{"id":2400,"date":"2011-02-24T14:23:18","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T14:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2400"},"modified":"2011-02-24T14:23:18","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T14:23:18","slug":"the-wildeyes-top-5-cine-fumetti-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/articles\/the-wildeyes-top-5-cine-fumetti-films\/","title":{"rendered":"The WildEye’s top 5 cine-fumetti films…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"John<\/a>
John Philip Law and Marisa Mell in Diabolik<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve been watching a lot of these Italian cine-fumetti films recently, and so here’s a rundown of my top five films from the genre.\u00a0 But cine-fumetti, I mean films that were either based on the Italian comic strips of the 60s or were influenced by them in some way (it’s quite a hard filone to define, to be honest…)\u00a0 In reverse order:<\/p>\n

5. Argoman the Fantastic Superman<\/strong>. Bit of a toss up between this one and Flashman <\/strong>for the fifth spot, but Argoman the Fantastic Superman <\/strong>just about wins out.\u00a0 It’s an incredibly silly film – Roger Browne stars as a masked superhero-stroke-jewel thief, Dominique Boschero as a sexy villain intent on the usual world domination thang – but it’s also extremely good fun.\u00a0 Sergio Grieco really knew how to direct these 60s style action films.<\/p>\n

4. Hypnos follia di massacro<\/strong>. This is an unusual one, it doesn’t feature a masked superman, any elaborate heists or, quite frankly, anything you normally associate with the genre.\u00a0 What it does have is Robert Woods investigating subliminal messages on TV, which cause certain viewers to commit homicidal acts (I think The X Factor <\/strong>has a similar effect on me).\u00a0 The villain of the piece wears a weird mask and seems to have been modeled on Santo and \/ or Diabolik. It’s been claimed that David Cronenberg was influenced by this for Videodrome<\/strong>, and it’s a strange, moody film that’s worth watching.\u00a0 I don’t know if it ever came out in English, it’s certainly worthy of a fansubbing job.<\/p>\n

3. Superargo vs Diabolicus<\/strong>.\u00a0 The first real genre entry, this came before Diabolik <\/strong>and was possibly just as influenced by the Mexican Santo movies.\u00a0 Ken Wood (Giovanni Cinafriglia) stars as Superargo, a masked wrester, spy and general superhero, trying to save the world from crazy genius Diabolicus (Gerard Tichy) and another sexy villain (Loredana Nusciak).\u00a0 Colourful, wildly entertaining and well made, this is a good one, and available with English audio options on lovely DVD from Pulp Video.<\/p>\n

2. Three Fanstastic Supermen<\/strong>.\u00a0 Oh boy, this is a silly film.\u00a0 Directed by Gianfranco Parolini, it follows the adventures of FBI agent Brad Harris and two thieves (Tony Kendall and Nick Jordan), who are – you got it – trying to save the world from another <\/em>crazy genius, in this case Jochen Brockmann, who’s so nasty he even shuts small orphans in a giant freezer.\u00a0 Boo hiss!\u00a0 It’s typical Parolini stuff, full of acrobatics and energy, and just demented enough to make it stand out.\u00a0 It did so well there were about fifty sequels, most of which were bad, some of which were just abominable.<\/p>\n

1. Diabolik<\/strong>.\u00a0 The daddy of the bunch, this is the best known of the cine-fumetti, and the best as well.\u00a0 John Philip Law stars as the titular character, a prolific jewel theif and general trickster who has to deal with a mafia boss (Adolfo Celi) and an incompetent politician (Terry-Thomas) amongst others.\u00a0 Mario Bava directs it all with his usual flair, making for a quite wonderful film.<\/p>\n

What do you think?\u00a0 Any objections or differences of opinion?\u00a0 Please post your own lists!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been watching a lot of these Italian cine-fumetti films recently, and so here’s a rundown of my top five films from the genre. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[324],"tags":[870,868,62,869],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2400"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2400"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2403,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2400\/revisions\/2403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}