* "In Barbara Steele's case, much like Marilyn Monroe who is viewed through the lens of a sex symbol, bestowing the title of Scream Queen might be an honor considered by her passionate fan base, but it can also be a curse for an actress of formidable intelligence, acutely cerebral and worthy of an established movie career. Steele's otherworldly beauty has been objectified by the genre that embraced her uniqueness yet her acting skill never led her to become an idolized Hollywood star, a beloved character actor, or a mainstream celebrity. Somehow she metamorphosed into a figure of fantasy and myth, chained to an archetype and recreated as an icon. One thing's for sure, she has no competition for her unique style and mesmerizing sorcery, though there are many other genre superstars that are true, I would never dismiss that. Barbara Steele is the ultimate enchantress. Queen of shadows and the divine who suffer eternally. [The Last Drive In]"
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 while still 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 a wasted life faves. 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.
* "[When] Rank sold her contract to 20th Century Fox, [...] she was off to America. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, she later wrote, 'I [was] greeted by a coterie of people on the steamy tarmac – one of them holding a stricken-looking black panther on a leash from one hand and an electric prong in the other. I was obliged to stand there, holding the leash of this creature for their welcoming publicity shots, implying that this was some kind of image they decided to have of me.' Little did she know that this was to be the good part of her Hollywood sojourn. [awfi]"
Also go here:
Barbara et ses fourrures
(1967, dir. Adonis Kyrou)
The title, in English: Barbara and Her Furs. A rediscovered B&W short added as an extra on the Severin Blu-ray release of An Angel for Satan (1966, see Part VI) — an appropriate pairing, considering some of the S&M-tinged activities occurring in Camillo Mastrocinque's feature film (a nude Barbara Steele whipping the simple-minded gardener comes promptly to our minds).
Inspired by the writings of Leopold von Sacher Masoch (seen above with his love), the short's title, of course, is a direct reference to his most famous work, Venus in Furs (1870), which, interestingly enough, features a character named Severin. The short was written and directed by Adonis Kyrou (18 Oct 1923 – 4 Nov 1985), and was originally broadcast on the weekly French television program Dim Dam Dom. That show, which ran from 21 March 1965 to 3 March 1971, was aimed at the modern, hipster woman — for that, the short now seems to appeal mostly to the contemporary and male Barbara Steele fan. The name Dim Dam Dom was revived in 2018 for a French magazine for the well-to-do female hipster.
Barbara and Her Furs:
Over at Letterbxd, se13an drools "Barbara Steele acting cool and mysterious for 9 minutes, yes please. This is a great short because Barbara Steele and those amazing eyes can pretty much do anything and she gives off that mysterious ethereal air about her and this [short film] is designed to make the most of that."
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The intellectual Adonis Kyrou tended to write more than he made films, but amidst his limited cinematic output is the intriguing if contentious 1972 adaptation (full film) of Matthew Gregory Lewis's early Gothic (and scandalous) novel of "sinful sexuality", The Monk: A Romance (1796).
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Adonis Kyrou's Le moine:
The Crimson Cult
(1968, dir. Vernon Sewell)
A.k.a. Black Horror. A co-production by American International Pictures and Britain's Tigon Films. Director Vernon Sewell (4 Jul 1903 – 21 Jun 2001) was a British B-movie specialist of rather mundane talent whose fun if usually somewhat visually routine films include Ghost Ship (1952 / trailer) and House of Mystery (1961 / full film), which basically tell the same story but one on a boat and the other in a house; The Blood Beast of Terror (1968 / trailer), which Peter Cushing occasionally (incorrectly) referred to as the worst film of his career; and Sewell's last movie, Burke & Hare (1972 / trailer), which everyone seems to like trashing — but then, Sewell himself complained that it was taken away and recut and ruined by the studio. And given a wonderfully crappy theme song...
The Scaffold singing
Burke & Hare:
Though The Curse of the Crimson Altar — the American cut (which reduces that bane of the US: nudity) of which is known simply as The Crimson Cult — is indeed somewhat better than its terrible reputation, the movie is arguably a deep point in Barbara Steele's career in that she is very much little more than eye candy in green (some folks argue blue) bodypaint. (That said, though worth a gander, the movie is hardly a highpoint in the careers of all who participated.)
