Italy

Synopsis
Spoiler
Here’s an interesting Italian/German co-production, full of subjects from 1968 protest, recalling the two infamous “bikini thrillers”,”Interrabang” and “Top sensation”, in which three young beauties (Rosemarie Dexter, Doris Kunstmann and Laura Troschel), alluring their male friend (Bernard De Vries), embark on a journey in a luxury yacht around the coast of Yugoslavia, plenty of bedhopping, nudity and the usual hijinks occur before things take a sinister turn when they decide to lock themselves in a cabin and dose up on LSD
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Synopsis:
Recently-divorced fashion designer Julia (Faye Dunaway) arrives in Venice from the U.S. and meets handsome race car driver Valerio (Marcello Mastroianni) at the airport. While she initially brushes off his advances, she soon has a change of heart and invites him to spend a few days with her at the villa where she’ll be staying. After several days divided between lovemaking and sightseeing, a party at Julia’s home turns into an orgy, and Valerio decides that he’s bitten off more than he can chew and leaves her. However, Valerio soon learns that there’s a reason for Julia’s reckless abandon — she is suffering from a terminal illness and has a very short time to live. Faye Dunaway and Marcello Mastroianni were romantically involved at the time Amanti was in production, though little of their personal chemistry appears onscreen. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie GuideRead More »

Liv Ullman stars as real-life Russian Jewish dissident and astronomer Ida Nudel, who was denied permission to emigrate and then sent to a labor camp after protesting in Moscow in 1980. Starting off as a romance, turning into a grim political thriller, and then veering into tragedy, director Mauro Bolognini’s melancholy film offers another one of the director’s portraits of strong-willed women who are persecuted by history. The film isn’t particularly well-known, and it’s almost never seen nowadays. But any Ennio Morricone fans will immediately recognize the film’s haunting score, one of the composer’s greatest works.Read More »

SYNOPSIS
Entertaining fantasy-based peplum, starring American actor Roger Browne as the God of War.

The king of Telbia defeats an African army through the intervention of the war god Mars. Remaining on Earth, Mars falls in love with the human girl Daphne, but she is forced to become a priestess in the temple of Venus. Mars tries to free her, but falls under the spell of Venus, who keeps him prisoner. Daphne, meanwhile, having violated the sanctity of the temple, is condemned to be devoured by a monster.

Director Marcello Baldi composes his shots to make full use of the Totalscope image, making this picture a must in widescreen. Highlights include the opening battle between the Greek and African armies and a Little Shoppe of Horrors-type plant monster to whom maidens are sacrificed.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘Necchi (a bar owner), Perozzi (a journalist), Melandri (an architect) and Mascetti (a broken nobleman) live in Florence. They have been friends since their youngest years and spend every free moment together organizing complex and terrible jokes to all the people they meet, or just wandering around Tuscany. One of these crazy trips ends up in the hospital run by military-like Professor Sassaroli. Melandri falls in love with his wife, and steals her from the husband, much to the delight of Sassaroli himself. The relationship won’t last but the Professor becomes the fifth member of the team of friends, and jokes get even more complicated and powerful.’
– Alessio F. Bragadini
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Quote:
Tinto Brass somewhat reigns in the more comic and explicit aspects of his brand of erotica for this well-made tale of a couple in post-war Italy trying to recapture the magic of their wartime romances with other lovers. Fred (blues musician Andy J. Forest, who did a handful of Italian movies in the late eighties), an American soldier now working for UNESCO assessing the state of Roman art after the war, reconnects with a prostitute Rosa (Francesca Dellera) while former British nurse Jennifer (Nicola Warren) waits apparently in vain to meet up with Ciro (Luigi Laezza), a waiter/pimp who pursued her years before. Jennifer’s part of the film is dominated by flashbacks and tormented narration as she professes her love for her absent Italian. Fred’s part of the film has he and Rosa on the road with his attempts to relive their whore-client dalliances complicated by Rosa’s wanting more from him.Read More »

Clara Manni (Lucia Bosé, so good in Antonioni’s A Story of a Love Affair), a Milan shop girl, is discovered on the street and used for a bit part in a movie. That single part brings her immediate celebrity, and with the coaxing of her producer, Gianni, she becomes a screen sex symbol. She has great success in several sex comedy vehicles, but Gianni decides to push her into the world of the art film in order to attain artistic legitimacy and respect. She never wishes for this, since money is never an issue to her, but she is pushed head first into a production of Joan of Arc. The film is brutally attacked by the critics, and Clara’s dignity and identity are thrown into question in the harrowing final shot.Read More »

SYNOPSIS
A fetishistic killer is on the loose, a madman in a balaclava who enjoys murdering young women (and occasionally men, if they happen to get in the way). When two university students drop dead, Jane (Suzy Kendall) and her three friends, Daniela (Tina Aumont), Katia (Angela Covello) and Ursula (Carla Brait), decide to high-tail it to a villa in the countryside until the whole thing blows over. Unbeknownst to them, however, the killer has decided to tag along and proceeds to stalk them before launching into a blood-thirsty orgy of death. It feels great to be a student!Read More »

Quote:
Adua and Friends (Italian: Adua e le compagne) is a 1960 Italian film directed by Antonio Pietrangeli with a collaborative screenplay by the film’s director together with Ruggero Maccari, Ettore Scola and Tullio Pinelli. The plot concerns the efforts of four prostitutes to eke out a living after being thrown out of their jobs by enactment of the Merlin Law, which shut down Italy’s legalized brothels.Read More »