Fantastikal Diabolikal Supermen

Matt Blake, who runs the excellent Wild Eye website and wrote the essential Eurospy Guide a few years back has recently published this book on Italian fumetti neri style films of the 1960s and 1970s.



Extensively illustrated with posters, lobby cards and stills from the films and featuring quite a lot of interview and review material that hasn't been previously available in English (at least to my knowledge) it's an essential purchase for anyone with an interest in this comparatively under-explored area of Italian cult cinema.

Taking a comprehensive but not all encompassing approach, Blake looks at films that were made by Italian directors – so no Modesty Blaise or Mr Freedom – and which either presented direct adaptations of fumetti characters (Diabolik, Kriminal, Satanik, Isabella, Valentina etc.) or were clearly influenced by the comics (The 3 Supermen series, Vittorio De Sica's contribution to the anthology film The Witches, the Johnny Dorelli vehicle How to Kill 400 Duponts and so on).

The films are discussed in chronological rather than alphabetical order, allowing the reader to better chart the development of the filone as a whole and particular series within it. This is especially helpful when it comes to the likes of the long-running 3 Supermen series, since the personnel involved often changed from one film to the next, for better or worse.

Thankfully there's also a comprehensive index of titles for those wondering whether a specific film is one of the better, worse or average examples of the form.

While the reader will inevitably disagree with some of Blake's evaluations of the films, his reviews are invariably intelligent, informative and insightful, indicating why he rates or does not rate a given film, filmmaker or performer.

So, for example, of the 3 Superman films, Blake identifies those directed by Sabata's Gianfranco Parolini as ranking above those by Black Emanuelle's Bitto Albertini, with both in turn preferable to those directed by their usual producer and writer Italo Martinenghi – precisely the kind of stuff you need when, like me, you've got a whole load of them in your virtual to-watch pile and were not sure of where to begin.

Page for Fantastikal Diabolikal Supermen on The Wild Eye.

Come svaligiammo la banca d'Italia / How we Robbed the Bank of Italy

This is one of those films which simultaneously confirms Lucio Fulci's abilities as a film-maker and indicates the problems he had in having these be recognised by mainstream critics.


Done with mirrors

For while a thoroughly competent piece of work from the writer-director, it again sees Fulci largely subordinating his own interests to showcasing the talents of the stars, Franco and Ciccio, popular comedians whose act, no matter how accomplished in its own right - and make no mistake they were damn good at what they did - was never going to appeal to the elite tastemakers.


Self-referentiality

Franco and Ciccio essentially play themselves as per usual, but are here cast as brothers, representing two-thirds of the current generation of a family with a long and illustrious history in crime.


Yet another bungle

Indeed, the black sheep of the family is the one who became a priest. Tellingly, however, this amounts to nothing more than a gag rather than being used as the springboard for a more thoroughly developed anti-clerical critique as in Fulci's more personal films.




The inversion of conventional morality?

Franco and Ciccio are also, however, thoroughly hopeless as criminals, such that their older and considerably more successful brother Paolo would rather have them stay at home, out of trouble.

To this end, he keeps his brothers supplied with a steady stream of female company, not so much because they are playboy types, instead being content to settle down with one woman apiece in a more traditional, conventional and respectable manner, and more because it has proven exceedingly difficult for Paolo to find women able to tolerate his brothers' idiocy for more than a few days or weeks at the most.

Until now, that is, as a visit to the nightclub reveals two women, Maralina and Rosalina, who are even dumber than Franco and Ciccio and thus look to be the perfect paid companions for them.


The girls

The problem is that Maralina and Rosalina also fantasise about being with tough-guy gangsters, giving Franco and Ciccio a further impetus to prove themselves. (In an ironic turn of fate, the Finnish-born Lena von Martens, who plays Maralina, apparently turned to escorting after her film career came to an end.)

Another botched job leads Paolo to take a different tack. He tells Ciccio his long-planned scheme for one last big score, namely robbing the bank of Italy, in the hope that his younger brother - the slightly more intelligent one of the pair - will realise that a life of crime is just not for him. Unfortunately Ciccio is also smart enough to secretly steal his over-confident brother's plans and resolves to carry out the robbery of the century with the help of Franco and some of their still more inept friends...

While thoroughly predictable in its Big Deal on Madonna Street styled antics from herein on, How We Robbed the Bank of Italy is never less than entertaining and manages to raise more than a few laughs and smiles along the way through the antics of its stars.