The other names of note found in the movie are, of course, Sir Christopher Lee ([27 May 1922 – 7 Jun 2015] of The Curse of Frankenstein [1957], The Mummy [1959], The Devil's Daffodil [1961], Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace [1962], The Devil Rides Out [1968], Horror Express [1972], Death Line [1972] and so much more), Boris Karloff ([23 Nov 1887 – 2 Feb 1969] of The Mummy [1932], The Ghoul [1933], House of Frankenstein [1944], The Body Snatcher [1945], The Terror [1963], Mad Monster Party [1967] and so much more) in his final British movie, and Michael Gough ([23 Nov 1916 – 17 Mar 2011] of They Came from Beyond Space [1967], Ken Russell's Women in Love [1968] & Savage Messiah [1972] and so much more). As we mention in our RIP Career Review of the last actor, Gough once said "[The Crimson Cult] was an absolute disaster from day one, yet Boris Karloff was such a sweet man and was adored by the crew. [...] Barbara worked only a couple of days on it, and I don't think I worked more than a week myself."
Sir Christopher Lee was known to occasionally name this movie as one of the worst of his career — a career that included many far-worse movies. (Anyone remember Meatcleaver Massacre [1977 / trailer]? Regardless of how his presence was brought into that movie — his bookending scenes in Meatcleaver Massacre are bought footage from a never-completed project — he is in it and the movie is far worse than The Crimson Cult.) Disappointingly enough, though Lee & Karloff share time together on screen, the three greats, if you count Gough — four greats, if you count Ms. Steele — do not share a single scene all together.
Perhaps the saddest aspect of The Curse of the Crimson Altar: "Although Cauldron of Blood (1970 / trailer), Isle of the Snake People (1971 / trailer) and Alien Terror (1970 / trailer) were all released later, Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968) was actually Boris Karloff's last completed film. At 82, he caught pneumonia (reportedly as a result of his work in the damp manor scenes) and succumbed to it a few weeks after filming. [366 Weird Movies]"
Trailer to
The Curse of the Crimson Altar:
The somewhat generic screenplay, by Mervyn Haisman ([15 Mar 1928 – 29 Oct 2010], co-scripter of Jane and the Lost City [1987 / full film]) and Henry Lincoln (12 Feb 1930 – 24 Feb 2022), is based on the uncredited H.P. Lovecraft short story The Dreams in the Witch House, which, among others, most recently inspired the Spanish gore flick Venus (2022 / trailer), not to mention Bobby Easley's low budget H.P. Lovecraft's Witch House (2021 / trailer). Oddly, though Lovecraft is not credited, Jerry Sohl (2 Dec 1913 – 4 Nov 2002), the screenwriter of the Lovecraft-inspired Die, Monster, Die! (1965 / trailer), gets a "Based on a story by" credit.
In regards to The Curse of the Crimson Altar, scriptwriter Haisman once said: "Boris was very good, but he was getting on then. We were given the instructions that if he walked, he couldn't talk. And if he talked, he couldn't walk. He couldn't do both at the same time. So we put him in a wheelchair. [...] There was a man called Tony Tenser [10 Aug 1920 – 5 Dec 2007], who used to be a cinema manager, but then got into film making. He started by getting money from America for making horror movies, he used to get forty thousand pound to make a film. And it had to have horror, and it had to have some sex in it. Those two elements. That's what the Americans wanted. I think his US backers had the American and Japanese rights, and Tony had the rest of the world. Anyway, Henry and I were thrown the script and asked to do a rewrite on it. And we read it and it was absolutely unbelievable. It was meant to be set in Surrey and the script opened by saying 'the Sheriff rode into town on his horse', and this was the level it was written at. So I said to Tony, 'okay, we've already agreed to do a rewrite, but this has got to be a completely new script'. And he said, 'you're dead right, Mervyn. A completely new script, that's what I want, but you don't get any more money for it, and I want it in ten days'. [Magic Bullet]"
"The work of visionary Rhode Island writer H.P. Lovecraft has been notoriously difficult to adapt to the screen, with his trademark blend of cosmic dread and implied monstrous mayhem challenging more than a handful of filmmakers to adapt his unearthly visions to the big screen. However, a small handful of films have managed to beat the odds and do justice to his evocative prose, standing as rare achievements as literary adaptations and rip-roaring horror yarns in their own right. The Crimson Cult is not one of those films. [Mondo Digital]"
