The most difficult thing in an artistic career is to keep up the momentum in one's career! Having several hits or blockbusters is not a garantee to have a great career untill the end of days! Often the opposite is true! Sadly! Take for instance the Italian director-screen writer "Ferdinando Baldi". During the height of the Spaghetti Westerns in the 60's Ferdinando Baldi was one of the top directors in this genre. Several of his movies have since become classics of the Italian western genre like "Blindman", "Texas Adio", "Preparati la Bara" or "Il Pistolero del'Ave Maria"! All terrific movies!
But when the hype is over and the audience wants something new or fresh it is not easy to have a follow up to an once beloved genre. It is not only difficult to find that follow up but the next thing has also to be material that interests you or creatively challenges you! And that is often not the case! So you take the next best job out of necessity and make a run of the mill movie. This is what happened to the movie "La Compagna di Viaggio" from 1980 with Marisa Mell in a cameo role. Marisa Mell was once one of the highest payed actresses in Italia but now her movie career is almost distinct. She isn't even mentioned any more on the movie posters or promotional material. Her sex appeal is over and she is no money magnet anymore! And to top that her character has no name in the movie and is only credited as "the women with the veil". Sigh! The only thing she has to do in this movie is trying to seduce a young body builder and adoring his chest muscles. Time has moved on. Other and younger Italian starlets want their place in the spotlight like Serena Grandi. This is her second role in a movie and the beginning of a big career thanks to her big assets. She is still working in the movie business in Italy today. The movie "La Compagna di Viaggio" belongs to the movie genre Italian Sexy Comedy or Vizietto all'Italiana. Marisa Mell made several of those movies but not anymore as the sexy kitten but more the older women who is still sexy but whose time has come and passed like in "La Liceale al mare con l'amica di papa" as the fustrated sex obsessed wife! For Ferdinando Baldi this movie was just a job to survive and that you can clearly see on the screen. This movie is so bad that you wished that the train where all the characters are travelling on to Paris, France would crash so that this movie ends prematurely so you do not have to endure it anymore. I love Eurocult trash movies very much but this movie is so flat on every aspect from acting, directing, story wise that it is hardly possible to top that. To make my point, here is the trailer of this movie:
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