Edwige Fenech
Born Dec. 24th, 1948
If you have watched more than a handful of Italian giallos, then chances are you’ve seen Edwige Fenech in action. And she is one that is hard to forget. Born in France, she started her career in beauty contests, eventually moving into modeling. In 1967, she made her film debut in the comedy All Mad About Him. She continued to work making films, mostly comedies, in France, Germany, and Italy. Her first real thriller was Top Sensation (1969), that co-starred another Italian sex symbol Rosalba Neri. She appeared in Mario Bava’s 5 Dolls for an August Moon (1970), then the following year starred in her first film with director Sergio Martino, the 1971 film The Strange Vice of Mr.s Wardh (aka Blade of the Ripper). She would go on to star in quite a few giallos in the next few years, many of them for Martino, titles such as All the Colors of the Dark (1972), The Case of the Bloody Iris (1972), Your Vice is Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972), and even with director Ruggero Deodato in Phantom of Death (1988).
In the ’80s, she became a television personality, hosting a talk show for a while. After a while, she moved into movie producing, which she has been doing since. She even co-produced the 2004 version of The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino.
Seeing Fenech’s name in any movie was always an extra bonus. Such a great talent and just beautiful to watch, she is one of the reasons that Italian giallos are still as popular these days as they were back then. Of course, it might have also helped since she was usually in some form of undress during the movie….a lot.
While José Ramón Larraz is most known for his 1974 blood thirsty picture Vampyres, he also made another film that same year (actually a few in 1974) that starred the daughter of the immortal Donald Pleasence, Angela, who gives us a very creepy performance here. I don’t believe this film has never gotten an actual video release here in the states other than in the bootleg market, but it is one that should be seen, if only because of Pleasence’s performance. The film has such a strange and eerie look and quality to it, with a good and slow burn, but worth seeing.
John Ashley
Sometimes I am just amazed at not only some of the titles that get released on blu-ray, but in the huge special editions that they come out with. Case in point, a title that Arrow Video just announced. At the end of May, they will be releasing a special edition of the 1966 film Blood Bath. But this isn’t just any ordinary film that was made under the Roger Corman umbrella. In fact, it started as a film being made in Yugoslavia by someone named Rados Novakovic and called Operation Titan. But it didn’t really fit Corman’s approval, so he hired Jack Hill to take the film and see if he could make something out of it, which he did, and would be later called Blood Bath. But for various reasons, such as the film stock from the original footage and what Hill shot didn’t match up that too well. So because Hill went on to make Spider Baby, the film was set aside. Then Corman came back to the picture and hired Stephanie Rothman to see what she could do with it. She changed the title to Track of the Vampire and made it more of a vampire film! According to Hill, about 80 % of the film is what he shot, but I have to say that it is kind of a mess of a picture, even though it has one of the best posters from that era!