"The early scenes of Curse of the Crimson Altar promise prime late-'60s disreputability, and fans of prime camp can get themselves into a serious lather at the opening ritual, which features a hooded, nipple-ornamented dominatrix (Nita Lorraine of All Neat in Black Stockings [1969 / scene] and The Ups and Downs of a Handyman [1975 / trailer]) mercilessly whipping some trussed blonde, and a stag-helmeted, G-string clad muscle man (Nicholas Head) beating hot steel and branding Peter as member of the Satanic club. Steele watches and directs, clad in ram's-horn headdress and feathers, body painted blue with vivid red lips, a perfervid fetish totem climbed straight off a DC comic page, or Vladimir Tretchikoff's Chinese Girl (below) turned feral priestess. [This Island Rod]"
"It's some goofy-arse stuff, but Tigon and Sewell clearly aren't Hammer and Terence Fisher or AIP and Roger Corman, to put it mildly. [...] Lee is his usual suave, polite gentlemanly self, and despite what he might feel about the film, you can tell he enjoyed working with the legendary Boris Karloff. [...] He was an absolute pro and the film is lucky to have had him here. One of the all-time greats Karloff, frail and wheelchair-bound, isn't exactly in Targets (1968 / trailer) form here in his last British film, let alone any of the great turns he gave in films of the 30s and 40s. However, he's certainly in better form here than any of his Mexico-lensed cheapies [...]. Both actors spend a majority of the film walking a fine line between genial and sinister, though it's not all that difficult to work out which side of the fence each man ends up [...]. But what a shocking waste of the lovely Steele, and especially character veteran Rupert Davies (Dracula Has Risen from the Grave [1968 / trailer]) in a virtual walk-on towards the end. The best performance is actually given by Tim Burton regular Michael Gough, who lends his stock-standard suspicious butler role a heck of a lot more effort than it probably deserved. [Shameless Self-Expression]"
Virtual History has the complete plot (Spoilers!): "Antique dealer Robert Manning (Mark Eden [14 Feb 1928 – 1 Jan 2021] of The Pleasure Girls [1965 / trailer]) travels to Greymarsh Lodge to search for his missing brother, Peter (Denys Peek of The Limbo Line [1968, with Kate O'Mara]). The lodge is where the Manning ancestors had lived for generations, but the owner Morley (Christopher Lee) denies Peter ever stayed there. Suspicious, Robert decides to uncover the truth. That night, the villagers of Greymarsh celebrate the burning of the Black Witch, Lavinia (Barbara Steele), who had practiced witchcraft on the villagers 300 years ago. Robert discovers that Morley is a descendant of Lavinia. Professor Marshe (Boris Karloff), a local expert on witchcraft, tells Robert that Lavinia had cursed every villager responsible for her death and that many of their descendants met violent ends. The butler (Michael Gough) later reveals to Robert that his brother is dead. After Morley drugs Robert's drink, he has a strange dream where he is attacked by the dead witch, Lavinia. Investigating further, Robert discovers that Morley is obsessed with avenging the death of Lavinia on every descendant responsible for her death. Robert is overpowered and forced to watch as Morley's niece (Virginia Wetherell of Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde [1971], Demons of the Mind [1972 / trailer] and Disciple of Death [1972 / full film]) is about to be sacrificed. Professor Marshe arrives in time to prevent her murder on the sacrificial altar. Suddenly, Morley sets fire to the house and escapes. Trapped on the roof, he transforms into Lavinia as he burns to death."
"The film opened in England in December 1968, then premiered in Los Angeles on April 15, 1970 on a double bill with Horror House (1969, trailer below, with Jill Haworth). It went into general release across the United States on Nov. 11, 1970, on a double bill with Count Yorga, Vampire (1970 / trailer).[Wikipedia]"
Trailer to
Horror House:
Handicap
(1968, writ. & dir. Manuel Marinero)
Okay, this 37-minute B&W short film appears to be the directorial debut of Spaniard Manolo Viña Marinero (7 Jun 1943 – 17 Jul 2004), who had success in his home country as a critic and author. Over at the imdb, and on many other websites, Barbara Steele is currently (29 July 2026) listed as being part of the cast. Well: Sorry, that is not true. She does not appear anywhere in this short film starring Antonio Gasset (19 May 1946 – 29 Sept 2021) and Mercedes Juste as, respectively, Theo and Kalinka. How do we know? Because we watched the Spanish-language short, as you can, too, right here at Platfo.
