"Marta" or "Mata Al Macho Y Lo Devora" Photo novella

Marisa Mell was during the height of her movie career a major star, not only in Europe but also in almost the entire Spanish speaking countries of the world, especially in South-America. Before the rise of video, dvd and streaming in the 60's and 70's people living in those countries, who wanted to keep a part of a movie they particularly liked could only keep this momentum by buying magazines, soundtracks, novelizations or if it was available by buying photo novella's. These photo novella's were extremely popular, having print runs which are nowadays almost impossible to achieve anymore. They were often romantic stories, specially made for the magazines with its own cult following of their stars. Those stars often made the transgression into movies like Erica Blanc, Ivan Rassimov, Ornella Muti, Rosalba Neri... So it was only natural that movies with the big names from that time also ended up in print. Especially horror, western and erotic movies were very popular. One of the Marisa Mell's movies "Marta" or in Spanish known as "Mata Al Macho Y Lo Devora" from 1971 made into these magazines. Today this edition of the magazine is very hard to find in a good condition, thus very collectible.

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Thanks to Stephen Boyd-fan Monica from Denver, Colorado, USA I am able to present to you in this entry some very beautiful pages and lobby cards from this cult classic Marisa Mell and Stephen Boyd movie which I had never seen before! 

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Monica has also a wonderful Stephen Boyd Blog

https://stephenboydblog.wordpress.com/

with a lot of interesting photo's and information about the life and work of this amazing actor. I highly recommend this blog. There is also an entry with information about Stephen Boyd and Marisa Mell as a couple during 1970-1971, when they made two back to back movies together.

Cinesex and all the others!

There was a time not long ago that Euro Cult fans had not the access to the various multimedia gadgets that we now have at present day like the Internet, Computer, Iphone, Ipad, DVD to see and re-see a beloved movie or social networks like Facebook to connect fans all over the world. The world was a lot smaller and simpler then. The options for entertainment after a hard day of work were limited to televsion, radio, books or going to the movies. If you were a fan of a certain movie the next best thing you could do to revist the film that you loved was buying the original soundtrack and if you were lucky you could buy a novelisation of the movie based on the original script which was often a cash in and hardly worth buying.

Another way to cash in on a movie, especially in Italy, were the cine photo magazines. Italy has always been the home to a special kind of entertainment known as the "Foto Romanzo". These photo romance novels were during the 60's and 70's very big in that country read by millions of women and very often stars and starlets from the Euro Cult scene switched between their movie work and the foto romanzo work.

During the sexual revolution in the 60's, especially at the end of this decade, another kind of photo novels appeared on the news stands in Italy. Their prime target audience were not the romance hungry women but men. Contrary to the photo romance novels which were specially created by the publishers with original storylines the cine photo novels were photo strips of popular movies at the time that were running in the movie theatres. To cater to the male audience not just any kind of popular movie but movies that had as central theme a lot of sex and/or violence, better yet a combination of both in one storyline. So the covers of these magazines like Cinesex, Bigfilm, Cinestop... were always centered around a very sexual situation mostly women in some kind of sexual act with a lot of T's and A's showing. And what sold the most copies for publishers was a lesbian act on the cover. Nothing beats two women going for it! These photo fumetti's were always taken from the negative print of the movie in black and white, even if it was a color movie. To further the story these photo's were highlighted with word balloons.

Marisa Mell has never been an actress in a photo romance novel for publishers like Lancio but indirectly some of her movies from the early 70's became cine photo novels like her 1971 movie "...dopo chi che uccide il maschio e lo divora" or better known in English as "Marta" with then real time lover and co-star Stephen Boyd in the november 1971 issue of Bigfilm. Stephen Boyd was at that time still best known as the counterpart of Charlton Heston in the homo erotic movie "Ben Hur" but his career in the 70's was dwindling very fast so he had to make movies abroad like Spain or Italy to keep the much needed money flowing. Notice that Stephen Boyd is credited on the cover of this Bigfilm issue as "Stephen Body". Comparing the cover of this cine photo magazine with the orginal Spanish movie poster the difference could not have been bigger!

Eurocult Looney Tunes!

Marisa Mell was one of the most beautiful actresses of her time! During her reign in the Eurocult scene a lot of photo's where taken from her. This one is from March 1964 when she attended in Argentina the Buenos Aires "Festival Internacional de Cine de Mar del Plata" . Already early on Marisa Mell had a lot of success with her films in the Spanish speaking countries appealing to a lot of latino men. So Spanish language newspapers started to cover the movies she made often accompanied with a review of that movie. Because the internet and desk top publishing are still decades away the editors of the newspapers asked often cartoonists to make a little drawing of the content of the movie so to liven up the review a little bit. This week's entry shows some cartoons of that time as being published during the 60's and 70's. You will notice the cartoons are not very flattering to the beauty of Marisa Mell.

