In The Year...1969!

This is a picture of Marisa Mell from the year 1969 promoting the scooter company "Lambretta" in Italy while being on top of her game as a much in demand actress and fashion/commercial model. Never during her career afterwards would she be so much in demand as she was in that year 1969. What makes this picture also remarkable is that Marisa Mell almost looks 10 years older than her 30 years she in fact was.  I like this picture very much because it shows another side of the actress that is not often seen. In this photo Marisa Mell looks a lot like the other cult actress "Edwige Fenech".

Taxi Love - Servizio Per Signora

Since writing this blog my private collection of rare Marisa Mell movies has grown substantially thanks to some very dedicated Marisa Mell fans in the world and making her filmography more complete with each addition. Last week I got a movie from a fan that I was looking for to have and see since ages not only for the rarety of the movie but also for the controversy surrounding this movie in regard to Marisa Mell. The film is called "Taxi Love-Servizio Per Signora" from 1976. The movie is an Italian-Spanish co-production and known in Spanish speaking countries as "Taxista de Sinoras".

Some of the Marisa Mell movies are broadcasted regularly on television like "Danger: Diabolik!" or "Una Sull'Altra" but other lesser known movies like "Taxi Love" or "La Tempesta" have almost been graduately lost in film history untill one night during the red eye hours a commercial television station in a Spanish speaking country decides to broadcast a rare Marisa Mell movie just to fill its air time! And fortunately some fans are vigilantely enough to tape or record this movie before it disappeares again in the trenches of the film abyss of lost movies. Other times during the height of the VHS tapes in the 80's some rare Marisa Mell movies have been issued on a very limited production run in some local markets. Sadly at the moment those movies have not been re-issued on DVD. What ever the source it is nice to see that this movie has surfaced again for the dedicated fan to see and appreciate !The copy that I got is the Spanish version of the movie. The quality of the movie is not very good as you can see by the screen grabs but is a little bit better when played as a movie. In the filmography of Marisa Mell movies this movie "Taxi Love" can be classified under the label "Italian Erotic Movies" which were extremely populare during mid and end 70's in Italy and the rest of the world. In the past I wrote an entry about this kind of movies under the title "Vizietto All'Italiana or the sexy Italian comedy". One of the most famous Euro-cult stars Edwige Fenech made dozens of those movies. Even Marisa Mell could not escape this trend and was forced to act in them if she wanted to stay in the movie business at all. So she made several movies like "La Liceale all Mare con l'Amica di Pappa" or "Amore, Letti et Tradimenti". This movie "Taxi Love" has all the ingredients of a sexy Italian comedy like a duo of two stupid and clumsy men, one tall and the other small, several confusing story lines with a lot of endless babble, some car chases or turmoil , one or two sexy heroines who show a lot of legs or cleavage and try to seduce the hero of the story... Personally I do not like these kind of movies because they never live up to what the lobby cards or posters promise and mostly the stories are just plain stupid and especially not funny but rather far fetched with often old or sexist jokes!
So this movie fits the mold perfectly. The central piece is of course a taxi with several stories told around this taxi and its driver. Marisa Mell plays in one storyline in the middle of the movie and disappeares after her story has been told. Nothing special and nothing earth shattering. Just a money job with only a few days of production time.So what makes this movie special then in the Marisa Mell filmography?

As far as I know there are two version of this movie in circulation. One normal version and one hard core version. The version that I got was the plain normal version without any additions of hard core (Thank God!). At the end of the success of the sexy Italian comedies when the movie market was flooded with this kind of movies the producers of these movies were looking to find new ways to sell them to the audiences. One of the means to do that was to take a movie from their movie library and insert several hard core scenes that were not originally in the production to spice up the otherwise dull story. This became a very common practice during those days and is one of the reasons why some people regard Marisa Mell at the end of her movie career as a hard core actress although she never did perform any of those scenes as mentioned. Those scenes were later shot with body doubles. Other famous examples are the movies "Emanuelle in America" with Laura Gemser by husband Joe D'Amato or "Porno Holocaust" with George Eastman. (Sigh!!!)
Another reason why this movie is quite special is the fact that thanks to its rareness not many people have seen it and some have questioned and doubted the appearence of Marisa Mell in it. Often the name of Marisa Mell was mixed up with the name of another actress in this movie going by the name Malisa Longo, although not the same as Marisa Mell, it was enough to cause some kind of confusion. But as can be seen by the screen grabs, Marisa Mell was indeed part of this movie, although not in a leading role but in a gloryfied cameo or as the title credits call her "by special appearence".