Around the time Handicap was made, Mercedes Juste released a 45 in Spain, the first side of which, Un amante, un amigo y un amor, appears to have been mildly popular...
Mercedes Juste sings:
La amante estelar
(1968, writ. & dir. Antonio Lara García)
Over at the imdb, Barbara Steele is currently (29 July 2026) listed as being part of the cast — and, indeed, she is! Well, if you can call a two-second scene of her smiling face, cut in from some other film — possibly 8½ (1963, see Part I) — as being part of the film and cast. Claudia Cardinale's appearance is of similar nature: she is cut in from another film, possibly two films, and is seen smiling for about four seconds.
Still, while the imdb get it right that Ms. Steele is in the film and in the credits, they have the director wrong. La amante estelar was not directed by Antonio de Lara,* nor was it directed by the humorist Antonio Lara de Gavilán, a.k.a. Tono (22 Sept 1896 – 4 Jan 1978). No, La amante estelar was directed by the productive Spanish artist and intellectual Antonio Lara García (4 Mar 1939 – 1 Apr 2005). Garcia doesn't seem to have an imdb page of his own, and many of his other shorts are also credited to Gavilán...
* In the film itself, the credits (above) read: "[...] y realizatión de Antonio Lara". But the credits in the film itself are also poorly done: the original story is credited to an author named "William S. Stwart", which has been corrected into "William S. Stewart" all over the web. BUT: The movie is actually based on a short, darkly comedic story from 1962 titled Star-Crossed Lover written by the forgotten writer William W. Stuart, about whom we could find nada.
"She was a wonderful wife — sweet, pretty, loving — but she would keep littering up the house with her old, used-up bodies!"
Film Affinity, however, offers the following plot synopsis: "A death row inmate (Luis González Páramo [1940 – 20 Dec 2024]) tells his strange story to a priest. According to him, he had an encounter with an old woman who turned out to be an extraterrestrial whose purpose on Earth was to continue his [the inmate's] lineage. Taking advantage of her ability to transfigure herself into other human bodies, the inmate had a sentimental relationship with her. Antonio Lara's practice for the Escuela Oficial de Cinematografía (EOC), third year (1966/67)."
Some four years after this short, Luis González Páramo had the honor of appearing in a Paul Naschy movie directed by the great León Klimovsky...
the trailer:
"In retrospective analyses, La amante estelar has earned recognition primarily through its inclusion in the filmographies of key performers, such as Marisa Paredes* (3 Apr 1946 – 17 Dec 2024) in her early career roles [...]. It is frequently cited in scholarly overviews of 1960s Spanish experimental shorts [...], highlighting director Antonio Lara's contributions to institutional training and genre exploration during a period of cultural repression. These mentions underscore the film's role as an artifact of pedagogical innovation rather than commercial success. The cultural impact of La amante estelar remains niche as an early exemplar of science fiction in Spanish student cinema, influencing subsequent genre efforts by demonstrating feasible low-budget experimentation under censorship.[Grokipedia]"
* Ms. Paredes is found in numerous Almodovar films, but we know her from del Toro's The Devil's Backbone (2001 / trailer). Supposedly she can be found in the background somewhere in Jess Franco's...
The trailer:
They Shoot Horses, Don't They
(1969, dir. Sidney Pollack)
Released 10 December 1969 — the one that got away. "At the end of the 1960s Steele met screenwriter James Poe (4 Oct 1921 – 24 Jan 1980), and the two fell in love and eventually got married.* When scripting They Shoot Horses, Don't They (1969), Poe wrote the role of 'Alice LeBlanc' specifically with [Barbara Steele] in mind — but director Sydney Pollack begged to differ and eventually gave the role to Susannah York. After this disappointment, Steele took a five year break from the big screen, and her only acting assignment during that time was an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery – 'The Sins of the Fathers' (1972) set in 19th Century Wales — as if to be in tune with Steele's gothic roles. [Raz's Midnight Macabre]"
* Steele married American screenwriter James Poe in 1969. In August 1971, their son Jonathan Jackson Poe was born and, seven years later in 1978, the couple divorced.
