Cinesex and all the others!

There was a time not long ago that Euro Cult fans had not the access to the various multimedia gadgets that we now have at present day like the Internet, Computer, Iphone, Ipad, DVD to see and re-see a beloved movie or social networks like Facebook to connect fans all over the world. The world was a lot smaller and simpler then. The options for entertainment after a hard day of work were limited to televsion, radio, books or going to the movies. If you were a fan of a certain movie the next best thing you could do to revist the film that you loved was buying the original soundtrack and if you were lucky you could buy a novelisation of the movie based on the original script which was often a cash in and hardly worth buying.

Another way to cash in on a movie, especially in Italy, were the cine photo magazines. Italy has always been the home to a special kind of entertainment known as the "Foto Romanzo". These photo romance novels were during the 60's and 70's very big in that country read by millions of women and very often stars and starlets from the Euro Cult scene switched between their movie work and the foto romanzo work.

During the sexual revolution in the 60's, especially at the end of this decade, another kind of photo novels appeared on the news stands in Italy. Their prime target audience were not the romance hungry women but men. Contrary to the photo romance novels which were specially created by the publishers with original storylines the cine photo novels were photo strips of popular movies at the time that were running in the movie theatres. To cater to the male audience not just any kind of popular movie but movies that had as central theme a lot of sex and/or violence, better yet a combination of both in one storyline. So the covers of these magazines like Cinesex, Bigfilm, Cinestop... were always centered around a very sexual situation mostly women in some kind of sexual act with a lot of T's and A's showing. And what sold the most copies for publishers was a lesbian act on the cover. Nothing beats two women going for it! These photo fumetti's were always taken from the negative print of the movie in black and white, even if it was a color movie. To further the story these photo's were highlighted with word balloons.

Marisa Mell has never been an actress in a photo romance novel for publishers like Lancio but indirectly some of her movies from the early 70's became cine photo novels like her 1971 movie "...dopo chi che uccide il maschio e lo divora" or better known in English as "Marta" with then real time lover and co-star Stephen Boyd in the november 1971 issue of Bigfilm. Stephen Boyd was at that time still best known as the counterpart of Charlton Heston in the homo erotic movie "Ben Hur" but his career in the 70's was dwindling very fast so he had to make movies abroad like Spain or Italy to keep the much needed money flowing. Notice that Stephen Boyd is credited on the cover of this Bigfilm issue as "Stephen Body". Comparing the cover of this cine photo magazine with the orginal Spanish movie poster the difference could not have been bigger!