It also showcases Franco and Ciccio's versatility as comedians, with a combination of the verbal and the physical, the former relying on language and dialect and thus less accessible to non-Italian or indeed Northern Italians, though another recurring source of humour is the brothers' attempts to learn and use English. ("Frank, please," as Ciccio exasperatedly remarks in nearly every scene.)

The duo also perform a musical number that represents the reduction ad absurdum of the then-popular French Ye-Ye style, with Franco's lyrics comprising nothing more than "Yeah-Yeah" and Ciccio providing the occasional scream. This sequence, which results from the men being mistaken for members of the group on account of their costumes also highlights a connection with fumetti culture, with Franco and Ciccio's outfits being in the Diabolik and Kriminal vein.






An ironic critique of mass / popular culture; a defence of traditional cunning, both or neither?

Such moments again however highlight one of the basic issues in appreciating the film, that it helps to know the background context, one rather removed from the international art cinema.

Mister X / Avenger X

This 1967 fumetti adaptation was directed by Piero Vivarelli who also contributed Satanik to the filone a year later. Unfortunately whilst containing all the right ingredients, including a mysterious costumed anti-hero complete with attractive female sidekick; gadgets and gimmicks, like a gun that fires cigarette-style crampons; the odd bit of sadistic tortures with a blowtorch; memorable locations in London, Rome and Capri; despicable bad guys, and ineffectual to incompetent representatives of authority, it never really comes together to make for a completely satisfying whole.


So, Mister X...

The credits sequence, with comic book panels and an energetic jazz / lounge score from Manuel Parada, certainly get thing off to a good enough start.




The promise of sex, danger and adventure

We're then introduced to respectable businessman and secret gangster Lamarr and his erstwhile courier, Veronica, who has gradually realised his true occupation. Rather than being horrified, she wants into the operation – as Mrs Lamarr no less – and agrees to courier a consignment of heroin from Rome, where she is murdered by other members of Lamarr's outfit.

Besides thereby demonstrating his utter ruthlessness, Lamarr makes his first mistake, as he attempts to frame the mysterious Mister X for the crime.

Though Interpol take the bait as intended, it is doubtful whether Inspector Roux and his men are adequate to the challenge of capturing X who has, after all, clearly evaded them many times in the past. Moreover, X is aroused to seek out and punish those responsible for implicating him in “a beastly vulgar crime”; as is often the case in this kind of film, it is not just about doing something but also doing it with panache.

And, sure enough, X soon finds that Lamarr and his allies are planning to take advantage of the situation by putting Operation Black Dragon into motion, flooding the world with heroin...


X


Timi

For me the biggest weakness Mister X has is X himself. Though Pier-Paolo Capponi, credited here as Norman Warren, is a decent enough actor he just feels miscast in the role of the costumed master of disguise, his athletic and other shortcomings particularly apparent when we imagine what Gianfranco Cianfriglia, Glenn Saxson or John Philip Law might have done with the role.

Gaia Germani is a lot better suited to the role of X's partner in work and pleasure,Timi – indeed, heretical though it may be, I actually preferred the character to Diabolik's Eva Kant – whilst Helga Line is in fine feline form as another member of the syndicate, the femme fatale Gloria, amongst whom Umberto Raho is also enjoyable as a Scottish accented godfather type, Mac.


A familiar location in Rome

On the downside, Donald Murray / Vivarelli doesn't impart much of a comic book tone to the proceedings, using much the same approach to his set-ups, as one suspects he would apply to any other film in contrast to both the opening credits and Diabolik. It must also be acknowledged, however, that the panned and scanned somewhat fuzzy VHS sourced version under review hardly represents the ideal showcase for any director's talents.

[Thanks to Cosmobells Blog for the film]

The Satanik look

One of my other odd interests is the work of the late Italian designer Massimo Osti, who founded the clothing companies CP and Stone Island and conducted a lot of experiments with fabrics.

On Found_NYC, a site for these companies' enthusiasts and collectors there's a post-Osti collection for CP Company Donna which I could imagine Satanik or other 60s fumetti anti-heroine wearing:

La Bambola di Satana

Following the death of her uncle, Elizabeth (Erna Schurer) arrives at the family castle with her fidanzato Jack (Roland Carey), a journalist, for a reading of the will.


