading through hundreds of, quite frankly, rather similar productions, an exercise that would make even the most fanatical Eurospy fan a little jaded, makes it seem a little fresher and more vibrant.

When John Malsky (Marco Guglielmi), an intelligence agent investigating a huge arms smuggling operation, is murdered, the secret service tries a different approach: it sends a bunch of its best agents to the assorted, war torn countries where it believes the gang may be peddling their illicit wares.  Their top man, Mike Gold (Ray Danton), is deployed to Beirut and, before he’s even left the airport, he’s up to his ears in trouble, rescuing nightclub singer Jane (Silvia Solar) from a bunch of hoodlums.  He’s nobody’s fool, though, and it doesn’t take him long to realise she’s a plant, which in turn leads him to a local gangster called Manuel (Fernando Cebrian) and, in turn, a charitable organisation called The Kent Foundation, run by one Professor Ackerman (Julio Pena).

Inevitably enough, The Kent Foundation turns out to be a front, behind which Ackerman and his sidekick, Silvia (Dada Gallotti), are running the entire smuggling operation.  More surprising, though, is the fact that they’ve managed to enlist the collaboration of Malsky who, most distinctly alive, is busily selling out all the agents he knows of and getting whacked out of his brains of some kind of unspecified narcotics.  Or is he?  Could he actually be playing a double bluff, and working with intrepid Interpol agent Ingrid (Pamela Tudor) to bring down Ackermen and his entire organisation?

A co-production between ASA Cinematografica and Spanish spaghetti western specialists Centauro Films, this came out in February 1967, a busy period for the genre just before it went into rapid decline.  The title, Si muore solo una volte, was obviously ‘inspired’ by the Bond film You Only Live Twice, which was released in Italy as Agente 007, si vive solo due volte, although it actually managed to hit the cinemas a good few months before the bigger film made it onto general release.  One of the key plot developments - having a character fake their own death - also seems to have been appropriated from the source novel, albeit in a different enough way not to make it seem too derivative.

As with all co-productions, the credits for this are a complete jumble.  The script is accredited to three Italians (Giancarlo Romitelli, Renato Savino and Augusto Caminito) and two Spaniards (José Luis Dibildos & Joaquín Romero Hernández).  Dibildos had apparently worked on Romitelli’s previous spy film, Z7 Operation Rembrandt, but Hernández seems to have had something to do with Centauro Films, so it’s not unlikely that his name was attached purely for production reasons.  According to co-writer Renato Savino, who had previously been working as a director of production: “I met a friend of mine who had become director of Distribution Company. At the time, the 007 films were fashionable, and he asked me: ‘Why don’t you make one?’ After three days I came up with the story.”  This may be so, but at a guess, I’d say that Caminito was the main writer, as the script is done in the same no-nonsense style as much of his other work of the time.  There’s nothing particularly new or original about it, but some of the twists are vaguely unexpected and the dialogue is surprisingly well written.  Similarly, the cinematography is credited to both Carlo Carlini and Aldo Greci; it’s not impossible that the former was responsible for the sequences shot in Italy, the latter for the sequences shot in Spain.  Certainly, though, the way it’s looks, with occasional moments of wayward experimentalism, has a great deal in common with the work Carlini was doing for Sergio Sollima in his spy films (Agente 3S3: Passaporto per l’inferno (65), Agente 3S3, massacro al sole (66) and Requiem per un agente segreto (66))

In fact, it’s this dual origin of the production which leads to its biggest problem.  Whereas it wasn’t uncommon for Eurospy productions to be partially shot in assorted different countries, usually this was done in a relatively smooth fashion.  Often, for instance, Spanish shot sequences are just used for some interiors (the head of the secret service talking on the telephone, for instance) and don’t really have much to do with the meat of the narrative.  Alternatively, several actors would be used in both the Spanish and the Italian shoots, allowing for a kind of continuity to be maintained between them.  Here, though, it’s the case that the opening and closing thirds were both shot in Spain, and the only actor who is present in both these and the middle, Italian-lensed section is Ray Danton.  Even Spanish actor Julio Pena, ostensibly the main villain, only appears in the Italian footage, which doesn’t make any sense at all.  This has the unfortunate effect of making the film seem almost like it’s been knitted together from two different episodes of a TV series, a problem which could have been easily avoided if more performers had appeared in both sections.  There’s no reason, for instance, that the characters played by Silvia Solar and Dada Gallotti or Pamela Tudor and Francesca Rosano could have been combined, as they’re almost identical to each other.

But, if this inconsistency is overlooked, it’s a fun film.  There’s a great soundtrack by Carlo Savina, it’s visually interesting, the budget stretched to some additional location work in Lebanon, the pacing holds up and the performances are above average.  Danton models assorted variations on a polo necked theme, while the best performer on show is Marco Gugliemli, a highly underrated Italian actor who never quite got the roles his talents deserved.

With both this and Z7 Operation Rembrandt, Romitelli made a couple of decent spy films, and it’s peculiar that his career was otherwise so limited.  Again according to Savino: “I proposed a director, Giancarlo Romitelli, who had worked as assistant to Luigi Zampa … but he was a liar… at one point I said to him: “We must do just one more week and get it finished, that’s all we need.” The material that we had was good enough, we didn’t need any more. But Romitelli began to object, and snapped: “I’m leaving.” Great. In four days I finished the film myself. For the finale I used a scene which had been shot by Romitelli - “With this we’ll end the first section,” he said, “With this we finish the whole film!”"  This interpretation of events, though, only makes matters even more confused, as Romitelli was credited as producer rather than Savino, which would indicate that he was more than just a director for hire.  And on Italian prints direction was credited to Don Reynolds, a pseudonym for Savino rather than Romitelli.

Here’s a new crime drama from Italy, directed by one Carlo Fusci and starring Tony Sperandeo, Antonella Ponziani, Andrea Iervolino and Ciro Petrone (the geeky looking kid who plays with guns on the beach in Gomorrah).  Oh, and also in the cast are a couple of old favourites: Franco Nero and Angelo Infanti!

The plot goes something like this:

In a junkyard full of cars, a place on the borders of society & time, a philosphical bum tells the story of Stefano…

A difficult boy, troubled by childhood traumas and bullying, he is sent to an institutional school, which leads him into a future of violence and lawlessness.  When he grows up, he become the head of a gang, which also includes his friend Marco (who is becoming increasingly addicted to drugs) and Ciro (a trigger hapy madman).  In parallel to his criminal life, however, he also falls in love with Mary, a young woman, who allows him to show express his kinder, more dreamy character.

However, the gang’s criminal activities have bought them to the attention of Don Alfredo, who leaves them with no choice but to join his ‘family’… and life is only going to get harder for the unfortunate protagonist

It had a million euro budget, which isn’t big but isn’t too small either, and has music from Stelvio Cipriani.  It’s not been a big release, by any means, just showing in four cinemas (!), so I’m guessing video is the main intended market.

Here’s the trailer:

Belgian poster for Primitive Love

1964
Aka L’amore primitivo, L’amour primitif, Primitive Liebe
Original running length: 80 mins
Italy
Produced by Pietro Paolo Giordini and Fulvio Lucisano for G.L.M., Italian International Film
Director: Luigi Scattini
Cast: Jayne Mansfield (Dr Jane), Mickey Hargitay (the hotel manager), Ciccio Ingrassia (Ciccio), Franco Franchi (Franco), Alfonso Sarlo, Lucia Modugno (the maid), Carlo Kechler, Eugenio Galadini
Story: Luigi Scattini, Massimo Pupillo
Screenplay: Amedeo Sollazzo
Cinematography: Claudio Racca
Music: Coriolano Gori, the song “Bella come te” by Gori & Scattini & sung by Pippo Caruso
Editor: Otello Colangeli
Art director: Gastone Carsetti
First released in Italy on the 17/07/64

Primitive Love is a bizarre combination of slapstick comedy and mondo movie, made in 1964 by the late Luigi Scattini.  Scattini had previously built up a reputation as an accomplished documentary filmmaker, with award winning titles like La via del carbone (62), and La Vergine di Caacupé e Puerto Sastre (63) under his belt, and the vogue for mondos must have been incredibly tempting to him.  With backing from producer Fulvio Lucisano - who was making pots of money out of b-grade productions like this at the time - he went round the world, accompanied only by cameraman Claudio Racca, shooting footage about sexual mores and customs.

When they returned, though, and viewed the material they’d gathered: “…we realised that it wasn’t actually all that interesting.  After the screening I got up and said we ought to throw the film in the rubbish bin, as nobody would ever go to the cinema to see it.”  Lucisano, though, wasn’t going to let it go to waste: he came up with the notion of framing the footage with a story which would make it appealing to contemporary audiences.  And how would they do that?  “We needed a comedian.  Only one?  Why not get two, Franco and Ciccio, the most famous double act on screen at the moment.  What about a diva?  How about Jayne Mansfied, that incendiary sex bomb!  And, finally, how about a story with all the necessary trappings.  Sorted!”

The eventual film they created goes something like this: Franco (Franco Franchi) and Ciccio (Ciccio Ingrassia) are a pair of hapless bellboys who become even more incompetent when they discover that the incredibly beautiful Dr. Jane (Jane Mansfield) has come to stay there for a short while.  After discovering that she’s in possession of a selection of saucy photographs and some risqué film footage, they become convinced that she’s some kind of nymphomaniac, and try their best to wrangle their way into her bed.  In fact, she’s an anthropologist, and all of the supposedly salacious material is part of a recent survey she’s conducted into ‘love among the primitives’, which she’s intending to display to a cynical colleague of hers.

Franco, Ciccio and Jayne Mansfield

At this point we get to the documentary material, intercut with the occasional sequence of Franco and Ciccio trying to take a peek or Dr. Jayne talking to the elderly professor.  Much of it has very little to do with the supposed subject of her dissertation whatsoever (unless harvesting rice is the kind of activity that floats your boat). We get to see a Chinese wedding ceremony, a pig getting disembowelled, some cock fighting, Senegalese wrestling, native dancing in South Africa, funeral services in the South Pacific, prostitution in Hong Kong and (most amusingly) detection of an adulterous wife by prophetic python in Indonesia.  When things start getting a bit dull, there’s even a protracted display of Hula dancing which looks to have been filmed in a Roman night club.

Even after all of this, though, Jayne’s colleague remains unconvinced by her argument that ‘in the sphere of love, man has remained a primitive!’.  So she performs a striptease, which instantly turns Franco and Ciccio into gurning jelly and causes the Professor to turn into a weird kind of sex-crazed caveman, thereby proving… well, something or other.

That this film even got made at all is an achievement.  That it went on to become a huge success is testament to Fulvio Lucisano’s powers of improvisation, as well as a demonstration of the unsophisticated nature of the market at the time.  Because, in all honesty, it’s pretty terrible stuff.  Despite Scattini’s disparaging view of his documentary footage, it actually looks like it has better production values than the ‘framing’ sequences, which is quite an achievement.  According to Scattini: “It seems incredible, but the two of us shot the entire film: the whole crew consisted of Claudio Racca and me… It all cost about 40 million and grossed nearly a billion.”  Unfortunately, this low budget nature is painfully apparent, with most of the new material being shot in a hotel room (at the Hilton, where Mansfield was staying) and looking like it cost exactly as much to shoot as it did.

Franco and Ciccio are always a lot less funny when dubbed into English, but even so this isn’t one of their greatest moments.  They could be very funny, but a lot of the slapstick here seems forced, and they’re left with little to do beyond continually pull faces.  I guess if you were going to look at it from an academic perspective you could argue that their characters - the kind of goons who find leafing through a National Geographic an almost unbearable challenge to their libido - are a not too inaccurate representation of the audiences who flocked to watch this kind of rubbish.  Whatever the case, things just get weird when Franco starts dreaming he’s an African bongo drummer enticing Ms. Mansfield into a frenzied, erotic dance with his powerful rhythms, only to be thwarted by a spear (erm, mop) wielding Ciccio.

The striptease sequence from Primitive Love

Certainly, Scattini’s penchant for exotica shows through in the way in which he seems to have much more interest in the staged documentary footage than the comic exposition.  Some of the narration isn’t actually too bad, certainly no dumber than most of the stuff you find on Channel 4 nowadays, and apart from the animal sequences - which I have to admit don’t bother me a huge amount personally - it’s all pretty inoffensive.  Quite how much of this documentary footage may be authentic is arguable: much of it seems to have been shot with tongue firmly in cheek, and some of the ‘natives’ appear to be winking at the camera while they stage their ceremonies and rituals.  In fact, the sequence that the filmmakers were most worried about was Mansfield’s striptease at the finale: “The final scene, for example… lasted much longer than the version that ended up in the film.  It was perhaps a bit too ‘racy’ for the time, with Jayne going topless, so we cut it out before anyone complained.”

