Alida Valli
The most spectacular Easter celebration in the World. Hosts of hooded Penitents parade through the ancient, narrow streets of the Old Town in time-honored ritual. But for one celebrant this Holy Week is different. For him Semana Santa is a time to kill. As the death toll mounts, it falls to detective Maria Delgado - mistrusted outsider from Madrid - to stop the bizarre killings.
Documentary about the shooting of 'Suspiria' that details everything that lovers of horror genre can desire, including the inspiration of the plot, the director, the cast, the style, the music and, of course, its worldwide success. Argento, Daria Nicolodi, Jessica Harper, Udo Kier, Stafania Casini, Giuseppe Colombo, Luciano Tovoli and several members of the progressive rock band Goblin (Claudio Simonetti, Fabio Pignatelli, Massino Marante) are interviewed to learn about their work in the film.
Half-Italian Gioia loves Max, but leaves her son's son to cheat her as a fiancé. When Mama invites the family to the Italian winery for Grandpa's 80th birthday, the feelings are on the table alongside pasta, pesto and vino, because Gioia happens to meet Max again ...
Alex Ritt, a music video director comes to Italy to direct a video for pop sensation Stefania Stella. He soon encounters a mysterious killer who videotapes his victims for the police. As the horrible murders continue, Ritt is unknowingly pushed into the killer's games and he soon becomes a target of the police. The video-killer is on the loose and Ritt must find out the truth before it's too late.
For 16 years Miss Bentley has been spending April at an elegant hillside villa on Lake Como. This year, 1937, her London society artist father has recently died and the only other English-speaking guests are brash Americans. Then Major Wilshaw arrives. He suggests they meet for cocktails and Miss Bentley stands him up -- not even thinking about it -- as she helps the new nanny of an Italian family settle in. Miss Beaumont, a tall, young American who has dropped out of finishing school in Switzerland, is bored and finds some amusement in flirting with the major, whose libido is awakened for the first time since before the great war. And Miss Bentley now finds more about the major to admire than his ears.
Marco is a judge investigating a case of arms trafficking, one of the judges fight against corruption of Italian political life. Carla, his wife, lives dominated by the fear that her husband is murdered and, unfortunately, their fears are realized. Then she decides to join a group of widows of judges to break the silence that has always protected the crimes of the Mafia, who always acts in collusion with influential public figures. With the help of the group and the notes and documents of her husband, Carla produces a television documentary that endangers the lives of many people.
Marco, a television journalist, reads "red lies" on his teletext system in order to gather material on the homosexual world for a story he's working on. Unfortunately, he is implicated in a series of murders in which the victims are all gay. Marco becomes a suspect and is forced to investigate the crimes himself in order to prove his innocence.
This Italian TV mini-series (4 episodes) is directed by giallo great Sergio Martino and stars some of the most recognizable stars of Italian genre cinema, including Edwige Fenech, Ray Lovelock, and Alida Valli. Story: Sandra Venturi, studying to be a singer at the conservatory of music in the Italian town of Lucca, has a promising career in opera ahead of her. On the eve of her nineteenth birthday, during a thunderstorm, the young singer leaves the apartment she shares with her mother Nicole Venturi, a journalist. Sandra is on her way to a secret rendezvous with a married man. He is murdered shortly before Sandra arrives at the deserted villa outside the town which they had chosen as their meeting point. When Marco's corpse is discovered the next morning, Nicole senses that reporting this case will make her famous outside her local region. What she doesn't know is that her daughter is also missing ...
The survivor of a concentration camp finds out that her lover, a lesbian, is having an affair with a protegee.
Who is the mysterious stranger Cecilia met on the street? Why is he suspicious of everyone? She is happily married, has a lovely child and an interesting job: she has no motive to be troubled, but she decides to join him and to become his lover. She shares his destiny right up to its unexpected conclusion.
A Yugoslavian man meets a woman in Paris, where he has come to do some research, and their mutual attraction leads to a liaison and shared adventures, not many good.
A young girl's husband rents a lovely home just outside of Madrid so she can spend the last three months of her pregnancy in peace and luxury. Unfortunately, just as they arrive at the home, the girl realizes that it is the place where she had secretly had an illegal abortion some years before. The clinic is long-gone, but this doesn't ease the woman's disquiet. Things get even worse when she learns that her upstairs neighbor is the old abortionist's assistant.
A demented nun sliding through morphine addiction into madness, whilst presiding over a regime of lesbianism, torture and death. Sister Gertrude is the head nurse/nun in a general hospital, whose increasingly psychotic behavior endangers the staff and patients around her.
Eva is a singer in a Noah's Ark themed nightclub, where the guests wear animal masks. She sings about a doomed love affair between a lion tamer and a lion. She is approached by a stranger who claims to know her and to remember her singing Mozart which she denies. Driven around in her midget manager´s limousine she encounters bizarre characters who turn out to belong to her incestuous family of ogres. All culminates in a bizarre finale in a zoo featuring Klaus Kinski and arias from "The Magic Flute". Stylish, surrealistic and weird, but you will scratch your head and ask yourself what it´s all about (and why you should bother).
Senator Alberici tries to approach the secretariat of his party with a campaign against immorality. In reality the politician is a pervert with homosexual tendencies that he expresses with men and women.
The death of a multinational company’s chairman induces the three candidates for the chairmanship to plot against one another for control of the business.
Set in a rural area of France in the 19th century, this simple tale tells the story of a servant girl whose life seems marked by grand tragedy, but whose heart is simple and uncomplicated enough not only to endure, but even to attain serenity in the face of her manifold frustrations. Her only friend, to whom she pours out all her troubles, is an old parrot. When the parrot dies, she reverently has it stuffed and continues telling it her woes. This drama is based on a story by Gustave Flaubert.