Dolls and black gloved killers, what more could one want?

After dinner with the other guests and servants, in which the history of the castle and the family are discussed, Elizabeth and Jack are taken to their rooms – a conservative touch which provides an early indication of the film's at times awkward straddling of 60s and 70s styles, whilst also serving as an important plot point insofar as it allows for the easier terrorisation of Elizabeth at night.












Schurer's characteristic expressions

Instinctively heading for the room she used to stay in when she visited the castle as a child many years ago, Elizabeth is shocked to discover the first of the castle's many secrets. An old servant whom she had been informed was dead is in fact very much alive, albeit wheelchair-bound and apparently insane.




Bava they are not

The next day uncle's will is read, naming Elizabeth as the principal beneficiary to no-one else's particular surprise.




Black gloved hands at work

Later the housekeeper takes Elizabeth, Jack and some of the others on a tour of the castle's dungeons, complete with reproduction torture chamber and identified as being like something out of a giallo novel by another guest; meanwhile another young woman, ostensibly a landscape painter vacationing in the vicinity, proves to be searching for something in the castle grounds along with some unidentified confederates with whom she communicates by walkie-talkie...


Note how the candelabra is shedding absolutely no light at all

That night Elizabeth finds her sleep troubled by extraordinarily vivid nightmares involving the castle, its staff and Jack – if, that is, they are in fact nightmares and not a carefully stage-managed reality designed to drive her mad or to her death...

Released at the end of the 1960s, La Bambola di Satana – not to be confused with the later, more explicit and supernatural horror themed La Bimba di Satana – is one of those entries that hedges its bets by throwing in just about gothic horror and giallo motif the filmmakers could think of into a plot that's half Agatha Christie and half Scooby Doo; fans of the latter style of giallo may care to note that the film climaxes with the literal unmasking of the hitherto disguised chief villain.

Besides the aforementioned madwoman (not) in the attic, torture dungeon and sinister servants, we also have plenty of dark corridors illuminated only by the light from a candelabra; a black-gloved figure whose face we never see until late on; wolves howling outside in the dark; storms every night and a beautiful heroine / damsel in distress who spends much of her time in nightwear that leaves little to the imagination.

Obviously also inspired by the wider fumetti culture of the time, with the credits even being presented as a series of posed stills from later in the film – many also in black and white rather than colour – La Bambola di Satana is perhaps better as a collection of static images than as an actual movie.

While director Ferrucio Casapinta – whose sole film credit this seems to be – definitely has an eye for an arresting composition and tries hard, with the nightmare sequences well rendered, the technical aspects of the film are lacking at times elsewhere, with the zoom lens work sometimes stop-start rather than smooth and far too many attempts at atmospheric and / or realistic lighting going awry as the use of a candelabra, the switching of a bedside light, or a flash of lightning fail to produce an appreciable changes in illumination.

This in turn serves to distinguish La Bambola di Satana from other films of its kind, such as The Virgin of Nuremberg and The Bloody Pit of Horror, albeit to its detriment insofar as they each really work as films in their own right; perhaps the most telling aspect here is the way the makers of Bloody Pit of Horror have the confidence to incorporate the making of a fumetti into the film's narrative, poking fun at what they themselves are doing and indicating that it's all in good fun, not to be taken too seriously.

As Elizabeth, Erna Schurer doesn't have too much to do except look pretty, vulnerable and scared along with screaming on cue. She's adequate to each task, with her background as a photomodel in fumetti clearly giving her the kind of expertise in creating one-dimensional characters needed by the film.

Roland Carey's Jack is similarly flat, the kind of traditional hard-headed hero whom one is never really inclined to doubt or consider as having ulterior motives, with this again serving to give the film a distinctly old-fashioned and comforting feel when compared to the likes of The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (with its similar gothic / giallo crossover) or what a George Hilton type might have brought to the role.

Much the same can be said of the rest of the performers, with the absence of an eccentric character actors of the Luciano Rossi or Pigozzi type being felt along with that of more recognisable female glamour presences beyond Schurer herself.

In line with the general 60s / 70s crossover, Franco Potenza's score is a mixture of contemporary rock pieces and jazzy cues – the former playing diegetically in the nearby trattoria – and old fashioned horror mood music.

Bathman dal pianeta Eros

What could be better or worse – depending on taste – than an ultra low budget Italian Batman rip-off / spoof?