Undoubtedly, Primitive Love is a pretty dismal film.  But, and it’s a big but, it’s all so poor, so relentlessly cheesy, that it’s actually rather entertaining.  This is the kind of wrong-headed nonsense that could only have been made in its time, and it’s certainly more enjoyable than most of the more serious Mondo movies.

(all quotes taken from Luigi Scattini’s website and translated by me)

Luigi Scattini

Director Luigi Scattini has apparently died.

Scattini, a law graduate, was born on May 17, 1927, in Turin.  He began his career as a journalist, working for papers and popular magazines like Gente and Oggi, before moving into cinema as a documentary film maker, for which he soon began building a considerable reputation.  His 1962 film, La via del carbone, was nominated for best documentary at the Oscars and La Vergine di Caacupé e Puerto Sastre was shown at Venice in 1963.

He then took the logical step of moving into the Mondo field with 1963s Sexy Magico, and returned to the territory with Svezia, Inferno e Paradiso (1968),  Angeli bianchi, Angeli neri (1969) and Questo sporco mondo meraviglioso (1970).

In between these, he also directed several feature films, starting with the Buster Keaton / Franco & Ciccio vehicle Due marines e un generale (66).  Although he didn’t constrain himself to any particular genre, his films could be said to be linked by a sense of exoticism, whether this was the globetrotting espionage of Duello nel mondo (aka Ring Around the World, 66) or the Caribbean erotica of Il corpo (The Body, 74) and La notte dell’alta marea (77).  Even his sleazy 1977 film Blue Nude, which follows the adventures of an Italian gigolo in New York, finds a certain exotica in its sleazy settings.

Since the eighties, once his directorial career was effectively over, he forged a new and succesful career acting as a dubbing director for foreign films being shown in Italy.

I have to confess, I haven’t actually seen any of Scattini’s films, even his Eurospy ones, but the general view seems to be that he was pretty good at what he did.  I may dig out something of his later as a tribute.

Edith Peters in A Policewoman in New York

aka Edith Catalano-Peters | Edith Arlene Peters | The Peters-Sisters | Peters Sisters

Edith Peters was one of the many black performers who complemented their careers in the popular nightclubs and revues of the time with the occassional bit part roles on screen.  As one of the three sisters who made up ‘The Peters Sisters’, she’d had a succesful career since the 1930s, appearing in films like Ali Baba Goes to Town and Hi-Di-Ho (47).  At some point in the 1950s, she must have come to Europe, and was a popular fixture at Jazz clubs in Rome.

Her first screen appearences were purely as a singer, but soon she began also having small acting parts, most particularly in peplums such as Robin Hood and the Pirates (60) and Achilles (62).  She had quite a busy film career throughout the early sixties, but toward the end of the decade disappeared, before making a late comeback with two comedies, The Taming of the Scoundrel (80) and A Policewoman in New York (81).

Considering that she was quite an important figure in the music industry - much more so than film - it’s quite amazing that there’s almost no biographical information about her anywhere.

1957
Quiéreme con música (as Peters Sisters)

1960
Robin Hood e i pirati aka Robin Hood and the Pirates …. Palla di Grasso
Et mourir de plaisir aka Blood and Roses …. The Cook
Sotto dieci bandiere aka Under Ten Flags (as Edith Arlene Peters) …. Suora
Cartagine in fiamme aka Carthage in Flames) …. Sarepta
Madri pericolose …. Princess Fatima

1961
On Thin Ice …. Fräulein Pfeffer
5 marines per 100 ragazze …. Cucinera
Una vita difficile aka A Difficult Life (as Edith Catalano-Peters) …. Herself

1962
L’ira di Achille aka Achilles …. Nubian slave
Die türkischen Gurken …. Mahila, Haremsdame
Canzoni a tempo di twist

1963
Maskenball bei Scotland Yard - Die Geschichte einer unglaublichen Erfindung (as The Peters-Sisters) …. Herself
Obiettivo ragazze

1964
Due mafiosi nel Far West aka Two Gangsters in the Wild West

1965
Gli uomini dal passo pesante aka The Tramplers …. Emma

1966
Se tutte le donne del mondo aka Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die …. Maria

1969
Lisa dagli occhi blu …. Cook

1980
Il bisbetico domato aka The Taming of the Scoundrel …. Mamie

1981
La poliziotta a New York aka A Policewoman in New York …. La cameriera

Here’s a new Italian film that looks like it could be of interest.  It’s just come out in Italy this week, and is being shown in 20 cinemas, not a huge amount, but not unusually small for domestic product that isn’t a comedy.  A kind of fantastical thriller, it’s directed by Luciano Capponi, who’s done some stuff on TV before but is a new name to me.  The plot goes something like this:

Vladimir and his friend Vercingetorix discover, in his dead father’s wine cellar, a wine that has the power to conduct you to the afterlife, opening a doorway that leads in both directions.  They begin exploring, but accidentally bring back to life a serial killer.  Violent death and secret rituals follow, as both the police and a mysterious occult organisation who are desperate to gain possession of the secret become involved.  Along with Lidia, a policewoman, have to try and discover the secret of the fantastical doorway.

At the moment I can’t find any English language reviews, but the Italian critics have called it a bit of a mess, and it sounds like it’s as much a black, surreal comedy as a horror film - a mixture of Sideways, The Da Vinci Code and Artaud.  The cast includes Pietro Ragusa, Cosimo Fusco (from Angels and Demons and Rome) and Barbara Bouchet, of all people.

Here’s the trailer:

I’d never seen this before, but Ottaviano Dell’Acqua, aka Richard Raymond, one of the famous Dell’Acqua family of cinecitta stuntmen and a fixture of 80s Italian horror films, has his own website.

Ottavio Poggi may not be a name that you are familiar with.  There’s certainly very little biographical information about him anywhere.  But he was actually one of a band of little known - but very important - producers who fuelled the whole explosion in the Italian film industry in the 1950s and 60s.  These guys, and I’m thinking of others like Mario Siciliano, Fortunato Misiano, Emimmo Salvi and so on, were small scale producers.  They didn’t have the profile of a Franco Cristaldi or an Alberto Grimaldi, let alone a Carlo Ponti or a Dino De Laurentiis.  They concentrated almost solely on low to mid budget productions,financing films in whatever genres happened to be popular at the time.  And it’s thanks to them - as much as if not more so than their more celebrated directors and stars - that genres such as the peplum, spaghetti western and polizioteschi thrived to quite the extent that they did.

Poggi is an elusive character.  I have been unable even to track down a date of birth.  But he was active in the film industry from the war years, initially as a writer, and then working his way up the production ladder.  By 1952 he was a producer in his own right, putting together a number of melodramas and comedies for directors like Fernando Cerchio and Sergio Grieco.  Towards the middle of the decade he discovered his cinematic vocation, moving into the cape and sword field with the likes of Il falco d’oro (The Golden Falcon) and Giovanni dalle bande nere (The Violent Patriot), a genre he’d revisit roughly twenty times over the next ten years.  Some of his films had ambition: Annibale (Hannibal) was the subject of considerable press attention, and he was able to contract Vincent Price to appear in Nefertiti, regina del Nilo and Gordon, il pirata nero.

In the late 50s, he also founded Liber Film, who also produced a handful of films that he either wasn’t directly involved with (such as Totò e Cleopatra) or only had a hand in the script, with the hands-on production responsibilities being left to the likes of Nino Battiferri.  Sometimes Liber was involved in international comproductions - such as Bernard Borderie’s Angélique - but on the whole they were primarily Italian films, made by Italian directors and, apart from the occassional American star, featuring Italian actors.  It’s notable that he often worked with the same people over and over: Grieco, Cerchio and Luigi Capuano - all efficient if unglamorous directors - all made numerous films for him, and actors like Gianna Maria Canale, Guy Madison, Mario Petri, Alberto Farnese and Andrea Aureli appeared repeatedly.

What happened to Poggi, I don’t know.  It’s certainly true to say that when the boom in historical adventures died out in the mid sixties, he seemed to disappear.  Neither Poggi or Liber became involved in Spaghett Westerns, the next big boom genre, and apart from contributing to the scripts of a couple of small scale spy films he wasn’t heard from again.  I also don’t know whether he was anything to do with stunt director Fernando Poggi (who appeared in several of his films) or any of the other numerous Poggi’s who have made their living in Cinecitta over the years.

1942
Quarta pagina
Aka 3/4 of a Page
Dir: Nicola Manzari
Cervinia Film, Industrie Nazionali Associate Cinematografiche (I.N.A.C.)
(writer)
Cast: Claudio Gora, Valentina Cortese, Paola Barbara

1952
I morti non pagano tasse
Dir: Serio Grieco
Domino Films
(writer, production manager)
Cast: Tino Scotti, Titina De Filippo, Carlo Campanini

Non è vero… ma ci credo
Dir: Sergio Grieco
Associati Produttori Indipendenti Film (API), Gladio Film
(producer)
Cast: Peppino De Filippo, Carlo Croccolo, Titina De Filippo

1953
Amarti è il mio peccato
Dir: Sergio Grieco
Gladio Film, Po Film
(writer)
Cast: Jacques Sernas, Luisa Rossi

Lulù
Dir: Fernando Cerchio
Gladio Film
(producer, writer)
Cast: Valentina Cortese, Jacques Sernas, Luigi Pavese

1954
Tua per la vita
Dir: Sergio Grieco
Po Film
(producer)
Cast: Gaby Andre, Ettore Manni, Gerard Landry

Addio, mia bella signora!
Dir: Fernando Cerchio
Gladio Film
(producer, writer)
Cast: Gino Cervi, Armando Francioli, Silvio Bagolini

1955
Figaro, il barbiere di Siviglia
Aka The Barber of Seville
Dir: Camillo Mastrocinque
(producer)
Cast: Tito Gobbi, Armando Francioli, Irene Genna

Il falco d’oro
Aka The Golden Falcon
Dir: Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia
Po Film
(producer)
Cast: Anna Maria Ferrero, Massimo Serato, Nadia Gray, Frank Latimore

1956
Giovanni dalle bande nere
Aka The Violent Patriot
Dir: Sergio Grieco
Po Film
(producer, writer)
Cast: Vittorio Gassman, Constance Smith, Anna Maria Ferrero, Gerard Landry, Philippe Hersent

Lo spadaccino misterioso
Aka The Mysterious Swordsman
Dir: Sergio Grieco
Po Film
(producer, writer)
Cast: Frank Latimore, Fiorella Mari, Gerard Landry, Tamara Lees

1958
La Gerusalemme liberata
Aka The Mighty Crusaders
Dir: Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia
Max Production
(producer)
Cast: Francisco Rabal, Sylva Koscina, Gianna Maria Canale, Philippe Hersent

La spada e la croce
Aka The Sword and the Cross
Dir: Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia
Liber Film
(producer, writer)
Cast: Yvonne De Carlo, Jorge Mistral, Massimo Serato, Andrea Aureli, Rosanna Podesta

1959
Annibale
Aka Hannibal
Dir: Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, Edgar G. Ulmer
Liber Film
(producer, writer)
Cast: Victor Mature, GAbriele Ferzetti, Rita Gam

1961
La Venere dei pirati
Aka The Queen of the Pirates
Dir: Mario Costa
Max Film
(producer)
Cast: Gianna Maria Canale, Massimo Serato, Scilla Gabel, Andrea Aureli

Nefertiti, regina del Nilo
Aka Queen of the Nile
Dir: Fernando Cerchio
Max Production
(producer, writer)
Cast: Jeanne Crain, Vincent Price, Edmund Purdom, Liana Orfei

Gordon, il pirata nero
Aka Rage of the Buccaneers
Dir: Fernando Cerchio
Max Production
(producer, writer)
Cast: Riccardo Montalban, Vincent Price, Giulia Rubini, Liana Orfei

1962
Il colpo segreto di d’Artagnan
Aka The Secret Mark of D’Artagnan
Dir: Siro Marcellini
Les Films Agiman, Liber Film
(producer, writer)
Cast: George Nader, Georges Marchal, Magali Noel, Massimo Serato

La tigre dei sette mari
aka Tiger of the Seven Seas
Dir: Luigi Capuano
Euro International Film, Liber Film
(producer, writer)
Cast: Gianna Maria Canale, Anthony Steel, Maria Grazia Spina, Andrea Aureli