DIAMOND WALKERS (1965)

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X

TRAIN D'ENFER (1965)

X

X

CHE NOTTE, RAGAZZI (1966)

X

X

DANGER: DIABOLIK! (1968)

X X

SENZA VIA D'USCITA (1970)

X

X

LES BELLES AUX BOIS DORMANTES (1970)

X

X

MARTA (1971)

X X

AMICO, STAMMI LONTANO ALMENO UN PALMO (1972)

X

X

LA ENCADENADA (1975)

X

The Schneider Connection

Since the start of my blog I get a lot of mails from around the world from other Marisa Mell fans! I am always glad to hear from them and appreciate each and every one of them. It signals to me that Marisa Mell is not forgotten and a lot of people are still enjoying her movies every day and missing her very much. On Wednesday January 14th, 2009, I got a very nice mail from a German actor-writer-director-producer named Andre Schneider. Andre Schneider is a big fan of Marisa Mell since his early childhood and a collector of memorabelia from around the world of her life and work.

Andre Schneider lives in Berlin (Germany) and London (UK). He is a graduate from the world famous actor school Lee Strasberg Institute in New York. He appeared in several international TV productions like the British cult favorite's "London's burning!" and "Taggart" but also in international movies like "Wish you where here" or "Dos Billetes". But that is not enough, he is also active on the production front as producer and writer of movies like "Deed Poll" and "Der Mann im Keller".

Andre has written 2 published books in 2004 in English "Life is a sexually transmitted disease" and in 2005 in German "Die Sprache der Scherben", both available at Amazon.de.

As mentioned Andre Schneider is also fascinated by the life and works of Marisa Mell. He has also created a site in her honor (http://marisamell.wordpress.com/).

On this site you can find three very interesting articles about Marisa Mell written by Andre:

The first is written in German about the lives and similarities of Marisa Mell and her friend Romy Schneider (http://andreschneider.wordpress.com/2007/10/27/romy-vs-marisa-verneigung-vor-der-trash-queen/)

The second is in Spanish about Marisa Mell in the movie Marta (http://andreschneider.wordpress.com/2007/08/16/marta-y-historia-de-una-traicion/)

And finally the third one is in German as a portrait of Marisa Mell (http://andreschneider.wordpress.com/2006/07/29/portrait-marisa-mell/)

Andre Schneider has also a very interesting personal blog about his private and professional life. (http://andreschneider.wordpress.com/)

But that is not all. The best always comes at the end! Andre Schneider told me that he is working on a biography on the life of Marisa Mell. Personally I am very happy to hear that because I think it was long overdue and the time is going to be right to get it published around her 20th year of passing. Knowing his dedication and love for the subject, the book will be very good. In future entries we will come back to report on further developments on that front!

Marta or ...dopo di che, uccide il maschio e lo divora (1971) - Avco Embassy Television Pressbook

In 1971 Marisa Mell was at the height of her career! That year she played in two Spanish movies, filmed back to back, which was rather exceptional for that time, with Stephen Boyd as her co-star. One was "Historia de una traición" or internationally known as "the Great Swindle" the other was "...dopo di che, uccide il maschio e lo divora" and internationally known as "Marta". The story of a sister's tortured attempt to discover what happened to her twin. During this expierence, she is suspected of murder herself; falls in love with her sister's husband, only to discover he is impotent and insane. The final discovery of her murdered twin, in the house, climaxes a horror tale of twisted minds and souls. This period in the life of Marisa Mell was special because she fell madly in love with actor Stephen Boyd during the production of the first movie "the Great Swindle". Due to a sometimes special atmosphere on set with often intimate scenes, actors often fall in love during a production. Unfortunately they mostly end it when a production is wrapped and everyone drifts to other productions and projects. So Marisa Mell was no exception to this rule of dating on a film set. She had often a affaire with a co-star. Her affair during the production of "Danger: Diabolik!" with John Phillip Law is one of the best known examples. This time the romance was not just a fling. Later she would devote a whole chapter in her autobiography "Coverlove" to her time together with Stephen Boyd. In this chapter she tells us that by the end of the second production "Marta" Stephen Boyd asked her to marry him. Apperently she accepted. It was not a traditional marriage in a church but a gypsy wedding. Marisa Mell describes how they cut their wrists, shared their blood and how romantic the little time was that she spent with him. Although the affair was doomed from the beginning she tells the readers that she never quite got over the affair and makes special note of his death in 1977. In 1972 the affair came to an end and she never saw him again. A special trivia is the fact that one time after the death of Stephen Boyd, Marisa Mell believed that he still spoke to her from beyond and that theirs was a very special kind of love, no matter how short-lived. Here are some photos from the 1974 pressbook released by Avco Embassy Television issued to all the networks and television stations in America who were showing this film on TV.


Next to pictures from the movie, a pressbook had often ads, texts and templates to promote a film in local newspapers and/or magazines with the name of the cinema at the bottom of the ad. Here are two examples for this movie together with the templates for the printers to use.