| Femmes Fatales | Oct 4 2020 |
For me, at least, this thing brings to mind making love, not war.
Barbara Bach has had three distinct periods of fame. The first was as an actress in numerous Italian movies during the late 1960s and the entire decade of the 1970s. Her second stage came when she starred as Anya Amasova in 1981's James Bond adventure The Spy Who Loved Me. This was the third Bond outing for Roger Moore, and the last before he stopped taking the role seriously and began smirking and mugging his way through the role. Not that we disliked it. The smirky Moore was fun. Bach became globally recognized in that film, as all Bond girls do. Her third stage of fame was as the wife of one of the most recognized men in the world—Ringo Starr of the Beatles. Mixed into all of that were a few American movies, and one of them was a 1980 comedy called Up the Academy, from which the above promo photo came. The movie arrived on the heels of a string of successful comedies like Animal House that slayed at the box office, but Up the Academy bombed with critics and ticket buyers. We absolve Bach of any blame, though. We haven't seen Up the Academy, but we have zero doubt she was one of the best things in it.
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 15 2015 |
In the land of the blind the painter is king.
Above, two more posters for the spaghetti western Blindman, starring Tony Anthony and Ringo Starr. We talked about the movie last month on the day of its 1972 Japanese premiere. Its Italian premiere was a year earlier, today in 1971. These two great pieces were painted by Rodolfo Gasparri, yet another top notch Italian poster artist, whose work you've seen before on his nice promo for Klute. We'll have more from him later.
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 14 2015 |
Justice is blind, but it can still shoot straight.
This nice poster was made for the 1971 spaghetti western Blindman, a forgotten classic in an inherently cheesy genre. Tony Anthony plays a nameless blind gunman out to rescue fifty European women promised as brides to a group of miners in Lost Creek, Texas, but who were instead kidnapped to Mexico by a gang of bandits. Anthony channels Clint Eastwood, but we don’t mind because he does determined menace passably well, helped in his portrayal by a pair of creepy blind guy contact lenses from the prop department. How he can successfully aim at his quarries in order to aerate them is never addressed, but really, why bother to question it? It’s all good fun, especially because one of the main villians is Ringo Starr, and some of the fifty brides include Agneta Eckemyr, Krista Nell, Janine Reynaud, and Solvi Stubing, who’s certainly worth killing for. Shootouts, fistfights, explosions, and a double-cross or two equal spaghetti western gold. Blindman premiered in Japan today in 1971.
JapanItalyBlindmanTony AnthonyRingo StarrAgneta EckemyrMagda KonopkaKrista NellJanine ReynaudSolvi Stubingposter artcinemaspaghetti westernmovie review