Totò contro Maciste
Aka Toto vs. Maciste
Dir: Fernando Cerchio
Liber Film, Wanguard Film (Nino Battiferri credited as producer)
(writer)
Cast: Toto, Luigi Pavese, Samson Burke

1963
Il boia di Venezia
Aka Blood of the Executioner
Dir: Luigi Capuano
Liber Film
(producer, writer)
Cast: Lex Barker, Guy Madison, Alessandra Panaro, Mario Petri, Alberto Farnese

Il leone di San Marco
Aka The Lion of St. Mark
Dir: Luigi Capuano
Liber Film
(producer)
Cast: Gordon Scott, Gianna Maria Canale, Alberto Farnese, Rik Battaglia

Totò e Cleopatra
Aka Toto and Cleopatra
Dir: Fernando Cerchio
Liber Film, Euro International Film (EIA) (Nino Battiferri credited as producer)
Cast: Toto, Magali Noel, Moira Orfei

1964
Angélique
Aka Angélique, marquise des anges
Dir: Bernard Borderie
Compagnie Industrielle et Commerciale Cinématographique (CICC), Fono Roma, Franco London Films, Francos Films, Gloria-Film GmbH, Liber Film, Pro Artis Ibérica
(producer)
Cast: Michele Mercier, Giuliano Gemma, Robert Hossein

I misteri della jungla nera
Aka Kidnapped to Mystery Island
Dir: Luigi Capuano
Liber Film, Eichberg-Film (Nino Battiferri credited as producer)
(writer)
Cast: Guy Madison, Ingeborg Schoner, Giacomo Rossi Stuart, Giulia Rubini, Peter Van Eyck

Sandokan alla riscossa
Aka Sandokan Fights Back
Dir: Luigi Capuano
Liber Film, Eichberg-Film
(producer)
Cast: Ray Danton, Guy Madison, Franca Bettoia, Mario Petri, Alberto Farnese

Sandokan contro il leopardo di Sarawak
Aka Sandokan Against the Leopard of Sarawak
Dir: Luigi Capuano
Liber Film, Eichberg-Film
(producer)
Cast: Ray Danton, Guy Madison, Franca Bettoia, Mario Petri, Alberto Farnese

Totò contro il pirata nero
Aka Toto vs. the Black Pirate
Dir: Fernando Cerchio
Liber Film
(producer)
Cast: Toto, Maria Grazia Spina, Mario Petri

1965
Angélique et le roy
Aka Angelique and the King
Dir: Bernard Borderie
Films Borderie (as C.I.C.C.), Fono Roma, Francos Films, Gloria-Film GmbH, Liber Film
Cast: Michele Mercier, Robert Hossein, Jean Rochefort

Il ladro della gioconda
Aka The Mona Lisa Has Been Stolen
Dir: Michel Deville
Les Films Marceau, Liber Film
(producer, writer)
Cast: George Chakiris, Margaret Lee, Marina Vlady

L’avventuriero della tortuga
Aka Cold Steel for Tortuga
Dir: Luigi Capuano
Liber Film, Eichberg-Film
(writer)
Cast: Guy Madison, Ingeborg Schoner, Rik Battaglia, Andrea Aureli

Song of the World
Aka Le chant du monde
Dir: Marcel Camus
Cosmos Film, Les Films Marceau, Liber Film, Orphée Productions
Cast: Hardy Kruger, Charles Vanel, Marilu Tolo

1966
Perry Grant, agente di ferro
Aka The Big Blackout
Dir: Luigi Capuano
??
(writer)
Cast: Peter Holden, Giacomo Rossi Stuart, Marilu Tolo, Seyna Seyn

Superargo contro Diabolikus
Aka Superargo vs Diabolicus
Dir: Nick Nostro
Liber Film, Società Europea Cinematografica (SEC) (as S.E.C. Film), Producciones Cinematográficas Balcazar
(producer)
Cast: Giovanni Cinafriglia, Gerard Tichy, Loredana Nusciak

Tre notti violente
Aka Web of Violence
Dir: Nick Nostro
Hesperia Films S.A., Liber Film
(producer, writer)
Cast: Brett Halsey, Margaret Lee, Julio Pena

1967
Colpo doppio del camaleonte d’oro
Dir: Giorgio Stegani
G.V. Cinematografica, SEC, Variety Film Production
(writer)
Cast: Mark Damon, Luisa BAratto, Magda Konopka

French poster for Mexican Slayride

aka Moresque obiettivo allucinante, Coplan III, Coplan ouvre le feu a Mexico
1967
Original running length: 94 mins
France / Italy / Spain
Based on the story ‘Coplan fait peau neuve’ by Paul Kenny
A Fida (Rome), Comptoir Francais du Film (Paris) and Balcazar (Barecelona) production
Director: Riccardo Freda
Screenplay: Bertrand Tavernier
Cinematography: Juan Gelpí, Paul Solignac
Music: Jacques Lacome
Editor: Teresa Alcocer, Claude Gros, Vincenzo Tomassi
Cast: Lang Jeffries (Coplan), Sabine Sun (the countess), José María Caffarel (Langis), Robert Party (Fondane), Frank Oliveras (Don Felipe), Guido Lollobrigida (Montez), Osvaldo Genazzani, Guy Marly, Luciana Gilli (Maya, Don Felipe’s daughter), Silvia Solar (Francine Labout)
Uncredited: Francisco Cebrián, Ida Galli, Antonio Orengo, Mónica Randall, María Dolores Rubio, Tomás Torres, Moisés Augusto Rocha (killer with bazooka), Paco Sanz (Don Felipe’s man)

This little-known spy film was financed by three important production companies in the world of low-budget cinema during the late 1960s.  From Italy, there was Edmondo Amati’s Fida Cinematografica, which made most of the Agent 077 series of films starring Ken Clark (Mission Bloody Mary, Special Mission Lady Chaplin etc etc).  From France, Comptoir Français du Film Production, which had made a previous Coplan film, Coplan FX 18 casse tout, as well as putting money into numerous other peplums and spy films.  And from Spain Balcázar Producciones Cinematográficas, formed by the brothers Alfonso and Jesus Balcazar, who regularly invested in and allowed Italian productions to use their Barcelona-based studios.  Unsurprisingly, then, it’s a truly cosmopolitan film, with a multinational cast and crew.  It’s also a bit of a mess.

When a bunch of paintings stolen by the Nazis during the Second World War start turning up in auctions around the world, the secret service are interested: just who is it who’s selling them?  and why are they being sold right now?  After the first agent dispatched to find out what’s going on is murdered, super-efficient spy Coplan (Lang Jeffries) is assigned the case and, given that he knows absolutely nothing about culture whatsoever, is ordered to take along a slightly more civilised, rookie agent, Fondane (Robert Party), with him.

Lang Jeffries in Mexican Slayride

After posing as a bidder for one of the stolen masterpieces, Coplan is approached by a certain Lady Francine Lagrange (Sabine Sun), who tells him she has some rare artworks for sale and then promptly drags him off to bed.  After drugging her, he searches around her villa, where he finds some incriminating cheques and some even more incriminating goons. In order to find out more about what she’s up to he lets her escape, following her as she heads off to Mexico.  After surviving a rapidfire assassination attempt as he leaves the airport, he meets up with wealthy businessman and ex-agent Langis (José María Caffarel), who has a passion for classical music and a collection of pet snakes, and Montez (Guido Lollobrigida), the secret service’s man in Mexico.

He also runs into Francine (Silvia Solar), a damsel in distress, who had come to Mexico in order to carry out geological research and has now spent over a week trying to avoid assorted people who are trying - for some reason or other - to kill her.  It doesn’t take a genius to work out that her troubles might be connected to his investigations and, as the body count escalates, they figure out that everything is connected to some underground caverns on the land of a local aristocrat, Don Felipe (Frank Oliveras).

Given some of the big names involved in this - both the writer and assistant director, Bertrand Tavernier and Yves Boisset, went on to become award winning filmmakers, and it was directed by the much respected Riccardo Freda - it’s quite amazing that it has remained obscure for so long.  For many years it was obtainable only as a cut-down, mutilated version lasting just less than an hour, called Entre las redes. Now available in a much longer, fandubbed print from the Wild Eye forum, it’s possible to make a true evaluation of its worth and, while it undoubtedly has some hugely impressive elements, it’s let down by moments of quite staggering slapdashery.

The script itself seems to hark back to earlier spy films: apart from the occasional moment of humour and self mockery (such as when Coplan refers to it being the usual ‘nutters in a cavern with plans of world domination’ type situation), it’s actually quite a dour, moody affair.  The more fantastical elements are underplayed, and the narrative fixes more upon the investigation and multiple double-crosses than the deadly weapons, flame throwing walking sticks and so on.  It’s also quite callous, with Coplan merrily burning already incapacitated villains to death or crushing people’s head in a handy vice, and even his bedroom activities seem more calculated and cynical than normal for the genre.  But it certainly springs some surprises and has a degree of complexity, as well as an assortment of hastily, but not badly, sketched characters.

However, the problem lies in the direction.  While there are some quite exceptional moments - a secret meeting between the spies on a rollercoaster, a funeral that descends into a gunfight, Francine’s paranoid flight through the city, a search of a meat packing plant - other sequences are just rubbish.  It’s almost as though there were two directors: a talented one who was dealing with all the action and build up sequences, and a not-particularly talented one who was filming all the static filler and incidental material.  It’s not beyond the realms of plausibility that some of the interior work was shot in Spain by someone apart from Freda (Boisset?  A Spanish stand in?), which would explain why so much of it is dully paced and staged.  At other moments, it feels almost as much like a giallo or, more particularly, a Spaghetti Western as a spy film (a feeling accentuated by the fact that it reuses several of the Balacazar’s western sets as a stand in for Mexico).

Lang Jeffries and Silvia Solar in Mexican Slayride

Furthermore, there’s also some extremely poor miniature work, especially when compared to the kinds of results that were being achieved by the likes of Mario Bava and Antonio Margheriti with similar resources.  The stuntwork is impressive - there’s a wild leap out of a plane into a moving taxi - but this is let down by some occasionally ineffective editing (although, to be fair, this could be down to problems with the print).

It would be interesting, in other words, to know more about what was going on behind the scenes of the film.  Admittedly, during the later stages of his career Freda’s films often seemed to suffer from a certain lack of interest on his part, and that could have been the case here rather than anything more complicated.  As it is, it remains an interesting, but highly flawed film.  But it’s always watchable, not least because of the performance of Lang Jeffries, a very underrated actor who was perfect at playing a more moody breed of spy than usual.

This was the fourth of five films to feature Coplan, a character created by author Paul Kenny.  Agent secret FX 18 (64), Coplan FX 18 casse tout (65) and Coplan sauve sa peau (68) were also co-produced by Comptoir Français du Film Production and were intended as a vague kind of series, while Coplan prend des risques (64) would appear to be a rival production which had nothing whatsoever - apart from its protagonist - to do with any of the other films.

Bekim Fehmiu in The Deserter

Apparently Bekim Fehmiu has died…  according to news alerts:

Belgrade - Well-known Yugoslav actor of Albanian descent Bekim Fehmiu was found dead on Tuesday in his apartment in Belgrade, Serbian state television RTS reported. He was 74.

Fehmiu is best known for his role in a 1967 movie Skupljaci perja (I Even Met Happy Gypsies) which won the Grand Prize of the Jury and FIPRESCI prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Fehmiu was a major star of Yugoslav films in the 1960s and 1970s. He appeared in many European productions, mostly Italian, and partnered with stars such as Ava Gardner, Charles Aznavour and Olivia de Havilland. He retired from the public life in the 1980s.

For the Wild Eye, Fehmiu was familiar primarily as a star of Italian and European films.  In 1968 he starred in the TV series L’odissea, directed by Franco Rossi, Piero Schivazappa and Mario Bava, and from there went on to appear as a supporting player in Lewis Gilbert’s The Adventurers (69) and then star in the semi-spaghetti western The Deserter (71).  Other films included Daniele Pettinari’s Cagliostro (74), Giuseppe Rosati’s Il testimone deve tacere (74) and, briefly, Salon Kitty (76).  He could have been a big star but his choices were often a little leftfield and he was never really able to capitalise on the buzz that surrounded him during the early 70s.

This was a TV adaptation of the popular Daphne Du Maurier novel Rebecca (which had actually already been adapted by the Italians in 1946).  The story, as I’m sure you know, follows a young woman who marries a wealthy, aristocratic and charming husband, but when she moves into his home she discovers that he’s still haunted by the memory of his deceased first wife. Director Riccardo Milani is something of a TV specialist, although he did make the award winning social-realism film Il posto dell’anima (2003).  The cast includes Alessio Boni (who was the lead in Michele Soavi’s Arrivederci amore, ciao (2006), Mariangela Melato and Tomas Arana.

