Musings! (03-11)

Searching far and wide for all things PEPLUM! Luciano Marin and Steve Reeves in GOLIATH AND THE BARBARIANS (1959)

MARIO PETRI, OPERA SINGER

Mario Petri in THE EXECUTIONER OF VENICE (1963)

I recently discovered that Mario Petri, star of many PEPLUM movies including HERCULES AND THE CAPTIVE WOMEN (1961), was an accomplished opera singer. I had no idea about this even after years covering the PEPLUM genre. I always thought there was something unique about him and when I saw him as an opera singer, I was pleasantly surprised.  I accidentally found this tidbit of information on Youtube. I really like his voice. Dude was tall. 

CINEMATIC CONFUSION

VHS cover for THE MAGNIFICENT GLADIATOR (1964) starring Mark Forest. Such a strange cover. I really can't make any sense to it. The guy at the bottom is holding the blade. Wouldn't that cut him?



RECENT ACQUISITIONS

Not much to report except for this MESSALINA (1960) Blu-ray edition. It's nearly identical to the French Blu-ray release with different audio tracks. 



HAVE YOU SEEN...

EZOP (1970), a Bulgarian - Czech movie on the life of Aesop. The production is pretty good and it has a Felliniesque flair to it. No English subtitles so I can't understand what's going on in the movie but this is a pleasant surprise. 
 

IDENTIFY THE MOVIE

Can you identify this movie from this screenshot? I know it's not much to go on but this scene is unintentionally hilarious so...

From the last musings, someone correctly identified the image was from HERCULES (1983). 



MOVIES I WATCHED...


HELEN YES...HELEN OF TROY

I watched it because I just got a couple of nice copies of this, from my excellent source in Europe. I like it. I uploaded a clip from this to my Youtube channel.


ZORIKAN THE BARBARIAN

I had to watch the recently acquired brand new widescreen print. It's a good movie but not with a lot of memorable moments. Dan Vadis is the stars and he has fun as the villain.


SALOME

I watched the HD print. I like it. So much better watching it this way. It looked less like a TV episode. It looked cinematic.

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People often ask me where I get the movies from, when they're not Blu-rays or DVDs. Well, there are tons of places on the internet with many titles. One website I used to frequent often 7 or 8 years ago was ULOZ.TO. It had many titles but the service was unreliable. Downloads would stop and the site was sometimes erratic. I didn't bother visiting the site anymore. I recently visited it, thanks to a tip, and found a boatload of movies, more so then what they had before. I won't link directly to the site or to any specific title. My blog is followed by folks with bad intent so I rarely link anything from my Youtube channels or websites to download movies. Just search for titles, in Italian or English and you'll find  many there. 

There's a copy of HERCULES UNCHAINED from a RAI TV in HD. It's the same print as the Japanese Blu-ray but that one is in full HD, 1920x1080, while the RAI TV one is 1280x720. 

I searched for a lot of titles and even found MORGAN THE PIRATE in full HD. This copy is most likely an upconversion. Most of the movies are not in English.

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Coming soon:

Edmund Purdom: obituary and that book on his life!