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Showing posts with label Nackt über Leichen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nackt über Leichen. Show all posts

Saturday, June 18, 2011

La Diabolica Spia

Sometimes other Marisa Mell-fans ask me what my favorite movie poster is of a Marisa Mell movie. Well there are several movie posters that are in my top 10 like the mega posters for "Una Sull'Altra", both versions, the black one and the green one, where Marisa Mell and co-star Elza Martinelli are both depicted in stunning art work and very life like or the giallo version of the movie poster for the excellent "La Encadenada" with another beautiful rendition of Marisa Mell in a vortex of fear. But when you ask me what is in my opinion the best set of movie posters and lobby cards then it has to be the Italian locadine of the 1966 cold war spy movie "City of Fear". This set of movie posters and lobby cards has it all. Stunning art work of Marisa Mell on two of the three movie posters, vibrant colors, action scenes, vintage cars and in the vein of the James Bond craze from that moment a mega gun with a silencer. Can you ask for more? Although the movie was shot in black and white the lobby cards are all re-colored in lively colors almost all depicting a beautiful Marisa Mell as she appeared in the movie! Simply the best set!

Friday, April 17, 2009

How "Marisa Mell" became "Edwige Fenech"!

Back in the days before the Internet, fans of Euro Cult movies like Giallo, Eurospy and Spaghetti Westerns... often had a hard time to find more info about their beloved movies, directors and stars. They were often viewed as trash, B-Z movies or whatever kind of name they came up with to put on them! Thankfully some hard core fans in Europe found it their duty to write and publish about them by publishing fan magazines like the still excellent "Cine Zine Zone" (1978-2003) in France by the sadly missed Pierre Charles, who published 136 issues of his magazine (with one special issue entirely dedicated to Marisa Mell in his series "Les Déesses du Cinema du Quartier")
or the British publication "Giallo Pages" by John Martin, known as one of the überfans of the Italian movies and his love for everthing giallo.The first issue of Giallo Pages was published in 1993 with cover date March/April/May. It had among other items an interview with Dario Argento, Michele Soavi, David Warbeck... and because Marisa Mell had died a year before an obituary called "Goodbye Marisa Mell". The cover of this issue was quite shocking composing two movie stills "Antropophagus" with George Eastman and "L'orribile segreto del Dr. Hichcock" with Barbara Steele. In the lower right hand corner you got a little daring photo of a semi nude Marisa Mell from her best movie for many fans "Una Sull'Altra" by Lucio Fulci.

Publishing a magazine of any kind is a hard business because it asks a lot of time, money, creativity and endurance from the publisher or editor to keep on publishing. Not many people were able to copy the gigantic work of Pierre Charles with his magazine Cine Zine Zone. So John Martin ceased to publish his magazine after a 6 issue run in May of 1999 (Cover: a white dressed Diabolik). Giallo Pages had not a big print run but had excellent articles so many fans, especially in the USA, who had missed the first issues were looking for these hard to find issues to complete their collection in a pre-Ebay time when instant gratification did not exist like it does today. American publisher "Draculina Publishing" took the opportunity in 1996 and published an American version of the first issue of Giallo Pages. The publisher did not copy the original British issue to an American version but took some liberties for the American market!

They dropped the editoral page together with the Giallo Pages logo. Three illustrations from the content page were deleted. Pages 9, 11 and 15 have differences in illustrations than the original. Page 43 with the Marisa Mell obituary is missing completely. The "Trauma" back cover is replaced by a "Danger Diabolik" photo. On the cover Marisa Mell with her breasts in full is replaced by Edwige Fenech covering her breasts. The publisher forgot on the American version to remove the reference to the Marisa Mell orbituary called "Marisa Mell Remembered". Why did the publisher change Marisa Mell to Edwige Fenech? Probably because the photo of Marisa Mell is quite daring with her arms in the air and her breast in full view for an American market at that time. Or maybe he tought that Edwige Fenech was more known to the American Euro Cult fans than Marisa Mell who had not made many films since the 80's and had almost slipt into obscurity. Who knows! Fact is that only issue # 1 got reprinted.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Una sull'altra - Nackt über Leichen - German Lobby Cards













People who love European cult movies from the 60's and 70's, like I do, are always on the look out for the most complete version of their beloved movies!It is in the blood and can be an obsession! It has to be the total uncut version of the film with all the scenes complete down to the last second. That being said it often happens that it is not always possible to get the complete version of a movie, whatever you might wish. Bummer! A lot of it has to do with the way the movie was presented to the audience in the first place. Una sull'altra in Italy or Nackt über Leichen in Germany or Perversion Story in the USA had three production companies situated in Italy, Spain and France. So each producer tailored this movie in accordance to the legal rules of their country or to the wishes of their film board. The end result is that you get different versions of the same movie in different territories and later on different versions on different dvd labels, all pretending to have the definitive ultimate version of the movie. For example the American version was longer, but censored in several places, while some European versions had much expository footage removed while retaining sexual material cut from the U.S. release. A fully uncut version of "Una sull'altra" runs in the neighborhood of 103 minutes. Another good example is the above poster. The left hand poster is the original poster that came out during the original distribution of the movie. It is a gorgeous poster, drawn by a master painter who can draw beautiful life like faces! An art and job that is lost these days! The right hand poster is a present day manipulation of the same poster to make a cover for the DVD-R release of the movie. Problem is that they are calling their movie the uncut version ("Ungeschnittene Fassung") but untill you see the movie you are not sure what you bought! It is still a risk! And please, do not trust the running time on the back of the cover!