Someone’s put some edited together bits of this up on youtube (to the accompaniment, weirdly, of Donovan’s Hurdy Gurdy Man!)

Known in English language countries as The Headless Woman, Lucrecia Martel’s La mujer sin cabeza is really more of an Argetinian film than anything else; there was some Italian (and French and German) involvement on the production side, but that’s it.  Produced by Pedro Almodóvar, among others, this received some very favorable reviews when it played at festivals around the world, and even had a theatrical release in the UK (albeit in February 2010!)

Here’s the Guardian review, by Philip French:

Six years ago the Argentinian moviemaker Lucrecia Martel made an extraordinary movie, La Niña Santa (The Holy Girl), much influenced by Luis Buñuel and Pedro Almodóvar, who produced it along with his brother. Set in a town in northern Argentina, it’s a mysterious film with no formal exposition, looking at the world through the eyes of a brooding 16-year-old girl who attends some sort of church school. Her mother owns a decaying, once fashionable spa, seemingly a metaphor for a decaying society, and at the centre of the film is a transgressive act by a doctor that leads to the girl informing on him and betraying a friend.

Martel’s first film since then, La Mujer sin Cabeza (The Headless Woman) is similarly oblique. Once again the viewpoint is subjective and the audience left to infer relationships and work out what’s going on. The plot, however, turns on that familiar movie device that goes back via The Great Gatsby to Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. This is the hit-and-run story, the offence invariably committed by someone of the privileged classes, the victim always from the oppressed lower orders. Verónica (María Onetto), a good-looking, middle-aged dentist, is driving along a country road when she’s distracted by her cellphone and appears to hit something. She breaks hard, bangs her head, sits for a while, looks back and drives on. From then on her life is a nightmare of confusion and guilt, and we are compelled to share her distorted vision.

A child from a peasant family has disappeared in the area and is eventually discovered in a storm drain. Was he her victim? Were the fingerprints on the car’s window his or those of her own child? With a touch of Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, all records of her visit to the hospital, her stay at a hotel that night and any marks on the car have disappeared, the work of a male conspiracy involving her husband, her lover and a relative. It’s an intriguing film, more alienating than involving, that ends abruptly and in my view unsatisfactorily. Some people whose opinion I respect regard it as a masterpiece, but after a single viewing I can’t share this view.

As this isn’t really an Italian film, I’m not going to cover this in any more depth, intriguing though it sounds!

Here’s the trailer:

Gloria Paul gets raunchy

Someone who has always intrigued me is Gloria Paul, an English actress who ended up acting in films in Italy during the 60s.  I associate her primarily with comedies and spy films, a glamorous, exotic lady who wouldn’t fit in so well with the more grimy productions made during the 70s.  But there was never really much information about her anywhere.  Recently, however, I stumbled across an Italian language interview, which I have translated for your delectation.  It’s mostly about her life in Rome, but there’s some interesting biographical information in there as well.

Gloria Paul was born in London on the 28th February 1940. The daughter of a Financial Times journalist and an opera singer, she began dancing at the age of three. Success came when she won numerous contests and qualified as a ‘young talent’. While studying at school she was compelled to stop her dance classes but, after having finished secondary school, she was signed up by the famous dance group ‘Tiller Girls’. With them, she performed ‘Bluebell’ at the Paris Lido, before becoming the first ballerina of the Alaria Ballet. She arrived in Rome in 1961 and took part in four films (in total she shot over 25), appearing opposite such legendary performers as Totò, Renato Rascel and, in theatre, Erminio Macario. Her last film appearance was in 1996, in the film Esercizi di stile. In the same year she was the victim of a bad domestic accident, which necessitated her spending a period in a wheelchair (while she was in the shower, the ceiling of the bathroom suddenly collapsed, bringing down the boiler above and breaking her back). After the incident she took part in several TV reports such as Conversando, Domenica in and Porta a porta.

Q: How did you come about your love of the performing arts, Gloria?

It was born when I was a little girl. My mother sent me to a dance school when I was a little girl, I was there for three years, and then I began to do talent shows etc etc. And out of that I got used to going on stage.

Q: So your parents wanted you to go into the industry?

It was my mother’s dream, perhaps because it’s what she wanted to do but it just wasn’t possible. My father, though, was a journalist, and he wanted me to be a model or a fashion journalist. He hoped that I would follow in his footsteps. Instead, my first job after finishing school was as a dancer, and from there - without ever really thinking about it - everything escalated. I just let myself be carried along by the work.

Gloria Paul with Toto

Q: And what was the best compliment you ever received?

Oh God! I’ve received so many that I can’t remember them! One thing that makes you really happy is when you finish a show and there’s lots of applause. That’s a strong feeling that fills your heart. Away from the professional, one thing that I like is that people say I haven’t really changed from the girl I was. Even when I was at my most successful, I never lost my head,.

Q: And what’s the worst thing that’s been written about you?

Nothing so bad. The worst thing that’s happened to me was the incident in 96, when the water heater fell on me in my shower. The boiler collapsed and it all fell on me.

Q: In your career you’ve worked with some famous people. How did you find Totò?

When I met him he was already a big star. That was on Totò, Peppino e la dolce vita, and I didn’t really understand quite how important he was, because I’d only just arrived in Italy. I was 20 years old and didn’t know anything about Italian film. I must say that he was a gentleman, he always seemed very protective. After doing the movie I also worked with him on a TV show called Tutto Totò, and I remember that the director teased me for not speaking very good Italian and said something wrong. He said: “What, after all the years you’ve been here you still can’t speak Italian properly?” So Totò intervened and said: “I’d like to see you speak English as well as she speaks Italian!” He was always very friendly and polite with me.

Q: And Renato Rascel?

He was also a nice guy. He was very demanding, professionally, but a great artist. I worked with him for 3 years, doing Enrico 61. We did it for two years in Italy and then for one year in England, translated in English, of course.

Q: What advice would you give to those who wish to follow in your footsteps?

Everything is very different now to how it was in my day. There’s a lot more competition. But I’d suggest keeping a sense of humility, working hard, and being tenacious, don’t give up at the first sign of trouble. It’s a job that can be humiliating. You might want to do a part and get rejected, but you need to carry on, don’t let it bother you.

Q: What’s your dream, Gloria?

Oh, I don’t have any dreams any more, dear Gianfranco! All my dreams vanished after the accident.

Q: After the accident, who has helped you? Has faith been important?

I’m very practical about things. Certainly, one hopes that there’s something up there that can help us. After the accident I discovered that people truly wished me well and I’ve been very lucky in my choice of friends. As the saying goes: “You discover who your true friends are in bad times”, and at bad times, they were always at my side. I had a good nose for friends, and when I need them they’re there. With my job, you know a thousand people, but in life one must be selective. You shouldn’t judge people too quickly, it takes time.

Gloria Paul (right) with Julie Andres

Q: Let’s talk a little about Rome. When did you arrive here and what impact did it have on you?

It had a big impact on me. This was the magnificent 60s, the years of La dolce vita. In those days I was working a lot and so didn’t experience much of La dolce vita. The first time I came here was with my parents and my brother, and the first monument that I wanted to visit was The Coliseum, which I’d heard about and studied at school. I remember that it was an emotional experience. Then I started working in Italy a lot and got absorbed in that, caught up in too many commitments and thousands of contracts.

Q: Where did you live in Rome?

Oh, I’ve lived in many parts of Rome. Now I’m on the most beautiful hills in Rome, Aventine. When I go down and see the Palatine I can’t help but wonder at the beauty of it all. It’s a wonderful thing, believe me. Above all on a summer evening when the sun goes down and there’s a sunset, a unique, beautiful and orange sky. It’s a show you can only see in Rome.

Q: So now you’re in Aventine, but where did you live when you first arrived in Rome?

At first I was in Parioli, then I moved to Trionfale, then Piazza Barberini. Then on to Nomentana and, occasionally when I was doing theatre, I took on an apartment for rent.

Q: What do you miss about Rome when you’re away?

When I’m away I very much miss my house and my thousand comforts. I’ve lived here for nearly 30 years and am very fond of it. Then I miss my friends and loved ones. One thing about Rome I definitely don’t miss are the streets, which aren’t pleasant for people like me who use a wheelchair. That’s one downside to Rome.

Q: Did you know that the actress Dalila Di Lazzaro had an accident because of the potholes and now has back problems as a result.

Oh yes, I know. But she’s not paralysed. She had some back and spine problems but is pretty good now. She can walk, whereas I can’t because I’m paralysed from the waist down.

Q: How do you find the Romans?

Well, I’ve been in Rome so long now I consider myself half-roman, or an adopted Roman. I must say that sometimes I feel the Romans can be very intrusive, but they’re very nice and there’s something comic about it. They can make a drama into something less dramatic through their irony, they always have a joke ready and can make you laugh even when you don’t feel like it.

Q: What about Roman food?

We shouldn’t mention it! Apart from at the Coliseum, Roman food, and Italian food in general, are exceptional. I lived in Paris for some years, which is the home of fine cuisine, but here in Italy, and particularly Rome, it’s the food of the Gods. When I first arrived in Italy I went made for parmesan and clams, at the restaurant I’d order clams and ask the waiter to put parmesan all over them (Laughs). The waiter looked at me strangely. When I was doing theatre I had problems with my diet and I’d eat three times a day. With Macario we’d do tours of 93 town squares and eat all the regional specialties.

Q: Do you have any favourite restaurants in Rome?

Very many. Near to me there’s the Testaccio, which is the home of Roman cuisine, and there are many fine restaurants.

Q: On the internet it says that Gloria Paul is a stage name, is that true?

No! Paul is my true name, my family name. On the internet there are all kinds of mistakes and errors.

Sono viva (I Am Alive)

Here’s an interesting sounding new Italian film.  It’s had a somewhat limited release, showing on just 8 screens, and the takings have been rather low so far, but the plot sounds intriguing and the word of mouth around it is generally very positive.  It wouldn’t be the first time an impressive film has fallen by the wayside in Italy, and it was actually made in 2008 (and showed at the London Film Festival back then as well), so I guess any kind of release is to be appreciated.

Sono viva (I Am Alive) is a kind of thriller / drama crossover, directed by Dino and Filippo Gentili, who previously had a hand in the writing of things like La piovra, Faenza’s I giorni dell’abbandono (2005) and Lizzani’s Hotel Meina (2007).  Among the cast are Giovanna Mezzogiorno (who seems to be championing these low budget films from novice filmmakers), Massimo De Santis (Miracle at St. Anna) and Marcello Mazzarella (Fortapàsc, Baaria).

Here’s the review from Eye for Film:

No matter how hard you’ve been hit by the credit crunch, don’t choose the same method of earning a little extra as the hero of the Gentili brothers’ intriguing directorial debut.

Veteran scriptwriters in the Italian film and TV industries, their latest tale concerns Rocco (Massimo de Santis) a young factory worker with a dead-end job and mounting debt problems. When an older, and decidedly dodgy, friend offers him several thousand euros for one night’s work he jumps at the chance.

But if an offer sounds too good to be true… the job turns out to be standing guard for a wealthy businessman at his plush villa - over the body of his young daughter. Rocco’s mate immediately has a spliff and a beer, then drives off with a girl half his age in tow, leaving the more conscientious Rocco alone.

But not for long. Through the course of the night, the villa is visited by a series of people, each with their own connection to the dead girl. And it soon becomes apparent that the story of her short life is a good deal more complex and messy than the one her father told his hired hands. Her brother was jealous of her status as daddy’s favourite, and her Romanian boyfriend, ostracised by the family, is now bringing up the child she never knew on his own.

As Rocco tries to keep the peace between the warring factions, he finds himself more and more fascinated by the dead girl, and begins to question his own relationships with his girlfriend (a disembodied voice on the other end of a mobile phone) and his long-suffering father (a builder who lives out in the country and is constantly urging his son to come and “work for the family”). As he continues to find out secrets about the girl, her brother and her father, he decides to change from being a passive henchman, and try to do something positive for her family…

It’s a film that constantly keeps you guessing, and builds up a tense, claustrophobic atmosphere. But it suffers from a few logic-defying plot turns. It’s never adequately explained why the girl’s father can’t simply stay with her for the night (though it’s strongly hinted that his wealth, if not exactly ill-gotten, is based on the kind of business that takes place after hours) and at one point Rocco simply leaves the house to grab a sandwich. This enables him to strike up a burgeoning romance with Stefania (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), a waitress at a nearby all-night cafe, and creates a dramatic flashpoint when he returns to find some more unexpected visitors, but you do find yourself wondering, wasn’t there anything in the fridge? And when such banal questions start occurring it’s a sure sign that a film’s lost its hold on you.