Trailer to
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?:
We took a look at They Shoot Horses, Don't They? back in September 2024 in our final entry of our Babes of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls entry, Part XXIII, which looked at Cynthia Myers. She was an extra in the movie — which was more than Barbara Steele ended up being. In that Babe of Yesteryear entry, we also argued that the movie was Cynthia Myers' true big screen debut, despite lore that she was in an earlier Hammer movie. In the blog entry back then, among other things we also more or less wrote:
[...] The original novel, by the mostly forgotten novelist and screenwriter Horace [Stanley] McCoy (14 Apr 1897 – 15 Dec 1955): 'Horace McCoy is one of the great unheralded writers of the hard-boiled school. Most everyone has heard of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain, but McCoy's novels are rarely in print nowadays. One of his best novels, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? [cover above] was widely regarded as a minor masterpiece upon its original release in 1935. But over the ensuing years it gradually disappeared from bookstore shelves. Maybe it was too bitter.* Maybe it was too unrelenting in its depiction of a depression-era dance marathon. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? presented us with a dark and violent world where people were readily exploited for the pennies that they might bring in from a viewing audience. [...] While most of the hard-boiled writers dealt with serious issues only in oblique fashion, McCoy confronted issues head-on. And he didn't pull any punches. The results certainly weren't pretty. So even during the heyday of film noir, Hollywood typically avoided McCoy's novels. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (trailer below) was filmed in 1950 by Warner Bros. with James Cagney in the lead role, but not until nearly two decades later was another McCoy novel filmed.** [Images Journal]"
* Someone named Lee J. Richmond, quoted in Wikipedia says: "With the exception of Nathaniel West's Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust, McCoy's novel is indisputably the best example of absurdist existentialism in American fiction." The trailer to the film adaptation of West's Day of the Locust is found at the bottom of this entry.
** Not quite true... not long after Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, McCoy co-scripted the subpar movie Bad for Each Other (1953 / trailer) with Irving Wallace; although not credited, the movie is based on McCoy's novel, Scalpel (1952).
Trailer to
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye:
The first script for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? was written by Barbara Steele's then husband James Poe, who wanted to do a low-budget version with her in it. In the end, the directorial chores were given to Sidney Pollack, who pulled in Robert E. Thompson (3 Nov 1924 – 11 Feb 2004) to do a rewrite, and the stars became bigger names. The result was a huge financial success that received nine Oscar nominations.
The plot: "During the Great Depression, a grueling dance marathon offers a glimmer of hope to the impoverished and unemployed folks who enter it with their eye on the $1,500 prize. What sounds like a potentially uplifting underdog tale is instead an utterly bleak drama that rightly paints America as a land in which the poor will always be exploited for the amusement of everyone higher on the economic ladder. Or, as the sleazy MC (an excellent Gig Young [4 Nov 1913 – 19 Oct 1978] of A Black Ribbon for Deborah [1974 / trailer] and The Shuttered Room [1967 / trailer]) notes, '[Audiences] just want to see a little misery so they can feel a little better about themselves.' In the role that definitively allowed her to transfer from sex kitten to serious actress, Jane Fonda (of Walk on the Wild Side [1962 / trailer] and Spirits of the Dead [1968 / trailer]) headlines as one of the most bitter of all the participants; co-stars include Michael Sarrazin ([22 May 1940 – 17 Apr 2011] of Feardotcom [2002 / trailer]) as her soft-spoken dance partner, Susannah York ([9 Jan 1939 – 15 Jan 2011] of Franklyn [2008] and Images [1972 / trailer]) as a British actress attempting to hold onto her glamour, Red Buttons ([5 Feb 1919 – 13 Jul 2006] of The Ambulance [1990 / trailer] and The Poseidon Adventure [1972 / trailer, with Leslie Nielsen]) as a middle-aged sailor, and Bonnie Bedelia (of Needful Things [1993 / trailer]) and Bruce Dern (of The Glass House [2001] and Bloody Mama [1970 / trailer]) as a pregnant participant and her husband. [Film Frenzy]"