Holy lawsuits Batman!

How about an ultra low budget Italian hardcore porn Batman rip-off / spoof?


Some alien android, I think

If you're not sold on the film or scurrying for cover yet, consider also that it stars none other than Mark Shannon, he of Joe D'Amato's Dominican Republic sex and horror epics and the lumpy scrotum, in the title role.


The Penguin, Joker and Catwomen

That there's not terribly much more can be said about the near plotless series of sexual numbers that follow, except for that they also feature Bathman's female sidekick, a gender shift obviously intended to avoid any suggestion of the camp crusader's not being one hundred percent heterosexual, though we also get a gay Penguin, along with the Joker and a Catwoman or two, along with a Commissioner Gordon clone, who gets turned gay; holy subtexts batman!


The gay Penguin looks away in disgust at two of his minions' heterosexual antics

What one does wonder, however, is how the big studios and corporations and their porn industry counterparts negotiate films like Bathman, perhaps more particularly in the US context. Do sound-alike porn films simply fly under the radar of the big studios? Do they avoid acting because it might be self-defeating, drawing more attention to the porn product, in a Streisand Effect manner? Do the porn producers know how far they need to go to produce something that's a parody rather than plagiarism, or which no reasonable individual could ever mistake for the real thing?




Robina engages in some auto-erotic activity

Perhaps the most incredible thing of all, however, is that Bathman isn't even the nadir of the Batman porn films, with that honour going to the once seen never forgotten Batpussy, a film which can only be summarised by the final words of Heart of Darkness: the horror, the horror!


Does this really need an explanatory caption?

http://batmanfansite.blogspot.com/2008/05/klito-bell-ovvero-bathman-dal-pianeta.html

Biancaneve & Co. / Snow White and the 7 Wise Men

This 1982 film is an adaptation of the adult fumetti of the same name by Leone Frollo, an erotic, comic version of the Biancaneve – i.e. Snow White – legend, albeit with seven wise men rather than the dwarfs that Anglophone audiences might be familiar with and a foregrounding of the sexual subtexts inherent in the original not-so-innocent tale.

C'era una volta...

After Biancaneve's mother, the Queen, dies giving birth to her the weak willed King (Aldo Sambrell) is tricked into remarrying. A number of years pass and Biancaneve (Michela Miti) blossoms into a beautiful young woman. The wicked Queen / stepmother (Damianne Saint-Clair) resents the threat she perceives Biancaneve represents and hires Jack il silenzatore to murder the girl. Jack, however, is smitten by Biancaneve's and cannot bring himself to kill her. Instead, after taking Biancaneve's virginity he takes a lock of her pubic hair and presents this to the queen as proof that Biancaneve is dead. Unable to return home, Biancaneve wanders the kingdom and has various adventures, invariably putting her in various states of undress...


The wicked stepmother and the king


Biancaneve


The mirror in the TV set


Biancaneve strips for her assassin, Jack the Silencer


Biancaneve meets the seven wise men

Miti is a winning heroine, who brings the right mixture of innocence, playfulness and sexiness to the role. It's a shame her emergence coincided with the decline of the Italian popular cinema as one could well imagine her having become a next generation Edwige Fenech otherwise – or, had the film been made ten years later during the heydey of the Decamerotics, the delightful possibility of seeing Fenech herself in the title role.

Everyone else enters into the spirit of things, with Sambrell effortlessly sleazy as ever and a nice cameo from Oreste Lionello as the sorceror the wicked Queen goes to for help on realising that Biancaneve is still alive.

The familiar magic mirror is replaced with a gold-framed television set, but otherwise performs the same mythic function of answering the wicked queen/stepmother's questions and indicating to her that she is no longer the fairest of all as Biancaneve's beauty blooms, with the magic mirror telephoning the director to check. (Lacanians will probably also have a field day here with the Queen's little secret.)

Another amusing anachronism, besides telephones, projectors and porn films, a prince in a tracksuit and welding gear, sees the queen looking for an assassin to take care of Biancaneve in the giallo – i.e. yellow – pages, where there are also entries for the likes of squartatore – i.e. rippers – before settling on Jack the silencer.