It also seems uncertain as to whether it wants to be an existential thriller, jet-black comedy or ‘state of the nation’ comment on Italy’s class divides, anti-immigrant paranoia and obsession with wealth and status. Such a lack of focus is stranger considering the Gentili brothers’ writing track record, but can perhaps be explained by a natural desire to shove as many ideas as possible into their debut, whether or not they actually fit.

But it does yield some effective moments, and they clearly know the characters inside out. The film is, if nothing else, an intriguing snapshot of modern industrial Italy, a world away from the travel guide clichés of Rome or Tuscany. The sense here is of trapped and circumscribed lives and a final shot of the majestic countryside outside the town feels like a breath of fresh air.

De Santis gives an excellent performance as a fundamentally decent, not too bright journeyman worker, simply trying to build a better life in an indifferent and occasionally hostile world; best-known in Italy as the star of the TV series Distretto Di Polizia 8, he has the looks and charisma of a young Gabriel Byrne. And Mezzogiorno makes the best of a somewhat underwritten part, proving once again that she was one of the better things about Mike Newell’s ill-conceived adaptation of Love In The Time Of Cholera.

Getting such a high-profile pair of performers for your debut is no mean feat, and shows the reputation the Gentili brothers have in Italy. I hope we’ll be seeing them behind the camera again, but perhaps next time they’ll play to their strengths and concentrate on a good, solid story rather than simply throwing ideas and incidents at the screen.

Daniele Luchetti's La nostra vita

Daniele Luchetti, who made the acclaimed Mio fratello è figlio unico (My Brother is An Only Child) a few years back, has a new film out called La nostra vita (Our Life).  It stars, among others, two of the more prominent Italian dramatic actors around today,

Raoul Bova and Elio Germano, which is probably one of the reasons why it’s playing at a considerable 264 screens and is by far the most succesful domestic release in Italy at the moment.

Here’s the review from Screen Daily:

One of this year’s smaller Cannes competition titles, Our Life certainly has merits: it’s a gritty, closely observed slice of Roman proletarian life. And it’s marked by a raw (though at times rather too full-on) performance by Elio Germano in the lead role as a construction worker with two kids, who after the sudden death of his wife tries to provide for his family by setting himself up as a shady building contractor.

In ambience and theme, it comes on a lot like an Italian Ken Loach movie. Loach, though, is good at stories; whereas Luchetti and his co-scriptwriters are so enamoured of their characters that they forget to build a satisfying dramatic home for them.

Our Life’s focus on the family, and redemption through families real and alternative, will reach out to Italian audiences, but this is a less commercial prospect than Luchetti’s last, My Brother is an Only Child. That had a sixties retro setting and an epic Best-Of-Youth-style timeline.

This is a punishingly neo-neo-realist tale shot on a distractingly shaky handheld camera, leavened only with a few audience baits: heartthrob Raul Bova in a minor role, some cute kids, the music of Italian stadium rocker Vasco Rossi and an upbeat ending. All will work better at home than abroad, where Our Life looks unlikely to reach even the handful of territories that picked up My Brother… for theatrical distribution.

Initially, the film’s rambling tone and jagged scene structure come across as confident rather than dispersive. Claudio (Germano) is one of those risky heroes who is never entirely likeable: street smart but also street crass, he’s brimful of arrogance as a building site foreman, but is saved by a real affection for his young wife Elena (Ragonese) - who he turns on by whispering the names of IKEA furniture - and for his two young sons.

Elena is pregnant again, but she dies in childbirth, and Claudio is knocked sideways. He’s already had a shock when he finds the body of a Romanian illegal immigrant worker on the building site. There’s a kind of moral payback in Elena’s death after his failure to report this other death, and in the way the dead man’s wife Gabriela (Berzanteanu) and teenage son Andrei (Ignat) enter his life.

But at this point the film starts to dither and the dramatic lines begin to blur. Using the cover-up of the Romanian worker’s death as a blackmail chip, Claudio convinces construction king Porcari (Colangeli) to give him the contract on a new residential block in Rome’s northern suburbs, which needs to be finished in record time.

He raises the money from a bad bunch of loan sharks thanks to his wheelchair-bound drug-dealing neighbour Ari (Zingaretti), and sinks part of it into flashy toys for his kids - the neon message being that Claudio is using consumerism to assuage his grief and guilt. Things, of course, spiral before they get any better.

Keen to show the positive side of life in Italy’s new outer suburbs - the solidarity, the love, the animal energies - Luchetti lets observation carry him too far into explorations of minor characters, like Claudio’s siblings Piero (Bova) and Loredana (Montorsi), who in the end add little. Our Life has its heart in the right place. But it feels like an episode of a tough, cutting-edge TV drama with a film struggling to find a voice inside it.

Assorted Women of Devil's Island

aka Le prigioniere dell’isola del diavolo, L’ile des fillles perdues
1962
Original running time: 90 mins
Italy
Based on the inquiry “Gli orrori della Gujana (France, 1848)
A Gianni Hecht Lucari production for Documento (Italy) and Le Louvre (France)
Distribution by Columbia CEIAD
Director: Domenico Paolella
Screenplay: Domenico Paolella
Cinematography: Carlo Bellero
Music: Egisto Macchi
Editor: Otello Colangeli
Art director: Aldo Tomassini Barbarossa
Cast: Guy Madison (Captain Henri Valliere), Michèle Mercier (Martine Foucher), Frederika [Federica] Ranchi (Jeanette), Marisa Belli (Melina), Paul Muller (Lefèvre), Tullio Altamura (Dubois), Antonella Della Porta (Louise), Carlo Hintermann (Captain Duval), Gisella Arden (Maeva), Fernando Piazza (Micheal, the mulatto), Roldano Lupi (Francis Bart, a pirate), Margaret Rose Kiel (Rosy), Claudine Damon (Pauline), Vera Besusso (Francoise)

Women of Devil’s Island is a 1962 film written and directed by Domenico Paolella, a former critic who specialized in low-but-not-no budget historical adventures and peplums.  Paolella obviously was a respected filmmaker at the time, as this was produced by Gianni Hecht’s Documento Film.  As well as some respectable genre items (such as Pietro Francisci’s The Warrior Empress (Saffo, venere di Lesbo, 60), Documento was also financing a number of more prestigious and challenging projects at the time, including Vancini’s La banda casaroli (62), Rossellini’s Anima Nera and Lattuada’s L’imprevisto (61).  They tended, in other words, to back either directors of some repute or promising newcomers.

Still, they weren’t going to let Paolella relax, and Women of Devil’s Island was shot back-to-back with another film, Avenger of the Seven Seas (Il giustiziere dei mari), which also featured many of the same cast and crew.  Of course, this had several budgetary implications, not least the fact that the two vessels hired by the production could be cheaply reused and the exterior shoot for both films, which took place at Ancona, a port on the Eastern side of Italy, could all be done at once.

Michele Mercier in The Women of Devil's Island

The plot, by Paolella and Ernesto Gastaldi, follows Martine Foucher (Michèle Mercier), a noblewoman who, convicted of treason for political reasons, is sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, a notorious penal colony for women near French Guyana.  Her only cause for optimism is the fact that her sister, Jeanette (Federica Ranchi) is already there, having been convicted on a similarly trumped up charge two years previously.  However, when they are reunited, Jeanette claims not to recognise her, and Martine’s spirits plunge even further when she’s put to hard labour panning for gold.

The degradations of the camp prove to be relentless: the guards are psychopaths who take advantage of their position to force sexual favours out of their charges, the women are violently punished for even the most minor infringements and, to cap it all, crocodiles wait in the rivers, ready to pick them off at any opportunity.  Eventually Jeanette admits who she really is - she’d assumed the identity of another prisoner with a shorter sentence - but is then promptly killed during a misguided escape attempt.

But then a new Commandant, Captain Henri Valliere (Guy Madison), arrives to take charge, and everything changes.  An apparently honourable man, he immediately puts a stop to all the corruption and brutality, even risking his own life to save Martine when she’s harassed by one of those pesky crocodiles.  But Valliere isn’t exactly who he claims to be: he’s actually one of a band of pirates who are planning to attack the island and seize all the gold, without much of a care for the poor prisoners who are stuck there.

Essentially, this is an enjoyable romp that foresees the later Women in Prison (W.I.P.) movies which came into vogue in the mid 70s.  The female prisoners storyline wasn’t a new one - for instance Raffaello Matarazzo had made La nave delle donne maledette, which was primarily set on a ship carrying a similar bunch of women convicts to a similar prison island - back in 1954. It’s not hard to see the appeal: there’s a bit of action, a bit of romance, a lot of melodrama and, most importantly of all, a whole bunch of beautiful women in not a great deal of clothes.  As with the later W.I.P. films the guards are almost uniformly horrible, there’s more than a suggestion of sexual exploitation and there’s an ambiguous hero figure who infiltrates (or is part of) the prison.  What there isn’t, though, is the relentless sadism and sleaziness - this was made before the time of acceptable nudity and screen violence - and it’s actually all the more enjoyable for it.

Paul Muller and Margaret Rose Keil in The Women of Devil's Island

Paolella was a dependable hand at this kind of thing, and he does a good job here, ensuring that just about all the budget is firmly visible on screen.  With decent cinematography, an enjoyably bombastic soundtrack and colourful costumes and art direction, it stands as a great example of the workshop style of filmmaking which was standard for much of the low-budget Italian cinema being made at the time.  Paolella also always tried to pack a little bit of intelligence into his films along with all the cleavages, and this exhibits a typically left-leaning view of the society of the time (the French revolution is mentioned in passing and is seen as a resoundingly good thing). Knowing Paolella, it’s also probably not too far fetched to suggest that he was also trying to make a comment about the then-contemporary penal system in Italy; that you can’t just lock away and brutalise prisoners, you have to rehabilitate them.  On a purely narrative level, though, the script also packs in a few surprises and, what’s more, it’s a bit different to the majority of historical adventure movies being made at the time.

As well as having some decently drawn characters, the cast is much better than usual for this kind of thing.  Guy Madison, of course, was a regular genre star, but he’s perfectly suited for this kind of role, in terms of talent, physicality and attitude.  Michele Mercier, who’d go on to become famous after starring in the popular Angélique series of films in the mid-sixties, is very appealing as the plucky Martine.  There are other key roles for the likes of Paul Muller (vicious prison commander), Tullio Altamura (nasty guard), Marisa Belli (of Gelosia, who plays a reluctantly traitorous prisoner) and Margaret Rose Kiel (who looks remarkably like Brigitte Bardot, and is particularly fetching in a remarkable well-tailored pirate costume).

Fernando Piazzo in Women of Devil's Island

Fernando Piazza was one of the more obscure black actors to ply their trade in Cinecitta in the 60s.  His first credited performance, as far as I can make out, was in Domenico Paolella’s entertaining historical adventure The Women of Devil’s Island (Le prigioniere dell’isola del diavolo, 62), where he plays the Guy Madison’s sidekick.  It’s a surprisingly good part, for the genre: he has quite a lot of screen time, get’s to be heroic himself and ends up winning over Margaret Rose Kiel, the lucky chap.  In 1964, he apparently turned up in the cheesey jungle movie Tarzak Against the Leopard Men (Tarzak contro gli uomini leopardo), but he wasn’t credited on some prints (I need to check this, I watched this not too long ago!)

After this, though, there’s a long break in his fimlography until 1968, when he turned up Joseph Losey’s camp favourite Boom, again receiving quite prominent billing, and another jungle movie, Ruggero Deodato’s Gungala, the Black Panther Girl (Gungala la pantera nuda).  Another lengthy break followed, until he pops up as a poker payer in Superfly T.N.T. (73), which was shot in Italy.

Fernando Piazzo and Margaret Rose Kiel in Women of Devil's Island

The time-spread of his roles  indicates that he was active and doing stuff throught most of the sixties, but quite what he was doing I don’t know.  On IMDB, he’s also listed as being a production secretary (on The Price of Power (Il prezzo del potere, 69)) and production manager (on The Heroes (Gli eroi, 73).  But was this really the same person?  Who knows!

Also, there’s a prominent agent in Rome who’s also called Fernando Piazza, who seems to specialise in handling foreign performers in Rome (such as Urs Althaus, Cyrus Elias, Tomas Arana etc etc).  I don’t know if this is the same guy or someone different, but amongst his clients is Veronica Wells, who also appeared in Boom. A coincidence?