"[They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is] arguably even more relevant today than when it was released thanks to the normalization of reality TV and rapid-fire manufactured celebrity [...]. It's also a key early entry in the wave of '20s and '30s nostalgia pieces that would become prevalent in theaters for the first half or so of the '70s, setting a nightmarish tone that would only be surpassed by another harrowing, almost-horror look at Depression-era California, The Day of the Locust (1975 / trailer below). All of the actors are in top form here, with Young easily earning his Oscar as one of the darkest and most complex ringleaders you'll ever see. (The actor's ultimate horrifying fate nine years later also gives this film and especially its finale an extra chill.*) The incredible derby sequences, with contestants forced to run in circles with the three slowest couples eliminated at the finish line, are particularly memorable and intense (with Pollack himself jumped in to capture some of the hand-held footage), and the film isn't afraid to go into some pitch-black places that still shock today (especially the fate of Buttons' character and the unforgettable closing minutes). [Mondo Digital]"
* Like so many people, including ourselves, Gig Young was a lifelong alcoholic — something, allegedly, that indirectly led to him losing the part of The Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles (1974 / trailer). Married five times, at the age of 64 he married his last wife, the 31-year-old Kim Schmidt (30 Nov 1946 – 19 Oct 1978), on 27 September 1978, whom he had met while in Hong Kong working on his last movie project, the Bruceploitation film Game of Death (1978 / trailer). Three weeks later, in their apartment at the Osborne in Manhattan (205 West 57th Street), for reasons unknown — the alcohol-induced death of his career, perhaps? — Young shot Kim in the back of the head, killing her, and then shot himself through the mouth. He left no note, so the why remains but speculation.
Trailer to
The Day of the Locust (1975):
The extremely pop-arty poster to the movie found at the beginning of this entry is the original poster used in the German Democratic Republic (as in the Germany behind the Iron Curtain), and is by the successful illustrator Thomas Schallnau. His poster work was often extremely colorful, if not even inappropriate for the film in question (as is the case here). For an even more WTF poster, take a gander of the racist poster below he did for Beverly Hills Cop (1984).
Honeymoon with a Stranger
(1969, dir. John Peyser)
Less than two weeks after "the one that got away", They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, was released, Barbara Steele appeared in this, her first American TV movie. The weekly ABC Movie of the Week series ran from 1969 to 1975 and featured a new made for television movie every week , many of which — for example, Duel (1971), Bad Ronald (1974 / clip) and Trilogy of Terror (1975 / trailer) — are still fondly remembered today, while others — The Night Stalker (1972 / full film) and Starsky and Hutch (1975) — went on to become TV series. They often featured "name" stars, particularly those of the earlier generation — like Janet Leigh (6 Jul 1927 – 3 Oct 2004), for example.
Full movie, while it lasts:
In his book The ABC Movie of the Week Companion: A Loving Tribute to the Classic Series, Michael Karol offers the following plot description: "This thriller has Janet Leigh [as 'Sandra Latham'] losing her new husband [Joseph Lenzi as 'Ernesto'] during a honeymoon in Spain. Friendly police captain Rossano Brazzi [as 'Capt. Sevilla'] helps her look for him, and they discover his past is littered with ex-wives he ran out on. When hubby [Cesare Danova as 'Ernesto'] finally is found, Leigh insists he's an imposter. No one believes her, of course. Horror cult icon Barbara Steele is Leigh's sister-in-law ['Carla']. The New York Post called this 'a fun and fast 90 minutes' with 'an ingenious and surprise' solution. Such a good story it was remade twice during the MOTW series: see And No One Could Save Her (trailer), February 21 1973, and Dying Room Only (full movie), September 18, 1973."
B&S About Movies, which snarkily defers that that Honeymoon with a Stranger "has to be a giallo, because the cops are just the worst at their jobs", knows the full origins of the narrative as well as a few other subsequent versions: "This movie is based on the French play Piège pour un Homme Seul (Trap for a Single Man),* which was based on the Indian movies Sesh Anka (1963 / full movie) and Puthita Paravai (1964 / trailer), which were — following all this? — based on the British movie Chase a Crooked Shadow (1958 / clip). And it wouldn't be the last TV movie based on this story, as it was also turned into One of My Wives Is Missing (1976 / full film) and Vanishing Act (1986 / trailer)." Other versions include at least one more Indian production, Khoj (1989 / full movie), the French TV flick La maison des renards (1975), multiple German-language versions (1960-61), and a Russian one, Lovushka dlya odinokogo muzhchiny (1990 / full movie). Some narratives never die, they become zombies.