Despite the English lyrics on the catchy theme tune (“Snow White she's a beautiful girl / She's a venus with a pony tail / Put your head in her world / She will give you fun / She never fails”), the film itself is in Italian, without subtitles. It matters because, alongside the visual humour and attractions, there appears to be a lot of wordplay, most of it delivered at screwball comedy speed and much with exaggerated voices: one character is called Stronzolo – i.e. little(r) piece of shit, while one of the wise men's attempts at installing himself as a pimp sees his target say she doesn't need any help from murderers, rippers, thieves or politicians.

Hopefully subtitles will surface some day. Until then...

...e vissero felici e contenti

Fenomenal e il tesoro di Tutankamen / Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankamen

This early outing from Ruggero Deodato is quite frankly a bit of a mess, albeit a sporadically entertaining one.

Inspired by the fumetti neri, especially Diabolik, the first problem is that we're pretty much in the dark about who our titular protagonist, hero and point of identification actually is. We know he's one of the good guys thanks to the opening sequence in which he takes out a boat full of heroin smugglers, but after this he actually drops out of the narrative, such as it is, for close on half an hour; after watching the film I found I wanted to check if the film was actually a sequel and that the audience was expected to know Fenomenal's alter-ego, even if it isn't terribly difficult to guess.

The second is that the film as a whole really isn't that good, with little of the comic book vibe apparent in the general style and mediocre action and set piece sequences. While it was Deodato's official debut, he'd picked up a lot of credits as assistant and second unit director, so couldn't exactly be described as inexperienced.

On the plus side Lucretia Love and Carla Romanelli are easy on the eyes and Bruno Nicolai's catchy score easy on the ears.

The story sees the Mask of Tutankhamun exhibited in a Paris museum; cue lots of location shots of the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysee etc.

Various criminal masterminds played by the likes of John Karlsen and Gordon Mitchell want the mask, with a complication provided by the fact that there are not just one but two replicas of it floating around. (Seeing that Karlsen is after the mask because it contains a secret code that reveals the location of an even greater treasure, presumably he would actually have been satisfied with an exact copy, however.)

The action then shifts to Tunisia; cue more location shots with various bewildered inhabitants wondering what's going on.

Fenomenal shows up once more and saves the day.

A Feast of Fumetti

New forum and site dedicated to fumetti which looks very promising:

http://www.afeastoffumetti.org/

Cinema fumetto nerosexy fantastique western saderotik estetica pop italiana 1960-1773

This latest volume in Glittering Images’ long running Bizarre Sinema series of exquisitely produced dual-language coffee-table style volumes looking at Italian cinema and popular culture focuses on the relationship between fumetti and film between the years 1960 and 1973.

Those familiar with Stefano Piselli and company’s other books will know what to expect: sometimes odd translations from Italian to English that nevertheless add to the what the authors might term naïf charm of the whole, much like the reproduction of a cowboy comic strip advertisement for Negroni salami in which the black hat pursued by the sheriff is one Bennye Ross, and, far more importantly, a treasure trove of information on these obscure old films and fumetti, all lavishly illustrated with stills, posters, ad mats and more.

It’s the photo of Jean Sorel and Elsa Martinelli as Diabolik and Eva Kant from Seth Holt’s ill-fated attempt to bring the Giussani sister’s seminal character to the screen; the tantalising page of an essay on Isabella by future Baba Yaga director Corrado Farina; the image of the blank-faced creatures controlled by the vampire lord in Maciste Contro il Vampiro, a legion of Blood and Black Lace-alike masked killers; the pop-art and fumetti styled advertising campaigns for Shell petrol directed by Elio Petri after The Tenth Victim …

As can be seen from these examples the range of titles discussed by the authors is wider than might be expected, encompassing not only the more familiar – all those with an anti-hero whose name begins or ends with K, like Diabolik, Satanik, Kriminal and Sadik – and less well known fumetti adaptations – the jungle-girl adaptations of 1967-69 like Gungula and Samoa, Regina della giungla that perhaps present an under-explored link between the mondo, emanuelle nera and cannibal-survival filone – but also all manner of titles, be they westerns, horror, spy, arthouse or just plain weird and unclassifiable that partook of the fumetti spirit.

Though a slim volume, with only 90 or so printed pages, there’s enough in Cine fumetto to keep you going for a while…

1970s Italian Sexy Horror

Discussing previous Glittering Images books on Italian cult cinema a little while back I commented that what was needed was a third volume that continued the story begun by La Dolce Paura and continued by Esotika, Erotika, Psicotika. At the time I didn't know that this third volume, 1970s Italian Sexy Horror: Weirdly Erotic Terror Movies from Cineromanzi Starring Rosalba Neri and Other Lucious Beauties of Cinema Bis, was already on the way.