Massimo Sarchielli

I’m a bit late in posting this one, but Massimo Sarchielli died on the 12th May.

Sarchielli was a busy actor who appeared in both Italian and international films from the 1960s onwards.  He was in several spaghetti westerns (such as the superior Requiescant and Bandidos (both 67)), a number of arthouse favourites (Giulietta degli spiriti (65), Il conformista (70), La notte di San Lorenzo (82)), and also crime films (Il poliziotto è marcio (74), Da Corleone a Brooklyn (79)).  When the Italian film industry went into decline in the 80s, he kept busy working on International co-productions such as Ladyhawke (85), The Sicilian (87) and Under the Tuscan Sun (2003).

Here’s a translation of an interview I found with him on the Witchstory website…

In anticipation of La terza madre, here’s an exclusive interview with Massimo Sarchielli, and noted actor with experience in all kinds of Italian genre cinema, who started his career with Federico Fellini and has worked often with Dario Argento…

Witchstory: What’s your background and what were your first steps in film and entertainment industry?

M. Sarchielli: You should ask my late mother about this! What can I say, I was born in the thirties, 1935, and my first work in this area was as a mime when I was thirty to thirty five years old when I worked with Giorgio Strehler, then I moved into theatre

Witchstory:Your early work was of a certain importance and it must have given you much satisfaction working on that level of project

M. Sarchielli: My first film was Fellini’s Giulietta degli spiriti, and that gave me a lot of pleasure.  At the beginning of the 80s I did La notte di San Lorenzo for the Taviani brothers, in which I played a fascist, and in France I did Il maggiordomo with Jean Delannoy, who was an important director.  I was also able to work with Lucio Fulci on Beatrice Cenci.  Then I did L’arcano Incantatore with Pupi Avati at Todi in Umbria.

Witchstory: Moving on to the subject we’re talking about, horror and Dario Argento, a person you know well, how did you come to work with him on Il Fantasma dell’opera?

M. Sarchielli: In this film I remember taking a bit of a thrashing.  We shot it in Budapest and they put a coat on me and then hit me all over, it was pretend, but also true.  My character was called Mr Bouchet

Witchstory: Il Fantasma dell’opera didn’t do very well in Italy, but in France it was a success, why do you think that was?

M. Sarchielli: Yes, that’s true, it’s because the cinemas were saturated with assorted films

Witchstory: In Non ho sonno you had a decidely more effective part, almost integral to the story as Leone the Vagrant

M. Sarchielli: Leone is usually upset that he’s become involved in this mystery and is a victim of society

Witchstory: In this film your scenes are often shot at Villa di Torino, which was also used in Profondo Rosso

M: Sarchielli: I had the opportunity to work with Max Von Sydow, who played the part of Commissioner Moretti (I then worked again with him in a historical film in which he played Emperor Tiberius and I was a Roman slave whose life he saves).  It was all shot in English because Dario wanted it to be, and this wasn’t difficult for me given that I’d lived in America for a while and had had the chance to learn the language well, also to study with the founder of the Actors Studio, and this also gave me the opportunity to work in some important international films.

Witchstory: Was it complicated working with the dwarf puppet?

M. Sarchielli: Look, you have to say to Stivaletti that it had to be done smoothly, and it was already the second time I’d worked with him and his staff, who were all very good and nice.  Regarding the puppet, I ruined my knees and my elbows being under the trapdoor.

Witchstory: In La terza madre, which was awaited with some trepidation by Argento fans, you played pretty much the same character as in Non ho sonno

M Sarchielli: Yes, I played a vagrant who’d lived undreground for more than thirty years and had never cut my beard or my hair, but I’m nonetheless recognizable.  I play a kind of guardian of the place where the followers of Mater Lacrimarum have their rituals

Witchstory: You shot it at assorted locations in Rome and Turin

M. Sarchielli: At Rome in the catacombs, at Turin in an abandoned villa.  The scene with Asia p[reoccupied me a lot because it was a kind of monologue and it had to last about four minutes, but then Dario had had to reduce it a bit here and a bit there.  It’s an important sequence.

Witchstory: Of your three films with Argento, which gave you the most professional pleasure?

M. Sarchielli: Undoubtedly Non ho sonno, which I was also able to give a physical level, such as in the long sequence with the bag.

Witchstory: And, to conclude, do you have any future projects?

M. Sarchielli: I’m going back to America for a while to play the part of a Cardinal, shooting in Brooklynn with the director Cristina Rosati, it’s called Le strane abitudini del Cardinale Canetti.  I also shot an episode of the new series RIS Delitti Imperfetti near Rome, in which I am the director of the Circo Williams where there’s been a murder.  And then I was contacted to play the part of the father in a film version of Margherita da Cortona.  I have various things in the pipeline!

This is a continuation of the post Italian Horror films of 2008: Part 1

Il monastero
Here’s a familiar face, Antonio Bonifacio. Bonifacio started out on a variety of roles in the 80s before moving up to direct a couple of giallos, Appuntamento in nero (90) and Il delitto di Via Monte Parioli (98), as well as other films like Kreola (93) and La strana storia di Olga ‘O’ (95).  Il monastero was his first film for a decade, though, and it doesn’t seem to have had anything much in the way of distribution.  It was also co-written by Daniele Stroppa, a busy b-movie scribe who worked regularly with the likes of Claudio Fragasso and Lucio Fulci (in his later years), and the plot follows a group of chums who end up in a village dominated by an abandoned monastery which, years before, had been used as an orphanage.  Now it is apparently haunted, and the whereabouts of the children who had lived there has never been truly uncovered.

Made for $200,000, this had a number of problems: not least the death of the distributor and Bonifacio suffering from a long period of illness.  There are reports of it being finished and released, but I can’t find any more details - let alone a review - anywhere.  A shame, as I’d quite like to see this one.  This is so obscure there isn’t even a trailer up on YouTube.

Bumba atomika
Bumba Atomika is a comedy horror film that showed at a couple of Horror Festival around the world.  The plot goes something like this:

In a small town in the hills of the Marche province, not far from the sea, four (im) probable first-year university students have a passion for alcohol which is their sole reason for living. Their biggest problem is how to find the money to continue drinking such copious amounts  of alcohol. When the aunt of one of them dies suddenly, the boys have the brilliant idea of putting the corpse for sale on the Internet, discovering the existence of a profitable business. This kicks off an uncontrollable spiral of searching for corpses to be sold via the internet, death, alcohol and grotesque events in the frantic search for an ideal and idyllic new world.

Director Michele Sinesi previously worked as a writer for Nocturno, so he certainly knows his genre stuff, and the user ratings on the IMDB are quite high, although nobody in their right mind would trust that too much.  It sounds like a fast paced, none-too-serious splatter movie, and if that’s your cup of tea it might be worth checking out.  I can’t find any reviews though, and I don’t think it’s out on DVD (although it was shown in certain festivals with English subs).

Here’s the trailer:

And that’s it… just five films, none of which had any kind of international impact and most of which played on the festival circuit if anywhere at all.  I haven’t seen any of them, so can’t really comment on how good or bad they may be, and quite frankly there are a couple that I have abslutely no desire to see anyway!

Gelosia

1953
Original running time: 90 mins
Italy
Based on the novel ‘Il marchese Roccaverdina’ by Luigi Capuana (1901)
An Exelsa Film production
Director: Pietro Germi
Story & screenplay: Giuseppe Berto, Pietro Germi, Giuseppe Mangione
Cinematography: Leonida Barboni
Music: Carlo Rustichelli
Editor: Rolando Benedetti
Art director: Carlo Egidi
Cast: Marisa Belli (Agrippina), Erno Crisa (Antonio, the Marquis of Roccaverdina), Alessandro Fersen (don Silvio), Liliana Gerace (Countess Zosima), Vincenzo Musolino (Rocco Criscione), Grazia Spadaro (Mamma Graziam the housekeeper), Maresa Gall (Santa), Gustavo de Nardo (Neli Casaccio), Amedeo Trilli (the Marshall), Loriana Varoli (Cristina), Gustavo Serena (the doctor), Giovanni Martella (Salvatore), Assunta Radico (Aggripina’s mother), Pasquale Martino (the Commissioner), Paola Borboni (the Baroness, Antonio’s Aunt)

Pietro Germi’s 1953 film Gelosia isn’t perhaps one of his best known or even more accomplished works, but it’s still a well constructed and extremely moving production that stands head and tails above much of the Italian cinema being made at the time.   Based on Luigi Capuana’s novel Marchesa di Roccaverdina, an established classic which had previously been filmed by Ferdinando Maria Poggioli in 1942, it’s a heady mix of melodrama and murder, not a million miles away from Germi’s extremely successful In nome della legge (48), which also dealt with the complex relationships between the landed gentry and the impoverished tenant farmers in Sicily.

When former ladies-man Rocco Criscione (Vincenzo Musolino) is murdered on his wedding day, the most likely suspect is Neli Casaccio (Gustavo De Nardo), a peasant who had a previous history with of arguing with the dead man.  After a protracted court case, Casaccio is found guilty and sentenced to 30 years in jail, but the truth is that he he’s an innocent man.  The true killer is a local aristocrat, the Marquis of Roccaverdina (Erno Crisa), who had been having a tempestuous affair with Rocco’s new wife, Agrippina (Marisa Belli) and, consumed by jealousy at the prospect of losing her, had been driven to commit the crime.

Erno Crisa starts feeling guilty in Gelosia

The narrative then breaks into a lengthy flashback, told as the Marquis confesses his guilt to a priest, Don Silvio (Alessandro Fersen).  It recounts the story of how he met Agrippina - she had come with her poor family to help with the olive harvest - and how the two of them fell in love.  Naturally, it turns out to be a relationship which meets with disapproval from both his wealthy associates and her fellow workers.  So the Marquis comes up with a plan that will ensure they can still be together but also quell all the gossip: she must marry Rocco, his trusted right hand man, but it will be a marriage in name only and she’ll be free to continue as his lover.  Unfortunately, he then begins suspecting that the two of them might, really, be falling in love, and his scheming begins to unravel.

This is a much more feverish affair than most of Germi’s films, and with its story of doomed love and protagonists who are attempting to escape their own, inevitable fate, it does feel rather as though it was a deliberate attempt to tie into the immensely popular melodrama genre of the time.  As a result, it can be somewhat hard to stomach for those who incline towards more subtle colour palettes; the passion is ratcheted up to the max in a singularly Italian fashion, giving it all a very operatic feel that isn’t lessened any by the extraordinarily lush soundtrack by Carlo Rustichelli.  By the time the final credits roll one protagonist has gone mad and died, the other has been isolated from their family and left heartbroken, and all but the most unresponsive of viewers is left feeling as though they’ve been put through some kind of emotional ringer.

Germi is often lumped in with the neo-realists, mainly because of his interest in the contemporary and the use of authentic locations and extras.  Although this has a historical setting, it doesn’t feel too far removed from the Sicily of the 1950s, and a lot of the social concerns - the exploitation of the peasants by the aristocracy, the intractability of social conventions, the conservatism of rural Italy - were thoroughly contemporary.  It’s interesting that Capuana was one of the leading lights in the Verist movement of the late 1800s, a group of writers who advocated modern as opposed to classical stories and the use of everyday language and simple narratives, which doesn’t seem all that removed from the arguments of the neo-realists when it comes down to it.

Marisa Bella in Gelosia

From a technical point of view, it’s all very accomplished.  The locations are very well shot and it all feels a million miles removed from the sometimes shaky look of Italian films of only five years previously.  Certain moments have an almost gothic tinge to them, especially once the Marquis, losing his mind with guilt, begins hearing voices and staring fixedly out of the window. (Curiously, this actually revolves aroung a kind of ‘crumbling vernerable family reaching the end of their line’ narrative that also featured in many gothic novels and films, not least Mario Bava’s La maschera del demonio (61)

Among the cast are two actors who died young: Erno Crisa and Vincenzo Musolino.  Crisa was a graduate of the fotoromanzi who flirted with stardom in the fifties and died in 1968, Musolino a character actor who later directed a couple of not-bad spaghetti westerns (Chiedi perdono a Dio… non a me (68) and Quintana (69)) before dying at the age of just 39 in 1969.  Marisa Belli, the female lead, is a very striking if not exactly beautiful lady, and she does an OK job, but her film career never really amounted to anything much.  Curiously, she also appeared in another adaptation of Marchesa di Roccaverdina, made for Italian TV in 1972.

Here’s the first part of a quick look back at the Italian horror films of 2008. It’s a pretty motley bunch, to be honest, with none of them gaining anything much in the way of international (or even domestic) distribution. But it does no harm keeping up with what’s going on in the way of contemporary genre cinema in Italy.

