Il Dolce Corpo di Carroll

Original still of giallo fav Carroll Baker, as the traumatised rape victim, in Jack Garfein's 1961 seedy drama, Something Wild.

Argento's Tenebre

Original French still from Dario Argento's gorgeous 1982 giallo, Tenebre. Check out the Starfix article on the Italian master's innovative use of the Louma crane, on my 80s genre blog, In Space, No One Can Eat Ice Cream.

Eye of the Spider (1972)

Continental Film Review article on Roberto Bianchi Montero's L'Occhio del Ragno (Eye of the Spider, Deadly Revenge - 1972), featuring pretty Lucretia Love alongside Antonio Sabato, Klaus Kinski and Hollywood veteran Van Johnson. Occassionally considered as a giallo, due to a stylish stalking sequence, the movie, in fact, displays far more traits of the polizieschi subgenre.

L'Iguana dalla Lingua di Fuoco (1971)

Continental Film Review article on Riccardo Freda's 1971 giallo, L'Iguana dalla Lingua di Fuoco, generously displaying starlet Dagmar Lassander's charms.

Erika: More Obscure Thrilling all'Italiana

Continental Film Review article on Filippo Walter Ratti's obscure Erika (1971), featuring lovely Patrizia Viotti, who can also be admired in the atmospheric La Notte dei Dannati (1971, also by Ratti), Silvio Amadio's gorgeous giallo, Alla Ricerca del Piacere and La Morte Scende Leggera (both 1972), alongside appearing in a couple of Decamerotici, Canterbury Proibito (1972) and Beffe, Licenze e Amori del Decamerone Segreto (1973).

Eurostarlets #35: Silvia Dionisio

Gorgeous Silvia Dionisio in Riccardo Freda's flawed but enjoyable Follia Omicida (1981 - Murder Obsession). Image from French genre magazine L'Ecran Fantastique.

Red Light Girls

Ciné-Girl article on Rino di Silvestro's 1974, Prostituzione, an odd hybrid of giallo, polizieschi, comedy and, of course, with di Silvestro involved, a healthy dose of sleaze and exploitation. The film features Krista Nell, Orchidea de Santis (both pictured), alongside Madga Konopka, Cristina Gaioni and Felicita Fanny.

LSD and Nymphos: Rare 'Thrilling' from Italy and Germany

Two Sex Stars System articles featuring rare giallo-esque mysteries and exotics. The first, Il Sesso Degli Angeli (1968) is an Italian-German co-production directed by 'exotics' specialist Ugo Liberatore (Bora Bora 1968, Incontro d'Amore 1970 and Noa Noa 1974), featuring Rosemary Dexter, Doris Kunstmann and Laura Troschel alongside Bernard de Vries. The second is an obscure German crime drama, Von Haut zu Haut (1969) featuring giallo fav Dagmar Lassander and Barbara Zimmerman.

Eurostarlets #30: Pamela Tiffin

Gorgeous Pamela Tiffin in a full-page Angelo Frontoni image from vintage magazine Ciné-Revue. She is best known as Franco Nero's girlfriend Lu Auer in Luigi Bazzoni's stunning giallo, Giornata Nera per l'Ariete (The Fifth Cord - 1971). In 1972, she appeared once more opposite Nero in Paolo Cavara's eurowestern, Los Amigos, as Suzie, a prostitute.

Young, Violent and Gorgeous: Eleonora Giorgi

Stunning Eleonora Giorgi in a full page Ciné-Revue image. Giorgi is best know to genre fans for her appearances in Romolo Guerrieri's Liberi Armati Pericolosi (Young Violent Dangerous - 73) and Dario Argento's brilliant Inferno (1980). She also made quite an impression with Domenico Paolella's Storia di una Monaca di Clausura (1973). You'll find some more stuff on that movie here and here. Apparently Eleonora Giorgi started her career with uncredited appearances in La Tarantola dal Ventre Nero (1971, as a maid in the beauty center) and the eurowestern, Tutti per Uno ... Botte per Tutti (1973, as the lover in the opening sequence).

A Rather Complicated Girl

Continental Film Review article on Damiano Damiani's 1968 semi-giallo, Una Ragazza Piuttosto Complicata, featuring euro-hunk and giallo fav Jean Sorel alongside Catherine Spaak and Maria Cuadra, with Florinda Bolkan making her film debut. Incidentally the second page contains some semi-nude images of Florinda Bolkan in Le Voleur de Crimes (1969) where she appeared opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant. Maria Cuadra also appears in Tonino Valerii's 1969 eurowestern Il Prezzo di Potere and is seen opposite the lovely Cristina Galbo in Dove si Spara di Piu (1967), another western. Here you can find some images from the French photonovel of this last movie.

Eurostarlets #27: Ornella Mutti

Pretty and sweet Ornella Muti on the cover of the July 1972 issue of vintage magazine Ciné-Revue. As often with the covers of this magazine, the photographs used may be of an earlier date. Here Ornella looks a lot younger (and has a lot more baby fat), so I figure this is taken somewhere in the later 1960s. Ornella Muti is best known to genre fans for her part in Umberto Lenzi's 1971 giallo, Un Posto Ideale per Uccidere, where, incidentally, she was doubled by eurostarlet Antonia Santilli. You can find a post on Antonia here.