* By the French playwright Robert [Louis Albert] Thomas (28 Sept 1927 – 3 Jan 1989). Alfred Hitchcock had actually bought the rights to the play originally, but he never got around to making the film. Despite what B&S says, however, Thomas's French play actually was staged three years prior to the release of Sesh Anka, in 1960. If anything, Chase a Crooked Shadow would be the original inspiration behind later versions and/or deviations. BTW: Thomas's second stage success, Eight Women, was rather an international hit when filmed (with every living French diva of the time taking part in 2002 (trailer to 8 Women).
The director of Honeymoon with a Stranger, John Peyser (10 Aug 1916 – 16 Aug 2002), normally paid the rent by directing TV projects, but once a great while he would helm a feature release, such as Four Rode Out (1969, with Leslie Nielsen), Tibetana (1970, with Alexandra Bastedo) and — the "best" of all projects he ever participated in — the incredibly sleazy and misogynistic grindhouse anti-classic, The Centerfold Girls (1974), starring Andrew "Horse" Prine (below, not from the film).
The Centerfold Girls (1974):
"Well structured suspense vehicle is singlehandedly carried off by Leigh's excellent performance and bolstered by a thoughtful (if downbeat) denouement; the revelation works thanks to Peyser's careful direction. [Terror Trap]"
"Most, like Terror Trap, seem to like Honeymoon with a Stranger, but Monster Hunter is a dissenting voice: "An intriguing set up with a decent cast keeps you engaged for the first half of the movie, but the reliance on lots of dull talking to move the story along at crucial moments and a hurried, underdeveloped finish ultimately force the audience to serve this ABC Movie of the Week with divorce papers before the honeymoon is over."
Hitless Wonder "became aware of this movie through Michael Eugene Wilson's blog Mike's Movie Room. Michael is a huge Barbara Steele fan." They mention that the lack of respect the TV movie gets is "another example of a performer's television work being considered unimportant. Barbara doesn't have a lot of screen time here, but she looks quite stylish in her contemporary wardrobe, and she plays the cold-blooded Carla very well. One big bonus with this movie is that Steele isn't dubbed, so you get to hear her actual voice. [...] The Spanish locations do make the picture stand out a bit from the typical fare being made at the time, but I have to say that the way the movie was shot and edited still gives it a very American TV feel."
All actors involved in Honeymoon with a Stranger have made movies that appeal to the tastes of a wasted life, but we would truly be amiss if we were to not mention that Eurotrash disasterpiece featuring Rossano Brazzi (18 Sept 1916 – 24 Dec 1994), the man playing film's lead police officer, namely:
Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974).
Fermate il mondo... voglio scendere!
(1970, writ. & dir. Giancarlo Cobelli)
In her last European movie — at least until Willi Hengster's Tief Oben, some 25 years later — they manage to misspell her name: Barbara Steele becomes Barbara Steel.
Some music to
Fermate il mondo... voglio scendere!:
A comedy, the directorial debut of Giancarlo Cobelli (12 Dec 1929 – 16 May 2012), released in Italy on 9 October 1970, never had a wide English release, possibly because it is too wildly bonkers for the Average Joe. Nevertheless, it did see the light of day with English subtitles, once upon a time, as Stop the World... I Want to Get Off! That said, the movie should not be confused with the 1966 Warner Brothers' release, Stop the World... I Want to Get Off.
A song from the wrong
Stop the World... I Want to Get Off
Co-scripted by Laura Betti (1 May 1927 – 31 Jul 2004) and Giancarlo Badessi* (21 Sept 1928 – 6 Dec 2011), Fermate il mondo... voglio scendere! is based on an earlier play of the same name by Cobelli and Badessi, a theatre piece that surely cannot be half as bonkers as the movie itself.
* Found somewhere in Salon Kitty (1976) and Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi's Mondo Canodid (1975 / trailer).