Anyway, let’s kick off with the best known of the lot of them, Colour from the Dark. This is another film by Ivan Zuccon, the prolific low budget filmmaker who seems to be on some kind of one-man-mission to bring H.P. Lovecraft adaptations to the screen.  The synopsis runs as follows:

Pietro and Lucia live on an isolated farm with Alice, Lucia’s younger sister. Poor farmers, they live tilling the soil. Pietro is a good worker and a strong man who, unlike his three brothers, is not at war because of a deformed knee. Lucia is a beautiful and reserved woman dedicated to her family. Their life is peaceful and good, in spite of the hard work. One day, while drawing water from the well, Pietro and Alice accidentally free something from Earth’s womb. A strange and alien color flashes underwater, at the well’s bottom, then disappears. From that moment on, inexplicable events start happening all around the farm, and by night the surrounding vegetation glitters with a sinister glow. The color soon takes hold of the whole farm, and dwelling inside Pietro and his family’s minds, it brings them into its sick world of pain, blood and death.

Of course, eagle eyed viewers will realize that this is exactly the same story as has already been filmed as The Curse back in 1987 and Die Monster Die in 1965.  Reviews have been variable.  Zuccon has quite a bit of respect among the blognoscenti, but his films are low, low budget (this was filmed for something like €100) and something of an acquired taste.  I’ve only ever seen his 2003 flick The Shunned House, which actually sent me to sleep.

Release information: This played in several festivals around the world, and has recently been released on US DVD in America (it’s available on Amazon.com).

Here’s the trailer:

Il metodo Orfeo is a film by novice director Filippo Sozzi, which was actually shot in 2007.  There’s a synopsis on IMDB:

A writer and his girlfriend, a painter, go to a Mediterranean island to stay in a country house where, two years ago, seven people were murdered. This is not the first time that these artists have stayed somewhere where terrible crimes were committed, in order to write their books. They call it The Orfeo Method, because it recalls the story of the ancient greek musician, who descends into hell to bring back to life his beloved Euridice. What adventures will they face this time, staying in those chilling places and reliving those events?

Unfortunately, there don’t really seem to be any review of this anywhere, apart from the Horror Movie Database which is extremely positive.  It was apparently made for €10,000, and the cast and crew is almost entirely made up of newcomers.

If you are interested in seeing it… well, it doesn’t seem to have had any kind of distribution anywhere, so for the moment you won’t be able to!

Trailer:

Finally, for the moment, an even more obscure one.   La morte di pietra is a low budget affair that got a (very) limited release in May 2008.  Director Roberto Lippolis had previous worked as a writer on the 2005 horror flick DeKronos - il demone di tempo, and went on to make Fly Light, a slightly bigger production, in 2009.  The cast has a few familiar names in it as well: Flavio Bucci, of course, appeared in films like Suspiria and Property is No Longer Theft, while Costantino Vitagliano is a model who’s extremely well known in Italy.

As for the plot, though… your guess is as good as mine.  This one doesn’t seem to have been covered anywhere.

Here’s some footage:

That’s all for now… expect part 2 of this article any day now…

Hey, Claudio Fragasso has a new movie out that’s just hit the cinemas in Italy.  Called Le Ultime 56 Ore, it’s a kind of drama / crime / thriller type thing, and it’s showing on 189 screens; a decent amount for an Italian production (and especially an Italian production that’s not a comedy).  It just goes to show, I guess, quite how far Fragasso has come since the days he was directing trash like Zombie 4 and Troll 2.  The cast is headed up by Gianmarco Tognazzi (who was in Romanzo criminale) and the plot goes something like this:

Colonel Moresco is in command of a group of Italian soldiers who have fought in many countries to try to establish freedom and democracy. Some of his men seem to have contracted a mysterious illness in Bosnia, but the authorities don?t want to know. To attract their attention, Moresco attempts to take over a hospital where the daughter of the negotiator sent to make them lay down their weapons is to have an operation.

Le sette vipere

1964
Aka Il marito latino
Original running time: 85 mins
Italy
Produced by Vincenzo Cascino for Accadia Film
Director: Renato Polselli
Story: Vincenzo Cascino
Screenplay: Vincenzo Cascino, Renato Polselli, Milo Panaro
Cinematography: Aiace Parolin
Music: Felice Di Stefano
Editor: Enzo Alabiso
Art director: Demofilo Fidani
Costumes: Francesca Saitto
Cast: Lisa Gastoni (Erika Montesanto), Vincenzo Cascino (Lorenzo Montesanto), Gloria Paul (Mona), Umberto D’Orsi (Emilio Bernasconi, a lawyer), Franco Franchi (Franchi, a lawyer), Ciccio Ingrassia (Ingrassia, a lawyer), Valeria Fabrizi (Claude), Alberto Bonucci (Lorenzo’s lawyer), Solvi Stubing (Inge, a maid), Annie Gorassini (Mitù, Lorenzo’s secretary), Aroldo Tieri (Barbichian), Antonio Devi, Nicole Tessier, Vincenzo Sartini, Alfredo Rizzo (the Italian judge), Alicia Márquez, Gian Franco Federici, Carla Calò, Susana Campos, Marilù Asaro

Le sette vipere, aka Le sette vipere: Il marito latino, is an obscure Italian film from 1964 which should be of interest to European cult cinema aficionados thanks to the people involved if nothing else.  As well as being directed by Renato Polselli, who garnered something of a following with his sexy horror films, it was written and stars Vincenzo Cascino, a shadowy figure who made two of the weirdest eurospy movies going, Sette donne d’oro contro due 07 (66) and Le sette cinesi d’oro (67).  Cascino was also the main man behind Accadia Films, the company who produced all three films, as well as Lo sceriffo che non spara (65), which was also directed by Polselli. Almost nothing is known of Cascino, but it would seem likely that he was someone with money to spend and a desire to make it in movies; and while none of his films were much good or made much of an impact at the box office, they’re at least different.

Lorenzo (Vincenzo Cascino) is a wealthy and successful Argentinian industrialist who should be happy with his life.  Unfortunately, his wife Erika (Lisa Gastoni) is bored and unfulfilled, and as a result spends most of her time lazing around and making life hell for everyone around her.  Encouraged by her fickle friends and with the assistance of a sleazy lawyer, Emilio Bernasconi (Umberto D’Orsi), she works out a way by which she’ll not only be able to divorce her husband and take possession of all of his assets, but also obtain sole custody of their two children.  All it takes is arranging it so that he’s found in a compromising position with another woman.

Franco Franci and Lisa Gastoni in Le sette vipere

Lorenzo, though, is a devoted family man, and several attempts to lead him astray fall resoundingly short, no matter how beautiful the women trying to seduce him may be.   Eventually, though, he’s implicated thanks to some false evidence planted by Bernasconi and, with his whole life crumbling around him, is driven to kidnap his children and flee to Italy.  Erika, though, suddenly rediscovers her previously well-hidden maternal instincts and determines to get them back, even if it means going to court in a different country.

Against my better judgement, I ended up very much enjoying this ludicrous little film.  Technically, it passes muster without any particular distinction, with cinematographer Aiace Paroli, art director Demofilo Fidani (who’d also go on to become a leftfield favourite) and editor Enzo Alabiso all doing their jobs proficiently.  Curiously, though, it’s not quite as enjoyable as either Sette donne d’oro contro due 07 or Le sette cinesi d’oro, neither of which are made as well but both of which are just a little bit more demented than this.

Polselli seems to be trying to bring a level of order to things, but it doesn’t entirely work: the pacing is completely haywire, with long stretches in which almost nothing happens, primarily set at a selection of ‘glamorous’ parties which gives the female cast members ample opportunity to shake their booties and take off some of their clothes. The script, meanwhile, fluctuates disconcertingly between a kind of heavy handed melodrama and subdued comedy, neither of which are pursued with anything in the way of conviction.  The whole mood, which had previously been quite serious, changes completely in the last ten minutes with the introduction of Franco & Ciccio, who do their usual shouting, gurning routine.  Their appearance feels very much like an afterthought, almost as though they just happened to be free for a few days and were shoe-horned in to give the film some extra commercial potential.

Gloria Paul and Umberto D'Orsi in Le sette vipere

However, what makes this worth the effort is its very peculiarity; apart from being weird on a base level, it also has an odd, jazztastic soundtrack and some rather peculiar scene construction, although this isn’t entirely surprising given the assorted leftfield film-makers involved.  And things get even stranger as the running time progresses: the narrative almost totally disintegrates, Lorenzo starts hearing booming voices in his head (which doing an a-grade ‘crazy eyes’ expression) and the camerawork becomes increasingly frantic.

Things aren’t particularly helped by the performance of Cascino, a rather nondescript chap much given to the over-emphatic style of acting that died out with arrival of the talkies.  He also sports a very peculiar beard, which makes him look rather like a dumpier, less dignified Fernando Rey (with none of the talent), and seems to have absolutely no natural flair for comedy whatsoever.  Apparently, Walter Chiari was due to star, but when he dropped out at the last moment Cascino stepped in to take his place.  Curiously, in both Sette donne d’oro contro due 07 and Le sette cinesi d’oro he played (unrelated) characters called Barbikian, and here Aroldo Tieri plays a character with exactly the same name.  The rest of the cast is fleshed out by a selection of sixties starlets, including English ballerina Gloria Paul, Annie Gorassini and Solvi Stubing.  Quite what Lisa Gastoni, who was already a respected actress at this stage, was doing in this is anyone’s guess.

James Sampson in Stagfright

aka James E.R. Sampson | James Edward Sampson

James Sampson was a familiar face in Italian exploitation films of the 1980s.  He never had big roles, being more the kind of actor who would pop up for thirty seconds before dropping out of the picture, but some of them were important: as Willy, for instance, in the succesful Stagefright, or the voodoo priest in Claudio Fragasso’s dismal After Death (Oltre la morte).

According to the imdb, he kicked off his career in Joe D’Amato’s La via della prostituzione, an erotic crime film from 1978.  He was relatively busy until the beginning of the 90s, when he disappeared from view at about the same time as much of the Italian cinema industry lost any kind of international focus whatsoever.  In 2003, however, he also seems to have re-appeared in Ricky Tognazzi’s Il papa buono, so he must have been lying low over the intervening decade.

Other biographical information is sketchy.  IMDB also has him listed as a singer / songwriter, and the fact that he was from the music industry is possibly given some credence by the fact that he played a ’street musician’ in 2019 - Dopo la caduta di New York and a saxaphone player in Norman Jewison’s Only you (94).  There is a James Sampson who’s a soul singer (big in Denmark, apparently), but this looks to be a different, younger man.

• 1978. La via della prostituzione (uncredited, as Car mechanic)
• 1980. Paura nella città dei morti viventi aka “City of the Living Dead” (uncredited, as James McLuhan - séance member)
• 1983. 2019 - Dopo la caduta di New York aka “2019: After the Fall of New York”  (uncredited, as Black street musician)
• 1985. Blues metropolitano (as Solomon)
• 1987. Deliria aka “StageFright: Aquarius” (as Willy)
• 1988. Appuntamento a Liverpool
• 1988. After Death (Oltre la morte) aka “Zombie 4: After Death” (uncredited, as The Voodoo Priest)
• 1990. Terminator II aka “Shocking Dark” (as Third Soldier)
• 1990. Robot Jox (as Control Center Technician)
• 1991. Vacanze di Natale ‘91
• 1992. “La piovra 6 - L’ ultimo segreto” TV mini-series
• 1992. Infelici e contenti
• 1994. Only You (as Saxophone Player)
• 2003. Il papa buono (TV) aka “The Good Pope: Pope John XXIII”

This one sounds interesting, La fisica dell’acqua, directed by Felice Farina.  It’s a drama / thriller, apparently inspired by Hamlet.  The cast includes Claudio Amendola and Stefano Dionisio, both of whom are pretty big names in Italian cinema, and it’s being released into 40 cinemas throughout Italy this weekend (not a huge amount, but still a few!)

There’s a review up from some guy on the IMDB:

This Italian independent movie is full of surprise, is an original psychological thriller inspired by the character of Hamlet. Ale is a 7 years old kid (who plays the role of Hamlet), a kid whose dreams are full of strange visions. Ale feels uncomfortable with his uncle, he thinks he hates him, but why? Why this sweet kid desires to kill his own uncle? The boy don’t understand his feelings, he feels guilty and evil. But the truth his hidden in his memories, somehow Ale has to discover the real story of his family. Felice Farina after many comedies gives us an original thriller with great actors and a astonishing kid that act like a great professional: Lorenzo Vavassori. The movie is co.produced by Renzo Rossellini a great producer, son of the famous Italian director Roberto Rossellini.