Not unlike several fellow Eurostarlets and stars, she appeared, under her real name Francesca Romana Rivelli, in a series of Fotoromanzi between 1969 and 1971 for Italian publishing house Lancio. Her sister Claudia Rivelli also 'acted' in these photonovels, but appears to have only one movie credit, Nando Cicero's Eurowestern, Due Volte Giuda, where she appeares opposite Klaus Kinski and interminably cute Cristina Galbo.

Images from the Fotoromanzi are from fotoromanzi-topilio.it. Check out the site if you are interested in the Lancio photonovels.

Eurostarlets #026: Barbara Bouchet

Gorgeous starlet Barbara Bouchet in an original US still from Paolo Cavara's stunning 1971 giallo, La Tarantola dal Ventre Nero (1971), also featuring Claudine Auger, Barbara Bach, Stefania Sandrelli, Rossella Falk, Annabella Incontrera and a very young Giancarlo Giannini as the troubled  Inspector Tellini.

One Influence on Top of the Other: Fulci Noir

Some original b/w stills of gorgeous Marisa Mell in Lucio Fulci terrific 1969 giallo, Una Sull'Altra, with a story that appears heavily influenced by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) and, usually neglected, Robert Siodmak's fabulous Phantom Lady (1944).

Ewa Aulin is deadly sweet !

Cinema X article on Tinto Brass' supercool, 1967 pop-art giallo, Col Cuore in Gola, with gorgeous Ewa Aulin and the always enigmatic Jean-Louis Trintignant. Note the provisional title, With Their Hearts in Their Mouths, which is pretty much a literal translation of the original Italian title.

 

 

 

 

Continental Film Review

Some lovely eurostarlets on the cover of the vintage Continental Film Review, a movie magazine 'for the aware audience.' Continental Film Review was a UK based magazine, with its first issue published in 1952, that started out as a serious film journal devoted to foreign releases, but with the relaxation of censorship during the 1960s and 1970s, it gradually focused more on elements of nudity and eroticism, and on the various nubile starlets, in the films of those eras. They paid considerable attention to European horror, giallo and various other continental subgenres. Featured on the covers here are Edwige Fenech, Nieves Navarro (Susan Scott), Marina Malfatti, (in a scene from La Notte che Evelyn usci dalla Tomba - 1971) Jane Birkin, Marie Liljedahl, Fabienne Dali and the lovely Françoise Pascal, known to fans for her appearances in Pete Walker's School for Sex (1968), Burke and Hare (1972), Jean Rollin's La Rose de Fer (1973) and Les Raisins de la Mort (1978), and as one of the orgy girls (uncredited) in Incense for the Damned (1972).

Eurostarlets #017: Antonia Santilli

After appearing as playmate in the August 1971 issue of the Italian magazine Playmen, gorgeous Antonia Santilli was at one point touted to be the new sensation in Italian movies, but her star never managed to rise, and after appearing in the occasional eurowestern and some decamerotici, she disappeared from the screen. She has one superior credit to her name, however, as she appeared as the nymphomaniac daughter of a crime boss, Rina D'Aniello, in Fernando di Leo's superior Il Boss (1973). Here are some images from the film, courtesy of Continental Film Review - the last one is a behind-the-scenes shot featuring Fernando di Leo himself. As an interesting aside, Antonia Santilli also doubled  Ornella Muti for her nude scenes in Umberto Lenzi's enjoyable 1971 giallo, Un Posto Ideale per Uccidere.

Giallo à la Française

Some seriously battered original French stills, featuring Alain Delon, the adorable Jane Birkin, Maurice Ronet and Romy Schneider in Jacques Deray's 1969 psychological thriller, La Piscine. Jean-Paul (Delon) and Marianne (Schneider) spend their holidays in a luscious villa near St. Tropez.  When Marianne's former love, Harry (Ronet) turns up with his seductive teenage daughter Penelope (Birkin), tension amongst the old 'friends' mounts with ultimately deadly consequences. 

With its sundrenched St. Tropez locations, stylish villa, predominant poolside setting, characters living the high life, former lovers, seductions, and generally adulterous behaviour, the movie superficially resembles the late 1960s psychosexual gialli, like Umberto Lenzi's Paranoia and Romolo Guerrieri's Il Dolce Corpo di Deborah.

Eurostarlets #007: Barbara Bouchet

Some Cinema X images of the lovely and charismatic Barbara Bouchet, from Alberto de Martino's 1971 giallo-crime hybrid, L'Uomo dagli Occhi di Ghiaccio (The Man with Icy Eyes).

That Cursed House Close to the Mushroom Bed

A House of Terror and Sex,

This was the article heading used to introduce the strangely titled, "That Cursed House Close to the Mushroom bed," in a 1972 issue of Continental Film Review. Upon closer scrutiny of the synopsis and the stills included in the article, the movie, labeled by the journalist as the new Italian 'sexy thrilling', turned out to be Alfonso Brescia's La Ragazza tutta Nuda Assassinata nel Parco (Naked Girl Killed in the Park), featuring the lovelies, Pilar Velázquez, Teresa Gimpera and Patricia Adiutori.