While it lasts — the full in Italian:
Cinema Sojourns, which mentions that "Barbara Steele gets a scenery-chewing supporting role that is an inspired piece of stunt casting [...;] although her performance is a shrill, one note caricature, it's fun to see Steele taking a vacation from her typecasting as a Gothic horror heroine", has the most-traditional plot description we could find: "The main focus is a group of young adults who are co-existing in a cramped apartment which seems more like some kind of dysfunctional commune. Among the roommates are Martora (Enzo Robutti [24 Oct 1933 – 13 Feb 2022]), an impotent, pontificating intellectual, Scilla (Paola Pitagora of The Carpet of Horror [1962], with Joachim Fuchsberger), his sexually frustrated companion, the elfin Angela (Claude Vega [2 Jun 1930 – 11 Apr 2022]), who sleeps in an inflatable rowboat, Fiorella (Noris Fiorina of Kill the Fatted Calf and Roast It [1970 / music]), a blonde party girl, and Pierluigi (Pierluigi Pagano), an irresponsible ladies' man. The most important resident in the flat, however, is Riky (Lando Buzzanca [24 Aug 1935 – 18 Dec 2022]), a clueless layabout who is suddenly transformed into an overnight TV celebrity. Riky's sudden rise to fame is due to his voice which has dropped from his throat into his stomach due to a parachute incident during his army training days. As a result, his freak condition launches him into a career as a ventriloquist. A group of maniacal TV executives team him up with a puppet, billed as Spazialino, the impish robot and soon the comedy duo become beloved hosts of a children's TV show. Despite their celebrity, their main function is to hawk products to kids like candy and cookies, which have questionable or even toxic ingredients. [...]"
More music from
Fermate il mondo... voglio scendere!:
The generally hard-to-please Worldwide Celluloid Massacre rates the movie as "Recommended": "This one-of-a-kind bonkers Italian comedy seems to consist only of a stream of throwaway visual gags. It throws reality and plot out the window for an anything-goes approach to satire, and has fun with random props in the meantime. [...] There's a delirious LSD sequence where a sex-act turns into hallucinative madness while a TV camera and public become obsessed over a mole seen during the act. Fears of pregnancies bring upon surreal hordes of pregnant girls and menacing cars, furniture moves unexpectedly, supermarket-goods talk, a wall turns into a magnet for no particular reason, men and women fight endlessly, in surreal logic, a woman finds herself unable to seduce her man in a car while every car around them seems to contain hidden couples in sex acts, and every act seems to be one of raving madness or frenzy, leading to a delirious final half-hour that comes off like a frenzied dream gone chaotic and completely nonsensical. The movie is difficult to describe, but is lots of fun."
Over at the website of the always excellent Shock Cinema Magazine, Steven Puchalski writes: "Bursting with dizzying visuals and random absurdity, this counterculture Italian comedy from first-time director Giancarlo Cobelli [...] tackles youthful rebellion, manipulative media, out-of-control consumerism, and selling out. It's exhaustingly inventive, cartoonishly subversive and doesn't make a lot of sense (even with English subtitles), but even though a good deal of its half-baked subtext probably flew over my head, I loved this explosion of colorful cinematic anarchy... [...] Edited for maximum delirium [...], it leaps from one blisteringly bizarre, disjointed idea to the next, amidst eccentric sets, props, costumes, and surreal throwaways. Pregnant Danielle [Barbara 'Steel']) ends up strapped into a high-tech maternity machine; ruined Ricky gets career advice by his handlers (who, at one point, hand him a gun after deciding that suicide is the most 'convenient solution'); Cobelli pours on the tripped-out imagery for his hilariously warped acid sequence (Is that a baby angel in the refrigerator? Or a raw chicken? Either way, it's going into the oven!); and by the final half-hour, this household is in total disarray, complete with a frantic conclusion that's equal parts Fellini and Benny Hill. This is wacky, untethered, arthouse-wannabe cinema at its very best."
"The striking and vibrant cinematography is from Dario Di Palma (Death Laid an Egg [1968 / trailer]), which should give you an idea of the surreal pop art confection this is. Stop the World is both enduringly pretentious without taking itself too seriously in the way only shambolic faux-arthouse psychedelic films of the era could be. Any greater satirical point is either lost in translation to my non-Italian head or lacking to begin with, but that hardly matters when the film is as constantly hilarious as it is. It would make a great double bill with Tinto Brass' The Howl (1970). [Teenage Frankenstein]"
The Howl:
Now go to:
And now,
a public service question from a wasted life:
