I CRIMINALI DELLA GLASSIS (WILD WILD PLANET)

1965/Director: / Antonio Margheriti/Writers: Renato Moretti, Ivan Reiner

Cast: Tony Russel, Lisa Gastoni, Massimo Serato, Carlo Giustini, Franco Nero

Antonio Margheriti

I will be honest and say that of all the countries whose films I watch regularly the one I struggle with the most and still have the most ambiguity about is Italy. While there have been some masterpieces like Vittorio de Sica’s The Bicycle Thief and Shoeshine and Fellini’s La Strada most of the stuff coming out of Italy leaves me a little confused and disoriented. For example some people find it amazing that I as a horror fan cannot really stand almost all of Dario Argento’s output. The are incoherent stories and all the ranting about his prowess with camera work and lighting is exaggerated. Then again Mario Bava ranks as one of my all time favorite directors and I have a folder on my hard drive full of Italian horror and giallo films just waiting for me. Now one area that I know basically zip about is Italian science fiction and in particular the genre films of the 1960’s. Other than Bava’s excellent Planet of the Vampires I know virtually nothing of Italian cinema’s visiosn of the future, until watching Wild Wild Planet, or I Crimialli della Gallassia (maybe Galaxy of Criminals). It was directed by Antonio Margheriti (who usually directed as Anthony Dawson and did films like Cannibal Apocalypse and Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein) and co-scripted by the man who brought The Green Slime to life Ivan Reiner. Spaghetti western star Franco Nero has a role as Commander Halstead’s second in command.

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JENIFER

2005/Director: Dario Argento/Screenplay: Steven Weber, Story by Bruce Jones

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Cast: Steven Weber, Carrie Anne Fleming, Brenda James, Harris Allan, Beau Starr, Laurie Brunetti, Kevin Crofton, Julia Arkos, Jasmine Chan

Some people simply worship Dario Argento. For years and years I just figured I was missing something or that I was not enough of a true film fanatic to see the brilliance in his work that his rabid sycophants did. Now I remember my reactions to films like Tenebre ( by the way, the second picture from the left in my banner is a scene from Tenebre I touched up in Photoshop) and Phenomenon and even his “magnum opus” Suspiria and do not feel I was so out of touch by feeling confused and bewildered. They were not really great movies at all in my opinion. Maybe not terrible movies, but Tenebre was so… so… terrible that I do not see what the big deal has always been about that movie. Okay there was a great axe murder scene with a spurting stump, but the rest of the film was so weird and Italian. (more…)

Mario Bava was born one day after the beginning of WWI in San Remo Italy in 1914. His father was Eugenio Bava and it was at the side of his father that Bava would learn the tricks of his trade in the world of set design and cinematography. Eugenio was a master film technician during the period of Italian silent cinema and a creator of film special effects. Mario would work for several years as his father’s assistant and apprentice. Like his highly creative father Mario was an artist who painted and sculpted and developed a fine sense of design that made him one of the great arrangers of the “mise en scene”, or what can be explained as the total scene one views in a film, as it is shot and framed by the camera. This includes the arrangement and placement of not only the actors but of all parts of the set as well as choices for color and position of props. It means in one sense that nothing you see on the screen is accidental in the same way nothing placed on a stage for a play is accidental or random. There is no denying that at his peak Bava’s stage sets were revolutionary in regards to lighting and shading, and yet at the same time they seem to pay homage to a bygone era of not only Italian cinema but of old Hollywood as well.

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