After viewing this movie I was surprised to see an old acquintance of Marisa Mell which I thought I would never see again!

In this movie from 1976 I noticed that she was wearing her white and yellow gold heart shaped pendant with diamonds that she wore for the first time in the spaghetti western from 1972 called "Amico stammi lontano almeno un palmo" as Sarah and that in the mid 80's also appeared on her neck during a sexy photo shoot for a skin magazine. A photo from that shoot was later used as an autograph card to promote her only single "Slave of Love". I wonder where that pendant is now???

And now...a commercial break with J&B

“J&B Whisky” is a scotch blended whisky. The “J&B-Rare Blend”, the standard J&B whisky brand, is a blend of 42 Scottish malt and grain whiskies. Its charactaristic green bottle with yellow and red label are world wide known but if you ask people, even ardent J&B-drinkers, what the abbreviation “J&B” means not many can aswer you that the two letters refer to the names of its founders “Justerini & Brooks”. The company, originally “Johnson & Justerini” was founded in 1749 in London (UK), delivering fine wine and spirits to various up-scale aristocratic households, as well as supplying the then British King George III. In 1910, Johnson & Justerini was bought by Alfred Brooks and renamed “Justerini & Brooks”. In the early 1950s “J&B” merged with another company to form “United Wine Traders Ltd”,and by the end of the decade it had conquered America. From this sound base, and helped by another merger with “W. A. Gilbey Ltd, the London Gin makers", the brand went on to win over the world and became today’s second best selling blended whisky in the world after that other strange whisky fellow “Johnnie Walker”. “J&B”-whisky not only became a household name in hotels, bars and private homes but during the 60’s and 70’s it also became a fixed staple in the cultural world.

Some famous examples: In the original 1960’s “Ocean’s Eleven”, Sam Harmon played by Dean Martin, is seen with a bottle of J&B and glass looking at a painting of modern art in the home of character Spryros Acebos. The main character of Bret Easton Ellis's famous generation X novel “American Psycho”, Patrick Bateman, almost exclusively drinks J&B on the rocks. The main character MacReady in John Carpenter's 1982 horror picture “The Thing” exclusively drinks J&B on the rocks or even straight from the bottle. In the film “Goodfellas”, Ray Liotta's character receives a bottle of J&B smuggled into prison. In the cult film “Scarface”, Al Pacino's character, Tony Montana, drinks J&B with Elvira, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, during a poolside conversation. In the ultra violent HBO-prison drama “Oz”, various prison staff personnel can be seen drinking J&B in their office in several episodes. In the film “Once Upon a Time in America”, by maestro Sergio Leone, Robert De Niro as Noodles drinks J&B….

During the height of the Giallo genre, J&B was one of the most famous stars in those movies without getting any credit. In almost all the well-known gialli, the bottle and its golden liquid appears one way or the other. Very often, one of the main characters is an avid J&B-whisky drinker giving the beverage a prominent place in the film, the life of the characters and the evolving story. Even Marisa Mell could not escape this trend so when she appeared in a giallo “Una sull’altra”, directed by Lucio Fulci, she was also linked to the famous drink, if she liked it or not!

Seeing someone pour in a drink is nothing special but what makes this scene so special is the way Fulci directed Marisa Mell when fixing the drink. During a conversation with one of the other characters, Marisa Mell in a flower power bikini top, walks to the bar placed on a small table with a lamp. Instead of turning around with her face to the camera while pouring the drink she keeps standing with her back to the viewer and camera only opening her legs just a little bit.

