You can find plenty of amateur reviews of La mansion de la niebla, aka Murder Mansion, aka Maniac Mansion around the internet, so we won’t add another. We watched it, though, and basically, it’s about a bunch of people stranded in a fogbound manor house, and a plot to frighten one of them to death. Hope that didn’t give away too much. What really struck us was the poster, which was painted by an artist who signed his work Mac. Mac was short for Macario Gomez, and for four decades beginning in 1955 this Spanish painter created posters for such films as Dr. Zhivago, For a Few Dollars More, El Cid and others.
Gomez’s effort for La mansion de la niebla is a bit cheeseball, but we rather enjoy the numerous elements he managed to fit in, including a disembodied face, some skulls, a ribcage, a full moon, assorted gravestones, some random ironwork, a spider web, a bare tree, a couple of bats, and, of course, copious fog. Faced with all that, it’s no wonder the central figure is fleeing for her life. But just to show that Gomez really does have top tier talent, we’ve shared a few of his more successful posters below. La mansion de la niebla, an Italian/Spanish co-production, premiered as Quando Marta urlò dalla tomba in Italy, and in Spain six weeks later, today 1972.