Co-authored by Stefano Piselli and Antonio Bruschini and opening with a dedication to the memories of Renato Polselli and Mickey Hargitay, the profusely illustrated volume is in the now-established dual language English / Italian format for the authors' commentaries, unlike the earlier entries in the publisher's Bizarre Sinema series which also included French text. The fotoromanzi excerpts that make up the bulk of the volume are in Italian only though it is not exactly difficult to work out what is going on from the pictures themselves even if one does not know the language given that the preceding piece on each film describes the sequence and that their subject matter is largely self-explanatory.


The cover artwork, derived from the poster for Mel Welles' film Lady Frankenstein

The films / fotoromanzi covered are Lady Frankenstein; The Night of the Damned; L'amante del demonio; Frankenstein '80; The Devil's Wedding Night and The Reincarnation of Isabelle – i.e. pop surreal, sadean concoctions of sex and violence whose own aesthetic clearly shows the influence of earlier generations of fotoromanzi and fumetti in pushing things that bit further than their filmic predecessors of the previous decade. (Others prime candidates for the fotoromanzi treatment, like Nude for Satan were inexplicably never translated into the format.)

The key filmmaker emerges as Renato Polselli, a favourite of the authors but also someone whose enduring engagement with the form from The Vampire and the Ballerina onwards marks him as a subject worthy of further research.

Besides all the pictures of Rosalba Neri, Rita Calderoni and company in various states of undress and distress the main aesthetic interest in the excerpts lies in seeing how the fotoromanzi authors have chosen to adapt and translate their filmic source material for the printed page and what is altered thereby with the absence of sound, colour and movement and the new ability to fetishistically pick out details for the reader to linger upon and return to. Away from the obvious, one notes the likes of the the jumbo cords and platform boots worn by Lady Frankenstein's monster (p. 25) and the framing of Raoul as a cut-price reincarnation not of Isabel but of Gorka from Bava's Black Sabbath (p. 87).

Now if only one could get the original fotoromanzi – although having said this a quick search on Ebay indicates that they are out there, while Kult Video also has a fair few...




Originals are out there if you look for them

An Easter rising

The Zora cover, using the same art and Gothic logo as the original

Just in time for Easter, a tale of death and resurrection. This is an English translation of the origins issue of the Italian fumetti Zora, a one-shot published by Eurocomics in 2003. I found the link to it on http://comix-collection.blogspot.com/, which has links to lots of adult comics, in a mixture of English, French and Italian, and then downloaded all the images, numbered them in sequence and created a .CBR file for easy reading

Get it here: http://rapidshare.com/files/24789698/Zora.cbr

The story starts in 1859 as Zora's father, Professor Pabst, returns to London from a scientific expedition to Transylvania. He has with him Dracula's coffin, but as a scientist does not belief in vampires and that the remarkably preserved state of Dracula's corpse must have a rational, natural explanation. He also has a hot-looking daughter, Zora, for whom he has the hots in an amusing display of Victorian hypocrisy, even having a peephole in the bathroom that looks into her bedroom where, naked, she entertains her own fantasies and tries to sleep. Restless, Zora then gets up and goes to have a look inside Dracula's coffin, summoning up courage she had lacked earlier. She also kisses the corpse on his lips. Back in her room and reading a book about the vampire, Zora then discovers that this act, coming from a virgin, is supposed to bring Dracula back from the dead...

Now all we need are the other 124 issues that were published in Italian between 1972 and 1979 to continue the saga.

Admittedly this has nothing to do with Argento nor the giallo directly. But again it is part of the general culture in which they emerged – remember that Argento and Luigi Cozzi had the idea of doing a revisionist Frankenstein film as a co-production with Hammer around the time of Four Flies on Grey Velvet or indeed the later Argento-brand fumetti in which he appears as the Crypt Keeper style master of ceremonies.


Argento, fumetti style

Grand guignol / fumetti neri / Inferno

Today I was at a conference on film audiences. One of the presentations included some images from Theatre du Grand Guignol that I thought were interesting in relation to its Italian variant and the iconography of Kriminal and, though it, Argento's Inferno, of the skull mask, the “come sweet death, one last caress” etc.: