Born on 29 December 1937 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, Barbara [Winifred] Steele studied art at the Chelsea Art School and in Paris at the Sorbonne, even as she worked in film. Signed by the Rank Organisation as an art student, she began appearing in minor film and TV roles in the late 1950s. Her contract was sold to 20th Century Fox in 1960, and soon thereafter she abandoned her contract for Italy, where she became famous primarily for her numerous, mostly Gothic horror movies, including some classics. By 1969, she was married to the American screenwriter James Poe (4 Oct 1921 – 24 Jan 1980) and living in California. The couple had one child, Jonathan, and divorced in 1973 (some sources say 1978). Her acting jobs became less and her parts smaller, and she began producing television projects — highly successful ones. She hasn't been seen onscreen in a "real" film since 2014.
Also go here:
The Horrible Dr. Hichcock
(1962, dir. "Robert Hampton")
As everyone in the know knows, "Robert Hampton" was actually the Italo trash master Riccardo Freda (24 Feb 1909 – 20 Dec 1999), the man (mostly) behind Italy's first sound horror movie, I Vampiri (1956 / trailer below).
Trailer to
I Vampiri (1956):
"Julyan Perry", the credited scriptwriter, is actually a guy named Ernesto Gastaldi. Scriptwriter Ernesto Gastaldi's oeuvre of scripts and projects is equally noteworthy, if not juicier than Freda's; among his early projects is a tacky fave of ours (written as "Julian Berry"), Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory (1961). Appropriately, the movies Gastaldi took part in or made featuring his wife, Italo "sex kitten" Mara Maryl (7 Apr 1939 – 18 Sept 2021) — Libido (1965 / trailer), Notturno con grida (1981 / full film), La linga spiaggia fredda a.k.a. The Lonely Violent Beach (1971 / music), Cheers to Cyanide (1968 / full film), and Sergio Martino's The Scorpion with Two Tails (1982 / full film) and The Great Alligator (1979 / trailer) — tend to be prime, exploitive and fun Eurotrash. That's Maryl below, not from The Horrible Dr Hichcock, a film in which she had no part at all.
So, after appearing in a remake of a Hitchcock film (The 39 Steps [1959]) and an episode of the Great Master's TV series — see Part II (1960-61) regarding both projects — Barbara Steele plays an actual "Hichcock", namely: Cinzia [a.k.a. Cynthia] Hichcock, the wife of the movie's titular Horrible Dr. Hichcock.
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"Funny thing is this film is most certainly a loving tribute to the man who invented modern cinema, [and] who also had a deep, dark perverse nature like the main character in the film. Yes, they both have the same name, sort of. LaMort always wondered if they spelt his name wrong in the title to prevent and type of lawsuits change [sic] by the insanely dark nature of this film, but everyone knows that Rebecca (1940 / trailer) and Vertigo (1958 / trailer) are about sleeping with dead. It is like Gastaldi and Freda were trying to show everyone Hitchcock was a pervert [...]! Yes Freda's Dr Hichcock film has added a weird, new dimension to post modernism and subversion to the cinematic landscape. [WIP]"
Trailer to
The Horrible Dr. Hichcock:
"The outrageous central concern of The Horrible Dr. Hichcock has never been considered appropriate material for any film openly advertised and exhibited to the public, horror or otherwise. That a film about the frustrated passions of a necrophiliac could even be released in 1962 is a censorial mystery in its own right — or, perhaps a clear testament to the way horror films were officially ignored on every cultural level back then. Did censors perhaps not know what was going on? Did they bother to even watch the film? [DVD Talk]"
"Supposedly, Steele took ten days off from filming Fellini's 8½ (1963) to make this movie. The Horrible Dr. Hichcock premiered in Italy in August 1962, but didn't hit screens stateside until Dec 1964, where it was released in a re-cut 76-minute version by the independent distributor Sigma III Corporation on a double feature with Jess Franco's first horror movie, The Awful Dr. Orloff (1962 / trailer below), which is best described as an artless, gory and sexed-up retelling of Georges Franju's artful, tragic and gory Eyes Without A Face (1960 / trailer).
Trailer to
The Awful Dr. Orloff:
The plot of The Horrible Dr. Hichcock: "In Victorian era London, the accomplished Dr Hichcock (Robert Flemyng [3 Jan 1912 – 22 May 1995] of The Body Stealers [1969]) excels in his profession where he is developing new medicine and surgical procedures, but he has a dark side – and it is a very dark side — for Dr Hichcock enjoys practicing necrophilia. At home in his large mansion he creeps down stairs at night and enters a locked room. There, his beautiful wife (Maria Teresa Vianello) lies waiting looking weak and frail. He kisses and caresses her body and then injects her with a serum. She reacts badly to it and convulses and dies. Heart-broken, Dr Hichcock leaves his long standing career at the hospital and movies away from London, leaving his house in the hands of his maid (Harriet White Medin [14 Mar 1914 – 20 May 2005] of Blood Beach [1980, with Lavelle Roby], Death Race 2000 [1975 / trailer], The Murder Clinic [1966 / trailer], Blood and Black Lace [1964 / trailer] and more). Ten years pass and Dr Hichcock arrives back in London and returns to his new home. The ten years have been kind to him and he has with him a new wife — the beautiful Cynthia (Barbara Steele). [...] Strange things are afoot in the house and Cynthia fears that the ghost of his previous wife walks its corridors. To make matters worse she cannot escape her presence because the previous wife's pictures adorn the walls and her pet black cat is never far away, and on top of that, Dr Hichcock has begun to change for the worse. [...] [Psychotic Cinema]"
"A film about necrophilia must have caused quite the uproar in 1962! On the other hand, [...] the subject of necrophilia is probably outside of most people's comfort zone regardless of the decade. [...] Oozing with atmosphere and no holds barred loathsomeness; this gorgeous gothic tale is a wonderfully twisted delight! The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock is a creepy and utterly captivating bit of celluloid. [Gore Girl]"
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"'I adored Riccardo Freda,' says Steele, 'he was prone to magnificent tantrums, which I really appreciated. I felt like we were in an opera. He had diabolical energy but also humour.' [BFI]"
"The most terrifying monster is our neighbor cutting his wife's throat, am I right? The theory behind my film L'orribile segreto del dr. Hichcock / The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) is this: anybody can marry a lunatic, a raving mad person, a monster... It was a shame that L'orribile segreto del dr. Hichcock had censorship problems. [...] You see, back in those days they used to cut a film for a half-seen thigh or for a low-cut neckline, and L'orribile segreto del dr. Hichcock dared to deal with the theme of necrophilia, as the protagonist was a doctor who is in love with corpses. So the censors cut the most explicit things like the doctor kissing the corpses. As a result, the film ended up being a bit obscure, because it wasn't clear that the doctor was a necrophile. That's why I wanted an opening scene showing the murder in the cemetery: it's not a film about grave-robbing, it's a film about necrophilia. But with all the cuts that were made, the logic behind the film was a bit lost. [Riccardo Freda @ Cinepugno]"
Il capitano di ferro
(1962, dir. Sergio Grieco)
"Barbara Steele wanted to break away from the horror mold, to avoid being typecast for the rest of her life, and her first attempt was Il Capitano di Ferro / Rampage of Evil / Revenge of the Mercenaries (1962) [...], but this film came out at a time when Italian adventure flicks in period settings came a dime a dozen, so the movie failed to leave a lasting impression with the audience. [re(Search)]"
The low-rent director Sergio Grieco (13 Jan 1917 – 30 Mar 1982) is not exactly remembered today, as his films seldom made waves; his most famous credit is probably as one of the screenwriters of Enzo G. Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards (1978 / trailer). That said, he did on occasion regurgitate some fun trash, for example: Beast with a Gun (1977 / opening credits), The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine (1974 / trailer) and Argoman the Fantastic Superman (1967 / trailer).
Revenge of the Mercenaries and/or The Iron Captain and/or Il capitano di ferro is one of Barbara Steele's least-prestigious projects and she has minimal screen time, despite top billing and poster presence. One can indeed imagine that she took the role not for the challenge or importance, but truly as an attempt to prevent the typecasting as a horror actress that she was already experiencing...
In their hefty tome Italian Sword and Sandal Films, Ray Kinnard and Tony Crnkovich give a one-line plot description: "Hero Furio (Gustavo Rojo [5 Sept 1923 – 22 Apr 2017] of The Valley of Gwangi [1969]) returns to his village only to find that it has been ravaged by German invaders."
A scene from the film —
recognize Barbara?
As virtually no one has bothered to write about Revenge of the Mercenaries online, most sites resort (sans credit) to the same review as we are, at imdb, where way back on 5 February 2013, Peplum Paradise wrote: "This is one of those obscure ones where an Internet search will leave you none the wiser plot-wise. It opens with Furio (Gustavo Rojo), the 'Captain of Iron' of the original title, returning to his village to find it burned to the ground by German usurper Walter von Rauchwitz (opera singer Mario Petri [21 Jan 1922 – 26 Jan 1985]), who seems to be on a one-man mission to conquer 16th-century Italy and assassinate the Pope. While taking his own sweet time getting revenge between having a good time in his favourite tavern, Furio also finds time to romance both gypsy Douchka (Susan Terry*) and von Rauchwitz's fiancée Floriana (Barbara Steele, whose screen time doesn't really justify her second billing), his rather willing prisoner. Petri gets to wear some fabulous designer leather wear and has a really protracted death scene while Barbara gets ravished by a hunchback — what's not to like! [...] Sadly not some undiscovered classic, but it is good light-hearted fun and the pace keeps up throughout, so it's certainly deserving of a better fate than the obscurity it currently enjoys."
* This "Susan Terry" — that's her above — otherwise known as the wife of the director, Sergio Grieco, was born Teresa Terrone, the name she used in her first film, Sergio Grieco's Lo spadaccino misterioso / The Mysterious Swordsman (1956 / full film). Contrary to the misinformation all over the net, Terry cum Terrone is not the Italian actress Silvana Jachino (2 Feb 1916 – 28 Aug 2004), who was married to an unknown man named Guido Cingoli and who did not appear Sergio Grieco's Caesar Against the Pirates (1962 / full film) as "Susan Terry".
More Ms. Steele in the film:
8½
(1963, dir. Federico Fellini)
"I really have nothing to say, but I want to say it anyway."
Guido (Marcello Mastroianni)
What nowadays would be the title to a porn film is actually that of Federico Fellini's early masterpiece and last B&W film. The title, 8½, represents not length but how many movies Fellini himself considered he had directed up to that point: six full-length movies, three short segments in two "compilation" films (.5 a segment), and this film itself, make 8½. Barbara Steel plays Gloria Morin, Guido's much younger new girlfriend (as if a wife and mistress aren't enough).
Allen Arkush at Trailers from Hell
on 8½:
"After all these years, just like Citizen Kane (1941 / trailer), the film 8½ is often compared to, it is still a gorgeous piece of work. It is funny and sad and sexy and naughty and breathtaking, and there is nothing out there quite like it. This was made before postmodern cinema was à la mode, and it is all the better for it. The focus is not on connected texts in film or literature. Instead, the film looks inward, at its main character, a director named Guido Anselmi, played by Marcello Mastroianni (28 Sep 1924 – 19 Dec 1996), and by extension at Fellini, who treats the ennui of his character with droll asides yet evokes real empathy in the viewer. [New Celluloid]"
Trailer without commentary:
"Every director's dream is to make a film as good, or even half as good, as Federico Fellini's 8½, but every director's nightmare is to have the events of 8½ happen to them. 8½ horrifyingly personifies the dreamlike-state and insanity that plagues a director [Marcello Mastroianni as Federico Fellini Guido Anselmi] who desperately needs a comeback film in order to revitalize his career. He's constantly berated and nitpicked by a snotty critic (Jean Rougeul [22 Oct 1905 – 30 May 1978] of The Possessed [1965 / trailer], Death Laid an Egg [1968 / trailer] and Naked Violence [1969 / clip]), while succumbing to prolific visions involving a woman (Claudia Cardinale [15 Apr 1938 – 23 Sept 2025] of Once Upon a Time in the West [1968 / trailer]) he sees as instrumental to the success of his film. On top of that, his estranged wife (Anouk Aimée [27 Apr 1932 – 18 Jun 2024]) reenters the picture at an inconvenient time, and his mistress (Sandra Milo [11 Mar 1933 – 29 Jan 2024]) pesters him for time he cannot give to her. [Steve Pulaski]"
First three minutes of 8½:
"Along with La Dolce Vita (1960 / trailer), this film personifies what people associate with the term 'Felliniesque.' Buxom women bouncing across the screen, eccentric people gallivanting through fields and carnivalesque settings, and bizarre fantasy sequences pepper this sprawling foray into the mind of a director unsure of how to progress with his next film. Of course, it's no secret that this subject was exactly the problem Fellini himself had at the time, making this an elaborate game of mirrors in which Fellini and his cinematic alter ego become difficult to separate. Everyone involved operates at the top of their form here, from all of the women (who seem to appreciate being at the center of Fellini's attention when his camera turns to them) to Nino Rota's buoyant score, easily one of his best. [Mondo Digital]"
As everyone loves the unnecessary, 8½ was adapted as a Broadway musical called Nine, which in turn was made into a pointless film in 2009.
Nine:
Barbara Steele once said of Fellini, "He'd have a Sicilian psychic on the set who looked like Rasputin and who would break eggs into the glass. The psychic would look into the glass and say: 'You can't shoot today.' Meanwhile, there are a hundred people in fabulous white costumes and the producer is going berserk. [The Guardian]"
The Hours of Love
(1963, dir. Luciano Salce)
And after Fellini and the classic that is 8½, a film remembered by everyone, Steele's next role was in a movie now hardly remembered at all and generally unavailable.
In Le ore dell'amore, which is the original Italian title, she plays a secondary woman, the "real flesh of a bipolar" Leila. She also made it onto the original posters, both in name and image: she (obviously enough) is the blue cleavage to the right.
Title track to
Le ore dell'amore:
Released in Italy in 1963, The Hours of Love hit the USA (NYC to be exact) on 3 Sept 1965, whereupon Andreas Sarris wrote at the Village Voice that just "as Hollywood films are occasionally very artistic, foreign films can occasionally be fun. The Hour of Love is the kind of good-bad movie that only Hollywood is supposed to have the knack for making. [...] As in The Fascist (1961 / colorized scene) and Crazy Desire (1962 / trailer), Salce is at times the closest thing to an Italian Lubitsch in the graceful discipline that enables his players to shift from near-farce to near tragedy without losing their lightness. [...] There is no law against liking bad foreign movies."
Le Ore dell'Amore –
Ugo Tognazzi (Gianni) meets Barbara Steele (Leila):
Director Luciano Salce (25 Sep 1922 – 17 Dec 1989), "the closest thing to an Italian Lubitsch", "was an Italian film director, comedian, television host, producer, actor and lyricist. [...] As a writer of pop music, he used the pseudonym Pilantra. During World War II, he was a prisoner in Germany. He later worked for several years in Brazil." If The Hours of Love is not all that remembered, his 1975 movie Fantozzi (trailer) is a cult classic in Italy... far more so, at least, than his movie about a man with talking penis, Lo e lui (1973 / full film). The last was remade in the USA in 1988 as Me and Him (trailer).
More music from
Le ore dell'amore – Jazzato Twist:
Once upon a time, the AFI had a plot description, without any reference to Barbara Steele's Leila: "Gianni (Ugo Tognazzi [23 Mar 1922 – 27 Oct 1990] of The Seventh Floor [1967, with Janine Reynaud], Barbarella [1968 / trailer], La Cage aux Follies [1978 / trailer], and more) and Maretta (Emmanuelle Riva [24 Feb 1927 – 27 Jan 2017] of The Tribulations of Balthazar Kober [1988 / scene] and I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse [1973 / trailer]) are lovers who believe that marriage is the natural culmination of their affair. No sooner are they married, however, than conflicts arise; their tastes prove to be far different than they had realized, and their friends continually discuss the couple's problems. For Gianni the excitement of courtship is gone, and Maretta begins to sense that she is no longer the center of her husband's attention. When Maretta is unable to become pregnant, they quarrel and Gianni moves out, taking up with an old bachelor buddy. He finds that he misses Maretta's companionship, but things are no different when he returns to her. Eventually, they decide to separate, conceding that their arrangement before marriage was best."
Full movie in Italian:
The Hour of Love's coscribes, Franco Castellano (20 Jun 1925 – 28 Dec 1999) and Giuseppe Moccia (22 Jun 1933 – 20 Aug 2006), worked on more than 100 films together, including the intellectually edifying classic that is Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966 / trailer).
More music from
Le ore dell'amore – Sogno
The music was written by the Brazilian master guitarist Luiz Bonfa (17 Oct 1922 – 12 Jan 2001), who some years earlier had supplied the music to Black Orpheus (1959 / trailer) and whose music is often sampled... perhaps you might recognize the song below (not from the movie) from one-hit-wonder Gotye's Somebody that I Used to Know.
Seville:
The Ghost
(1963, dir. Riccardo Freda)
"Lo spettro [The Ghost] was born to exploit the success of L'orribile segreto del dr. Hichcock. I wrote the screenplay in one day, all in one go. I shot Lo spettro in twelve days and I am happy about it. Barbara Steele was great with me: a real lamb. [Riccardo Freda @ Cinepugno]"
Trailer to
The Ghost:
Released in Italy on 30 March 1963, Lo Spettro reached the UK almost a year later in February 1964 as The Ghost. A.k.a. The Spectre and Lo Spettro del Dr. Hichcock, although the movie features a Dr Hichcock (this time played by Elio Jotta [24 Feb 1912 – 9 Jan 1996], credited as Leonard G. Ellio), and although Barbara Steele plays his wife, Margaret Hichcock, the characters have different first names and the movie itself is not a sequel to — and has nothing to do with — Freda's earlier gothic with Barbara, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962, see above).
"Freda's The Ghost (1963) [obviously inspired by Les Diaboliques (1955 / trailer below)] was scripted, shot and cut in a month, on a dare. In this and in his The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962), Steele is married to a Dr Hichcock, but it's a different Dr Hichcock in each. And the films lack even internal continuity: you could surely splice them together at random so the characters would glide from one dungeon to the next, with no one the wiser. 'I know,' agrees their star, 'and I would wear the same clothes in several movies. There wasn't a single movie that took more than ten days to shoot. And we had very heavy, difficult equipment then, so it was quite an accomplishment for the crew, working 18-hour days. We would be so impoverished that if we didn't have a dolly we'd just pull the camera on a carpet.' [BFI]"
Les Diaboliques:
Paghat the Ratgirl has the plot: "In a castle in Scotland, in 1910, the physician Dr. Hitchcock (Elio Jotta / Leonard G. Ellio) is crippled & knows he hasn't long to live. He convinces his colleague Dr. Charles Livingstone (Peter Baldwin) to attempt a radical cure involving administration of deadly poisons followed by the antidote. John's wife Margaret (Steele) is secretly having an affair with Charles. She talks her lover into not administering the antidote, and soon John is dead & entombed. Almost immediately, ghostly occurrences begin, harassing the murderous couple. Margaret becomes increasingly paranoid about her lover until she finally breaks & goes psycho on Charles. The climax is packed with gothic grotesquerie, none of it inventive, though justice at least is meted out to each & everyone involved. [...]."
"Lo Spettro / Lo Spettro del Dr. Hichcock / The Ghost is a sequel to Freda's earlier masterpiece The Horrible Dr. Hichcock in name only and is inferior on a quality level to the earlier movie — but it's still a good shocker/murder mystery with Steele's having her trademark malicious streak to it, and the surprise ending contains so many (totally plausible) plottwists it's going to make your head spin. The finale alone, which leaves Barbara Steele totally paralyzed but maniacally laughing all the same is almost worth watching the movie alone, but the rest of the movie is also decent genre fare that shouldn't disappoint. [(re)Search]"
Another actor in The Ghost returning from The Horrible Dr Hichcock was Harriet Medin (14 Mar 1914 – 20 May 2005), who plays the "conniving" housekeeper in both movies ("Catherine Wood" in the former, Martha in the latter). A name seldom lauded, Harriet Medin nevertheless can be found in some fine Eurotash productions, such as the a wasted life fave The Murder Clinic (1966 / trailer below) and Mario Bava's Black Sabbath (1963 / trailer) and Blood and Black Lace (1964 / trailer), as well as some fun American trash, like Death Race 2000 (1975 / trailer) and Blood Beach (1980 / trailer, with Lavelle Roby).
The Murder Clinic:
Peter Baldwin, found in movies ranging from I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958 / trailer) to The Weekend Murders (1970 / trailer) ended his days as a highly busy TV director. Elio Jotta's relatively sparse filmography includes being the lead bad guy in the Reg Park peplum, Maciste in King Solomon's Mines (1964 / full film), a sub-standard entry of the genre featuring Park's always exceptional body (below, not from this film)...
"[...] Anyone who enjoys Mario Bava's moody, languorous gothics from the same era will find much to like about The Ghost. While it's true that Freda lacks Bava's visual flair, he has a similarly firm command of atmosphere in his own way, and is just as good at wringing a claustrophobic air of sinister secrecy out of a period setting. Even the absence of The Horrible Dr. Hichock's attention-grabbing necrophilia angle is partially made up for by this movie's much more effective use of Barbara Steele. The role of the gothic heroine is so tightly circumscribed that an actress with Steele's vibrancy will almost inevitably be wasted on it. Far better to cast her [as here] as a character with a pronounced bad streak, and give her more to do than faint, scream, and be rescued. [1000 Misspent Hours]"
"Frida's ho-hum scripting plods, but The Ghost is salvaged by Steele's malevolent magnetism (Raffaele Masciocchi's camera swoons over her). Flavorfully-filmed, unnerving vignettes include an animated wheelchair descending the stairs (prefiguring The Changeling [1980 / trailer]), a nightie-clad Steele wielding a razor, a scheming feline Medin ascending the stairs, flaming annihilation, and a magical finale with betrayals galore. The Ghost is probably the only film in history that has you rooting for a murderess in a fur coat. [Alfred Eaker]"
The Ghost —
the full movie:
And, a contrarian: "The Ghost does offer up a few chilling sequences, including one where the family maid, Catherine (Harriet Medin), who is also a novice medium, inadvertently channels John's spirit from the great beyond (he does nothing but call out Margaret's name). Unfortunately, scenes like this are few and far between, with most of the film's running time taken up by the mystery of the missing jewels. Barbara Steele does manage to liven things up a bit towards the end (when she becomes the movie's primary focus), and some of its twists and turns are effective, but overall, The Ghost is a plodding, occasionally tedious motion picture. [2,500 Movie Challenge]"
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When The Ghost finally made it stateside in 1965 (!), it was released as part of a double feature with the German Edgar Wallace krimi, The Dead Eyes of London (1961, trailer below, with Joachim Fuchsberger), the first of a total of 13 movies of the Rialto Wallace productions to be directed by Alfred Vohrer.
In the movie credits, most Italian names were anglicized or replaced with English-sounding pseudonyms. Director Riccardo Freda, for example, became Robert Hampton, and the soundtrack was credited to a Franck Wallace. Generally, as at the imdb, that pseudonym is credited as that of Franco Mannino (25 Apr 1924 – 1 Feb 2005), the man who scored 1953's Beat the Devil. Fact is, however, that while Mannino did supply the first score, Freda didn't like it and replaced it with a new score composed by the great Francesco De Masi (11 Jan 1930 – 6 Nov 2005) — but the pseudonym remained the same.
The original music to
The Ghost:
The Ghost is known to have been "remade" (poorly) at least once in India, for example as Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche (1972).
Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche —
full movie, in Hindu:
Un tentativo sentimentale
(1963, dirs. Pasquale Festa Campanile & Massimo Franciosa)
Released in English-speaking areas as A Sentimental Attempt, this romantic dramedy was the combined directorial debut of two journeyman scriptwriters who had often worked together, Pasquale Festa Campanile (28 July 1927 – 25 February 1986) and Massimo Franciosa (23 July 1924 – 30 March 1998).
Franciosa directed an occasional movie thereafter, but remained primarily active as a scriptwriter, lending his writing talents to movies such as Lucio Fulci's One on Top of the Other (1969 / trailer), Umberto Lenzi's Spasmo (1974) and Alan Pyaet's hardcore porn flick L'inconnue (1982 / full NSFW film). Campanile, however, directed another 40 movies, including Hitch-Hike (1977, with David Hess), When Women Had Tails (1970 / trailer) and When Women Lost Their Tails (1972 / trailer).
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Piero Piccioni's music to
A Sentimental Attempt:
Barbara Steele is on hand in a secondary role as Silvia, but where she fits in the narrative of this seldom screened and seemingly forgotten movie we know not. (The film is, however, available on DVD.)
The first 7.20 minutes of
Un tentativo sentimentale:
The Torino Film Festival has a synopsis of what sounds like a precursor of the possibly better-known Same Time, Next Year (1978 / trailer): "A man (Jean-Marc Bory [17 Mar 1934 – 31 Mar 2001] of Mad Love [1985 / trailer] and Expulsion of the Devil [1973 / full film]) and a woman (Françoise Prévost [13 Jan 1930 – 30 Nov 1997] of The Murder Clinic [1966] and The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine [1974 / trailer]) meet in an airport and they immediately decide to become lovers. They regularly meet in a house on the beach: they don't know anything about each other, not even their names, but it is clear that when one of them will miss a date, everything is going to be over. Dino is a rich man with the illusion of escaping the aridity of his ambitions, Carla tries to live an adventure that can make her feel different emotions. She decides to leave her husband (Gabriele Ferzetti [1 Mar 1925 – 2 Dec 2015] of Fulci's The Psychic [1977 / trailer] and Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West [1968 / trailer]), but that very day Dino misses the date. They accidentally meet again and they start again their relationship. But during what will become their last date, Dino's wife (Letícia Román of Russ Meyer's Fanny Hill [1964 / trailer, with Veronica Ericson] and Mario Bava's The Evil Eye [1963 / trailer]) arrives and offers her husband to his lover, in a disdainful way. Once again Dino is unable to choose. Carla leaves him for good." That's men.
If anyone has seen the movie, no one has seen fit to review it online.
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Next month:
Barbara Steele Pt. IV (1964)
