July 6 - 12, 2024

 

 

To answer these trivia questions, please email me at scinema@earthlink.net.

Brain Teasers:

Which American actor, who made Italian Westerns, is credited as the co-director of two American films in the 1950s?

Bertrand van Wonterghem knew that it was John Ireland.

Which Italian stuntman frequently doubled for Lee Van Cleef?

Tom Betts, Angel Rivera and Bertrand van Wonterghem knew that it was Romano Puppo.

Which Italian director began his career with a Western starring Gianni Garko and Ivan Rassimov?

Tom Betts and Bertrand van Wonterghem knew that it was Mario Siciliano with I VIGLIACCHI NON PREGANO, aka THE TASTE OF VENGEANCE.

And now for some new brain teasers:

From what Titanus Production was Sergio Leone reportedly fired?

Which Italian actress was born in Libya and was married to the man who produced many of her films?

Which American actor complained that Joseph E. Levine offered him a contract just to ruin his relationship with producer Carlo Ponti?

Name the movies from which these images came.

Tom Betts, Bertrand van Wonterghem, and Charles Gilbert identified last week's photo of Alex Cord and Robert Ryan in UNO MINUTO PER PREGARE, UN ISTANTE PER MORIRE, aka A MINUTE TO PRAY A SECOND TO DIE.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

 

Charles Gilbert identified last week's photo of Scilla Gabel and Mimmo Palmara in SODOM AND GOMORRAH.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

No one has identified the above photo yet.

Can you name from what movie it came?

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I am interested in knowing what movies you have watched and what you enjoyed or not. So please send me an email at scinema@earthlink.net if you'd like to share. Here's what I watched last week:

Enjoyed:

AFI Lifetime Achievement Honoring Nicole Kidman (2024)

INFERNO ROSS: JOE D'AMATO SULLA VIA DELL'ECCESSO, aka INFERNO ROSSO: JOE D'AMATO ON THE ROAD TO EXCESS (2021) - On the Severin Blu-ray, there is an extra called "Two of a Kind: Talking about Joe" in which the co-director and co-writer of the documentary Manilo Gomarasca chats with Giona A. Nazzaro of the Locarno Film Festival. They think back on when they first became aware of Aristide Massaccesi, aka Joe D'Amato. This sends me back to when I first became aware of him. I started Spaghetti Cinema in 1984, and the first film I reviewed after seeing it in a theater was THE BLADE MASTER. Back before the internet, I didn't know that it was a sequel to ATOR THE FIGHTING EAGLE, which was a film I didn't see when it was in theaters because, at the time, I didn't want to bother seeing movies I was convinced were bad. Thanks to readers who had access to French publications, I soon was made aware the director David HIlls was actually Aristide Massaccesi, who also worked under the name Joe D'Amato. I was soon collecting every Italian movie I could find, and when I had too many featuring Laura Gemser, I decided to do an article on her in 1985 partly so that I could erase all of those videotapes of movies I didn't like. Possibly my favorite of her movies was ENDGAME, which turns out to be Nazzaro's favorite film by Massaccesi. Armed with extensive filmographies provided to me by readers with access to French fanzines, I decided to do a series of articles, starting in 1987, on Massaccesi, partly because he was either the Camera Operator or Director of Photography on some of my favorite films including FIVE GIANTS FROM TEXAS and BEN AND CHARLIE. This would also give me the ability to erase the videotapes of his films I didn't like. Around this same time, I met Richard Harrison who had done two films with Massaccesi (and neither film is mentioned in the documentary).  The first film was a Pirate movie called PUGNI, PIRATI E KARATE, which had gone well. So when Massaccesi invited him to make another film called VOODOO BABY, he accepted, even though he would be required to do more nudity than usual. The film came out theatrically with the title ORGASMO NERO, but Harrison had no qualms about his wife's mother and father going to see it. What Harrison didn't know, was that Massaccesi had added hardcore sex scenes featuring Mark Shannon. This embarrassment caused Harrison to angrily tell Massaccesi that he'd never work with him again. In the "Outtakes" section of the DVD, Annamaria Clementi talks about a similar occurence on the film IL PORNO SHOP DELLA SETTIMA STRADA, except that her main complaint was that the hardcore double used for her didn't look like her at all. It is actually the "Outtakes" section of the Blu-ray that is the most fun as participants talk about the making of films like ARENA (featuring a bit from Roger Corman and Pam Grier), RED COATS, EMANUELLE AROUND THE WORLD, CALIGULA THE UNTOLD STORY, EMANUELLE AND FRANCOISE, ENDGAME and TOUGH TO KILL. Plus there is some information about Ajita Wilson. The main documentary by Massimiliano Zanin and Gomarasca is an attempt to correct the perspective in Italy that Joe D'Amato was only the king of Italian pornography, though they do credit him with creating "Spaghetti Porno" with 1980's BLACK SEX. Reportedly, Massaccesi was more ambitious than that, but when his company Filmirage went bankrupt, he found that the only way to pay off his debtors was by making porno films, with which he had become bored. I've not seen everything Massaccesi made, but I think that the best thing he ever did was to produce Michele Soavi's directorial debut STAGEFRIGHT.

Professor T. season one, two and three (2021-24) - I've only had a few opportunties to see the original Belgian TV series from 2015, so I'm referring to the British remake with Ben Miller. I'd been a fan of Juliet Aubrey since I saw her in the Middlemarch TV mini-series of 1994, but couldn't stand the Primeval TV series of 2007. I very much enjoyed her on this show. I'd been a fan of Juliet Stevenson since I saw her in TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY back in 1990, so I was thrilled when she joined Professor T. in its second season. With its combination of deadpan seriousness and flights of whimsical fantasy, this show was a joy.

Yellowjackets season one (2021-22) - I was already a fan of Melanie Lynskey and Christina Ricci, and now I'm fond of Ella Purnell and Sophie Thatcher. So far the show has kept its perverse mysteries completely unpredictable.

Mildly enjoyed:

TAKE AIM AT THE POLICE VAN (1960) - A police van (or bus) transporting prisoners is waylaid on a country road and two prisoners are murdered by a marksman with a scoped carbine. Prison guard Michitaro Mizushima, whose philosophy is that criminals are people, too, and that there is good in everyone, decides to use his six month suspension to investigate why the incident took place. Naturally Police Captain Tatsuo Matsushita tells him to back off and let the cops handle the case, but Mizushima can't leave it alone, especially since he's worried that newly paroled prisoner Shoichi Ozawa might have been a target. At one point while our hero is questioning Talent Agency owner Misako Watanabe, she asks him if he likes convoluted detective stories, which, obviously the screenwriters of this film do. Events in the film don't really make sense - like why kill a stripper while she's entertaining a room full of men by shooting an arrow through a rice paper screen to hit her in her left breast? Director Seijun Suzuki has become a darling of Western film critics, but his sometime surrealistic style seems fairly standard for the Japanese thrillers that I saw while growing up on Okinawa. Was he such an inspiration for other Japanese filmmakers? Sometimes this film seems like a forerunner for a James Bond movie with the villains deciding to kill off our hero and heroine with an elaborate scheme, which, of course, doesn't work. And why don't the bad guys stick around to see if it works or not? And how do they get past our heroes to get to where the young women about to be sex-trafficked are being held? Cinematographer Shigeyoshi Mine captures everything with the beautiful expressionistic black and white widescreen photography that was standard for Japanese movies in the late 1950s and early 1960s. So, the film is fun if you don't think about it too much.

 

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David Deal Enjoyed:

TARGET FOR KILLING (66) - See The Eurospy Guide for a complete review of this Stewart Granger entry.

SATAN'S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS (73) - See the Television Fright Films book for a complete review of this entertaining entry.

WINNETOU III (65)

OUTLAW: GORO THE ASSASSIN (68)

HOT MONEY GIRL (59) - From 2017 "Eddie Constantine and old flame Dawn Addams team up to retrieve her box of jewels Eddie hid in Hamburg during WWII.  Fun adventure and the cold war Hamburg locations add much to the proceedings.  British film so you get Eddie's real voice."

DEAD MEN WALK (43) - From 2006 "Another revisit to this favorite George Zucco classic vampire flick that deserves a better reputation than it has. The soon-to-expire Dwight Frye adds goulish interest, and you get two Zucco's for the price of one in this atmospheric creaker."

THE LADY IN THE MORGUE (38) - From 2006 "Fun "Crime Club" mystery with Preston Foster, some denigrating humor, a graveyard sequence, and enough sassy patter to satisfy any twist with a rod."

Mildly Enjoyed

BROADWAY'S DEADLY GOLD (68)

THE GHOUL (33) - I remember when the DVD of this rare Boris Karloff entry came out and it was a revelation, but I never really warmed to it just the same.

THE HUNCHBACK OF SOHO (66)

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Angel Rivera  Enjoyed:

"COMING 2 AMERICA (aka 'COMING TO AMERICA 2)
As one of the characters in the movie says about the state of the film industry today, "they give you sequels no one wants." The film has some of the charm of the original, but that is the problem. It only has some of the charm of the original. Some of the jokes come off as retreads of jokes from the original. Still some fun for some of us who liked the original.

"VOYAGE TO THE PLANET OF PREHISTORIC WOMEN" (1962/68)
Roger Corman took a Russian made Sci-Fi film, dubbed it into English. Took the effects scenes and added some scenes of Mamie Van Doren and some sexy girls who say they are on the planet, Venus. Add some narration from the late Peter Bogdanovich and you have an okay flick; especially since the special effects from the Russian film are on a par with effects from some American films of the same period.

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Bertrand van Wonterghem Enjoyed:

El precio de un hombre (1966, Eugenio Martin)

Voltati... ti uccido (1967, Alfonso Brescia)

L'empire (2023, Bruno Dumont)

Mildly enjoyed:

Perché uccidi ancora (1965, Jose Antonio de la Loma & Eduardo Mulargia)

Open range – season 2 (7 episodes)

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Charles Gilbert watched:

A MINUTE TO PRAY, A SECOND TO DIE (1968) Famous outlaw gunman Clay McCord (Alex Cord) is tormented with a bum arm he believes to be caused by epilepsy passed down from his father. Governor Lem Carter (Robert Ryan) has granted blanket amnesty to all criminals in New Mexico, but rides by horseback alone to proffer it personally to the suffering McCord.

SODOM AND GOMORRAH (1962) Nomadic Hebrews, led by Abraham's nephew Lot (Stewart Granger) make a pact with the queen of Sodom in battling aggressive Helamites. But their association leads to moral corruption. Lengthy film ironically leaves out much of the brief Bible narrative.

REQUIESCANT aka REQUIEM PARA MATAR (1967) Baby-faced Colombian-born Lou Castel is protagonist to Mark Damon playing George Bellow Ferguson, a baleful aristocratic Dracula figure with greenish pallor lording over a Mexican village. Pietro Ceccarelli and Jacques Stany are a couple of his henchmen. Barbara Frey, who was married to Damon briefly, is also in this film.

GILDA (1946) B&W. According to IMDb William Smith appears uncredited. That would make him 12 years old. There are no youngsters in this overwrought love story. So much for their accuracy.

Dream Wife 1965 B&W. Sitcom television pilot with Shirley Jones as housewife Lisa Michaels who possesses the knack for reading what men are thinking. 

Honey West Unaired Pilot episode. Cesare Danova guest stars as a jewel thief.

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