Here’s the trailer:

Malizia

Aka Malicious
1972
Original running time: 99 mins
Italy
A Clesi production
Distributed by Cineriz
Director: Salvatore Samperi
Story: Salvatore Samperi
Screenplay: Ottavio Jemma, Sandro Parenzo, Salvatore Samperi
Cinematogrpahy: Vittorio Storaro
Music: Fred Bongusto
Editor: Sergio Montanari
Cast: Laura Antonelli (Angela), Turi Ferro (Ignazio), Alessandro Momo (Nino), Tina Aumont (Luciana), Lilla Brignone (Granma), Pino Caruso (Don Cirillo), Angela Luce (Widow Corallo), Stefano Amato (Porcello), Gianluigi Chirizzi (Nuccio), Grazia Di Marzà (Adelina), Massimiliano Filoni (Enzio)

Salvatore Samperi, who died in March this year, was another of those directors with a name that’s very familiar to me even though I haven’t actually seen any of his films.  Born in Padua in 1944, he was part of a group of filmmakers to emerge from Venice in the late 1960s, others including Tinto Brass and Aldo Lado.  Like Brass, particularly, his films tend to mix up eroticism with a rather skeptical view of Italian manners, and they also manage to be surprisingly elegant given their puckish, saucy storylines.

Samperi made his debut with Grazie zia (68), which was swiftly followed by Cuore di mamma (69) and Uccidete il vitello grasso e arrostitelo (70). Despite them being moderately popular, he reportedly gained a reputation amongst producers as someone who had problems finishing projects, and it was really with Malizia, which was hugely successful on its initial Italian release (making 2,172,000,000 lire) that he cemented his reputation.  Curiously, many of his films from this period are based around a similar narrative, in which an adolescent boy or young man is traumatised in some way and develops an unhealthy sexual obsession with an attractive older woman.  It’s a model which Malizia follows almost to the letter.

Alessandro Momo and Laura Antonelli in Malizia

When his wife dies, the much respected and wealthy shopkeeper Ignazio La Brocca (Turi Ferro) is left a widower.  What’s more he’s left with three sons to look after: eighteen year old Antonio (Gianluigi Chirizzi), fourteen year old Nino (Alessandro Momo) and nine year old Enzino (Massimiliano Filoni).  To help him out, he takes on a new housekeeper, Angela (Laura Antonelli), who proves not only to be more than capable of looking after them all, but also rather hot to boot.

Before long, Ignazio is stealing glances at her bottom at every opportunity, and both Antonio and Nino are going out of their horny, adolescent minds with lust.  Nino even begins telling his dumb-ass friends that he’s actually sleeping with her, while the disrespectful Antonio unsuccessfully tries to seduce her.  Things take a turn for the worse, though, when Nino discovers that his father has proposed to her, at which point he starts threatening to turn everyone - and most particularly Enzino - against her unless she does exactly as he tells her.  His demands become increasingly sexual and vindictive, until Angela is left with no option but to turn the tables on him.

This is another in a trend in Italian films from the early seventies to feature a sexy young woman arriving in the household of a supposedly bourgeois family and arousing all sorts of uncivilised passions (see also La nipote etc etc).  It’s a kind of erotic melodrama with comic moments, but all done in a very artful, elegant fashion, with few of the more exploitative elements that characterised these kinds of productions.  It’s beautifully shot by Vittorio Storaro, although you’d be hard pressed to tell this from the appallingly pan and scanned English language versions currently available, and there’s also a great soundtrack by Fred Bongusto, even if it occasionally breaks out into a kind of cheerily demented noodling that’s quite impressively inappropriate for what’s happening on screen.

Alessandro Momo and Laura Antonelli in Malizia

Although the story has a darker aspect - Nino is an ‘orrible little creep who frankly needs a good slap around the chops - it’s a generally upbeat production, and the more sordid and cruel aspects are rather underplayed. To keep the intellectuals happy there are a few comments about class - with the poor Angela being treated as a general dogsbody by the La Brocca’s - and also about Italian social manners of the time (including an amusingly subverted funeral and wedding sequence).  But it doesn’t feel particularly substantial, and although it won a couple of awards it’s hard to see quite why, as there were far, far better films made by Italian directors that year.  It’s decently put together, undoubtedly, but when it comes down to it it’s all actually a little bit silly.

But it wasn’t just the critics who approved, and Malizia was a hugely popular film throughout Europe.  Perhaps this was something to do with the fact that it was seen as rather a controversial production, showing both a teenage boy both sexually abusing an older woman and a being cajoled, not unwillingly, into having sex.  Or maybe it had more to do with the fact that much of the publicity featured Laura Antonelli in a state of undress, which was actually rather misleading because until the climax she remains fully clothed.  Whatever the case, this was the film that made her a star, and she deserves it, putting in a warm, persuasive performance that’s a class above that of the usual euro-sexpots who populated these kinds of films.  She’d work with Samperi three more times, on Peccato veniale (74), Casta e pura (81) and finally on a little seen sequel, Malizia 2000 (91), which also featured Turi Ferro.

The Italians seem to have a bit of a thing for football hooligan films at the moment, I guess in the same way that we do here in the UK with productions like The Firm and The Football Factory.  Secondo tempo, by novice director Fabio Bastianello, very much falls into this grouping.  Told in realtime, it’s the story of an undercover cop who, having spent a year and a half infiltrating the inner circle of a violent hooligan, gets caught up in an outburst of violence following a football match.

This isn’t getting a particularly wide showing, and has opened in just 21 cinemas across Italy.  I can’t find any reviews anywhere, so god knows what it’s like, and most of the cast are totally unfamiliar to me.

Zombie Flesheaters 3

Aka After Death - Oltre la morte, La vendetta degli zombi, Zombi 4, Das Bose ist Wieder
1988
Original running time: 83 mins
Italy
A Flora Film production
Distributed by Avo Film
Director: Clyde Anderson [Claudio Fragasso]
Story: Rossella Drudi
Screenplay: Rossella Drudi
Cinematography: Luigi Ciccarese
Music: Al Festa
Editor: Daniele Alabiso
Art director: Mimmo Scavia
Cast: James Gaines, Alex McBride [Massimo Vanni], Chuck Peyton, Candice Daly

Dear oh dear. If you want to see the depths to which Italian genre cinema had sunk by the mid to late 1980s, you could do a lot worse than checking out Claudio Fragasso’s Zombie Flesheaters 3, a film so amateurish and imbecilic it makes the likes of Ratman and Patrick Lives Again look like veritable masterpieces. Despite the title, this wasn’t any kind of official follow up to the hugely profitable, decently made Zombie Flesheaters, although it does share a certain lineage with it’s moribund sequel, Zombie Flesheaters 2, which was shot at around the same time, was also based on a script by Rossella Drudi and was similarly produced by Franco Gaudenzi for Flora Film. Both films were also shot in the Philippines, a popular and extremely cheap location for Italian filmmakers at the time, and share a handful of performers (Massimo Vanni, Ottaviano Dell’Acqua etc). Although credited to Lucio Fulci, Zombie Fleasheaters 2 was actually part directed by Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso, who are executive producer and director here, and they manage to make just as much of a hash of it as they had done with the previous film.

A lengthy introduction fills us in on the background: a number of talented scientists join together to found an institute dedicated to curing cancer and, heck, finding the secret of immortality while they’re about it. Unfortunately, their research - which involves fiddling around with voodoo and conducting experiments on the locals - succeeds only in causing dead people to continue walking around, albeit with increasingly raggedy clothing and a taste for human flesh. Oh yes, and there’s also a crazy voodoo priest involved with it all, and he seems to be reanimating people as well. Suffice to say, it all ends in a bloodbath.

Anyway, once that’s all out of the way, the meat of the story begins. A group of mercenaries - Dan (Jim Gaines), pot bellied, snaggle toothed Rod (Nick Nicholson) and Frederick Forrest lookalikey Mad (Jim Moss) - somehow end up on the very same island, along with a bunch of hopeless archaeologists and a couple of floozies, including Jenny (Candice Daly), who just happens to be the sole survivor of the previous massacre (she’s conveniently forgotten all about it). After reading a spell from a book, the dead rise yet again - although other zombies had been wandering around in the bushes anyway - and the assorted characters have to try and fight them off using a convenient chest full of guns that they just happen to find.

The plot, needless to say, is a mess. It takes a considerable chunk of Zombie Flesheaters, as well as disperate elements from other Fulci movies, most particularly The Beyond. None of it, though, it meshed with any kind of logic or imagination, with just about every element treated in the most rudimentary fashion possible. Characterisation and dialogue aren’t really things you associate with Italian horror films of the 80s, but even by their level this falls well short of the required standard. I suppose if you were going to look for positives, you could mention that this has the novelty of having zombies who run (although this was also true of Nightmare City (81)) and even shoot guns. But that’s pretty slim pickings in exchange for ninety minutes of your life.

A very realistic zombie from Zombie Flesheaters 3

Production values are, well, modest, which given the chepaness with which it was possible to make films at the time in the Philippines counts as something of an acheivement. In fact, it was shot using cameras and equipment from Strike Commando 2, which Bruno Mattei was making at the same time in nearby locations. It seems probable that Fragasso was left with an inadequate amount of footage, so additional shooting was conducted in Italy (on the sets built for Michele Soavi’s The Sect). As a result, the introduction sequence and scenes with the archeologists are played primarily by Italian performers (such as Massimo Vanni, Ottavio and Alberto Dell’Acqua), while the rest features Philippines-based actors. The only person to feature in both the Italian and Philippines lensed sections is Jeff Stryker, aka American porn star Chuck Peyton, who was making a brief attempt to move into legitimate cinema in Europe at the time. Apparently, Fragasso knew nothing of his background in porn, although if that’s the case you do have to wonder why he was hired in the first place… it certainly wasn’t for his thespian skills.

It should be acknowledged that, while this is dreadful stuff, it is at least better than Zombie Flesheaters 2, which stands as possibly one of the most boring films ever made.  This is partly down to Fragasso, who directs with more vim than Bruno Mattei could ever manage.  He actually handles some of the action scenes rather well, giving perhaps an indication of the success he’d later acheive after moving into the crime thriller field with Palermo Milano solo andata in 1995.

Furio Scarpelli

More sad news, the hugely influential Italian scriptwriter Furio Scarpelli has died. Scarpelli was best known for his comedy films, mainly written in collaboration with Agenore Incrocci - I’ve reviewed a few of them, such as Toto tarzan and Mafioso), but he  also had a hand in the script for the Good, the Bad and the Ugly as well.

If I’m not mistaken, he was just about the last surviving member of the famed writing partnerships who emerged in the 1950s and changed the shape of Italian comedy (see also Metz and Marchesi).

Here’s a translation of the obituary notice from Il messagero

ROME (April 28) - The 90 year olf writer Furio Scarpelli has died, as announced by his nephew Filiberto Scarpelli. An unsurpassed cartoonist and writer, he is considered to be a father of Italian comedy.

The son of Filiberto Scarpelli, founder of the humorous Roman newspaper Il travaso delle idee, he worked for many years with Age (Agenore Incrocci), forming the famous writing partnership couple Age & Scarpelli, who finally split in the 80s. Together they wrote masterpieces such as I soliti ignoti and la Grande Guerra by Monicelli, I Mostri by Dino Risi and Ettore Scola’s C’eravamo tanto amati and La terrazza. The duo also worked on the screenplay for Il Buono il brutto e il cattivo by Sergio Leone. Scarpelli worked extensively with Scola but also with young writers and directors, including Francesca Archibugi and Paolo Virzi.

“I feel devastated, lost like a child. He was a master of rhetoric, his work was the medicine that healed us from fascism,” said Paolo Virzi.  “Perhaps it is not clear to everyone who Furio was, he was a master scriptwriter, the principal author of the best Italian comedies, the author of the stories of popular films that were the most beautiful, intense, fun and intelligent that we have ever had in Italy.  But, above all, he was a wonderful person. A teacher, yes, but rhumane. His curious eyes, always witty and compassionate, watching people and observing.  He was a genius, he had a talent for dialogue that was unsurpassed, but also a generous and humble person, who preferred to stay out of the limelight, instead devoting himself to teaching other people.”

“Furio was a cultivated and ironic, with a great passion for social matters and an innate elegance,” said Walter Veltroni. “He invented wonderful stories and did justice to the absolute value of the imagination. He was an intellectual end with a deep sense of the value of a popular language. He made great Italian cinema. He honored the country he loved and which made him suffer. I am very sad, really.”