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!

... and the photo novella from Lancio!

In this magazine clip from the mid '60's Marisa Mell is reading a magazine called "Sogno" meaning "dream" in Engish. The title of the article is called "Il fotoromanzo e' uno svago sano e legittimo" meaning "the photo novella is a healty and legitimate way of relaxation", which I find a rather strange title for an article. But on second thought it is not! Why? Like almost all pop culture items like comics, pulp novels, televison series, soap opera's... what the general audience likes to relax with after a long day of work, another part of the population had for a very long time a very low estime for. Very often some kind of professor or scholar was behind a certain train of thoughts. The most famous case is probably in America professor Fredric Wertham in 1954 and his attack against the horror comics from publisher EC Comics which in his opinion was "A Secuction of the Innocent". Although more than decade later reading a fotoromanzo in Italy was probably not a naturally thing for a women to do in public who liked to dream away with her romantic heroes and heroines. So this explaines why Marisa Mell is reading this magazine "Sogno" from publisher Lancio and the article is declaring that nothing is wrong when you like to read those kind of stories. Italy had in the mid 60's a very strong pop culture output with fumetti's like Diabolik, Tex, Akim... for the general male audience and Lucifera, Jacula, Bianca Neve... for the porn-horror male fan.

Women on the other hand had their romantic novels and instead of fumetti, being drawn comics, they had their photo novella's with romantic themes. The first photo novella was published in Italy on May 8th 1947 and was called "Il mio sogno" or "My dream". The first issue was an adaption of a novel and due to the success of the photo novella it became quickly a weekly series with in the beginning also adaptations of succesfull movies like "Sissi" with Romy Schneider and later specially written scenario's. The big boom in the photo novella genre came in the sixties with the rise of publisher "Lancio".

Lancio was founded in 1936 in Rome as a publicity company but it's fame started in 1960 when they decided to also publish photo novella's. What was new about them was that they told their stories in a dynamic way, that they used very beautiful men and women as actors and actresses and that the themes of their stories were very modern and nothing was sacred to them. The success was huge and there was no stopping them. Due to the success of their publications with names like Charme, Marina, Letizia... they even went to Paris or New York to shoot their stories and did not stayed in Rome all the time.

At the hight of the photo novella in 1976 all the publishers in Italy sold more than 8 million copies a month and Lancio sold more than 5 million of that number. Another aspect of the succes of the photo novella was the fact that they were the breeding ground for new actors and actresses, often on the brink of breaking in in the movie or television business. A lot of famous actors and actresses today started in the photo novella in Italy like Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida and later Ornella Mutti and even genre stars like Franco Gasparri (Mark Il poliziotto), Laura Antonelli, Luc Merenda, Kirk Morris, Ivan Rassimov... and many others made their first steps in showbizz on the stage of the photo novella.

Today the photo novella is still alive in Italy and around the world, especially in the Latino countries. There are now only a few publishers and they are struggling to keep their print run to a profitable level. Thanks to their loyal followers, especially women, the publications are still a steady seller but not anymore the hugh numbers from the 70's. What still is a fact is that they are a stepping stone to a movie and television career. And even the opposite is happening: due to the big succes of reality shows some of their participants like Gilles Rocca were able to cross over into the photo novella and will ultimately thanks to his acting talent and charisma make it to movies and television and so the circle closes for him.

Other photo novella actors and actresses will stay as long as they are wanted by the publishers in the phantasy realm of the photo novella like Francesca R. Filone with occasionally trips to other mass media but she will always come back to her first job! Others will leave forever and start a job outside the mass media.

To close, Marisa Mell by my knowledge, never acted in a photo novella. She knew probably a lot of beginning photo novella stars because they were all living in Rome and some of them worked with her in her movies like Marina Giordana in "La belva col mitra". What did happen is that some of her movies like "Danger: Diabolik!" were made into a photo novella but that is another story.