The attentive viewer can now see the bottle J&D and its characteristic label through her legs giving the bottle a phallic like appearence as if entering the character's body. This scene filmed as it is by director Lucio Fulci is not a coincidence. Fulci had this scene clearly in mind while filming. Nothing more, nothing less. The scene gives a very clear hint about the profession of the character "Monica Weston". This scene also shows what a master craftsman Lucio Fulci was during the height of his carreer in telling a story solely with pictures and why “Una sull’altra” is regarded by many fans as one of his best movies.

During its giallo career, J&B appeared, as mentioned, in gialli like:

"Femina ridens" from 1969 with Dagmar Lassander as Maria, a giallo now famous for the dance scene with the see through bikini (See also entry "Pop Porno")

"Non si Sevizia un Paperino" from 1972 with Barbara Bouchet as Patricia

"Nude per l'Assassino" from 1975 with Edwige Fenech as Magda Cortis where the killer is pouring a glass of whisky

So in the end you can say that a giallo always had to have as a characteristic next to the black gloves and a bloody sharp razor blade a few scenes with J&B. Cheers!

How "Marisa Mell" became "Edwige Fenech"!

Back in the days before the Internet, fans of Euro Cult movies like Giallo, Eurospy and Spaghetti Westerns... often had a hard time to find more info about their beloved movies, directors and stars. They were often viewed as trash, B-Z movies or whatever kind of name they came up with to put on them! Thankfully some hard core fans in Europe found it their duty to write and publish about them by publishing fan magazines like the still excellent "Cine Zine Zone" (1978-2003) in France by the sadly missed Pierre Charles, who published 136 issues of his magazine (with one special issue entirely dedicated to Marisa Mell in his series "Les Déesses du Cinema du Quartier")
or the British publication "Giallo Pages" by John Martin, known as one of the überfans of the Italian movies and his love for everthing giallo.The first issue of Giallo Pages was published in 1993 with cover date March/April/May. It had among other items an interview with Dario Argento, Michele Soavi, David Warbeck... and because Marisa Mell had died a year before an obituary called "Goodbye Marisa Mell". The cover of this issue was quite shocking composing two movie stills "Antropophagus" with George Eastman and "L'orribile segreto del Dr. Hichcock" with Barbara Steele. In the lower right hand corner you got a little daring photo of a semi nude Marisa Mell from her best movie for many fans "Una Sull'Altra" by Lucio Fulci.

Publishing a magazine of any kind is a hard business because it asks a lot of time, money, creativity and endurance from the publisher or editor to keep on publishing. Not many people were able to copy the gigantic work of Pierre Charles with his magazine Cine Zine Zone. So John Martin ceased to publish his magazine after a 6 issue run in May of 1999 (Cover: a white dressed Diabolik). Giallo Pages had not a big print run but had excellent articles so many fans, especially in the USA, who had missed the first issues were looking for these hard to find issues to complete their collection in a pre-Ebay time when instant gratification did not exist like it does today. American publisher "Draculina Publishing" took the opportunity in 1996 and published an American version of the first issue of Giallo Pages. The publisher did not copy the original British issue to an American version but took some liberties for the American market!

They dropped the editoral page together with the Giallo Pages logo. Three illustrations from the content page were deleted. Pages 9, 11 and 15 have differences in illustrations than the original. Page 43 with the Marisa Mell obituary is missing completely. The "Trauma" back cover is replaced by a "Danger Diabolik" photo. On the cover Marisa Mell with her breasts in full is replaced by Edwige Fenech covering her breasts. The publisher forgot on the American version to remove the reference to the Marisa Mell orbituary called "Marisa Mell Remembered". Why did the publisher change Marisa Mell to Edwige Fenech? Probably because the photo of Marisa Mell is quite daring with her arms in the air and her breast in full view for an American market at that time. Or maybe he tought that Edwige Fenech was more known to the American Euro Cult fans than Marisa Mell who had not made many films since the 80's and had almost slipt into obscurity. Who knows! Fact is that only issue # 1 got reprinted.