A young poet falls in love with a sophisticated woman who hates poetry. But the poet wants to win her with poetry — and a bit of help from his mum.
Passengers on a European train have been exposed to a deadly disease. Nobody will let them off the train. So what happens next?
A psychiatrist (Sami Frey) takes complete responsibility when his son is found floating in a swimming pool, stabbed to death. All the evidence points to a young orphan boy as the real murderer. Why is the psychiatrist claiming the murder as his own?
A disturbed young woman is kept prisoner in a castle by her aunt for her money. The game-keeper, her guardian, tries to rape her but she escapes. In her flight she meets a man also running away, from two killers.
A total re-edit of Mario Bava's gothic classic Lisa and the Devil (1973) for US release in 1975. Cheesy exorcism scenes were shot to try to capitalize on the success of The Exorcist (1973).
A young Hacienda-owner abuses women due to his traumatic youth while his mother covers for his sadistic actions. When he 'tames' the daughter of the mansion supervisor and marries her, his young wife soon becomes the dominating person in the family.
An Italian nobleman seeks help after his paralyzed daughter becomes possessed by the spirit of a malevolent ancestress.
Two writers and their girlfriends visit the castle of an actor who specializes in playing vampire roles. As the night progresses, they begin to wonder if the man is an actor playing a vampire, or a vampire playing an actor.
Lisa is a tourist in an ancient city. When she gets lost, she finds an old mansion in which to shelter. Soon she is sucked into a vortex of deception, debauchery and evil presided over by housekeeper Leandre.
Julie (Rosemary Dexter) is disturbed by the disappearance of her psychiatrist boyfriend Luca (Horst Frank) following a bizarre dream where she witnessed him murdered. She travels to a seaside village where he might be and encounters Frank (Adolfo Celi), who tells her Luca has indeed been there. Julie's investigation leads her the house of Gerta (Alida Valli), where the mystery deepens among the odd characters residing at this artists enclave.
In Italy, the gambler and professor of poetry Daniele Dominici arrives in the seaside town of Rimini and is hired to teach for four months in the local high school replacing another teacher. His relationship with his partner Monica is in crisis and he spends most of the time with his new acquaintances and gamblers Giorgio, Marcello and Gerardo. In classroom, he meets the gorgeous nineteen years old student Vanina Abati, who is Gerardo's girlfriend.
Athos Magnani, a young researcher, returns to Tara, where his father was killed in 1936 in uncleared circumstances, before his birth. As the son untangles the web of lies the story of the assassination is constructed from, he finds himself ensnared in the same web.
A young physician becomes lonely when his workaholic wife ignores him to concentrate on her professional career. He is befriended by an older female artist who is fond of hallucinogenic mushrooms. When his wife is late for their anniversary celebration, he drinks and takes mushrooms with the artist. He wakes up to find she has died and is fearful he may have accidentally killed her.
In pre-war Italy, a young couple have a baby boy. The father, however, is jealous of his son - and the scene moves to antiquity, where the baby is taken into the desert to be killed. He is rescued, given the name Edipo (Oedipus), and brought up by the King and Queen of Corinth as their son. One day an oracle informs Edipo that he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother. Horrified, he flees Corinth and his supposed parents - only to get into a fight and kill an older man on the road...
A deaf and mute vagabond finds a large denomination bill in a Mexico City dump, and while he tries to buy something with it, others try to con him into giving it away. The film was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 36th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.
Also released as Valley of the Swords, this lugubrious US/Spanish co-production features the usual mid-1960s "tax shelter" international cast. Broderick Crawford plays a despotic 10th century Spanish king who, in cahoots with the invading Moors, has banished handsome Castilian nobleman Spartaco Santoni. With the surreptitious aid of Crawford's daughter Teresa Velasquez, Santoni assembles an army to march against the Moors. In keeping with the 13th century epic poem from which this film was derived ("El Poema de Fernan Gonzales") Santoni's path is smoothed by the celestial intervention of patron saints Milan and Santiago. Among the big names picking up a few tax-free dollars in The Castilian are Cesar Romero, Linda Darnell, Alida Valli and Fernando Rey.
Salvatori pays a visit to his old ma who is bedridden in a gloomy old people’s home. He promises her that pretty soon he’ll be rich and they’ll live together in their house. The young man is hired as a catering assistant in a desirable mansion, but the owner of the place is dying. The wife and the daughter are trying to regain the old man’s love and affection while the son is busy gathering his friends for a feast.
Therese, a café owner, mourns the mysterious disappearance of her husband sixteen years earlier. A tramp arrives in the town and she believes him to be her husband. But he is suffering from amnesia and she tries to bring back his memory of earlier times.
A suave art thief romances a wealthy duchess, only to enable him to steal a priceless painting from her collection. Complications ensue.
Dr. Génessier is riddled with guilt after an accident that he caused disfigures the face of his daughter, the once beautiful Christiane, who outsiders believe is dead. Dr. Génessier, along with accomplice and laboratory assistant Louise, kidnaps young women and brings them to the Génessier mansion. After rendering his victims unconscious, Dr. Génessier removes their faces and attempts to graft them on to Christiane's.
In full French Revolution, the young Blanche de la Force decides to protect a convent and so entered the Carmelite order. She meets the cheerful nun Sister Constance and mother Marie, among others, and is happy with them despite the external conflicts and pressures of his father to leave the convent. Film based on real and tragic story from the sixteen Carmelite nuns in the convent of Compiègne in 1794, and collected by the French writer Georges Bernanos in his play of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the piece "The Last of the scaffold" the writer Gertrud von Le Fort.
At the end of the Great War, Arsène Lupin resumed his adventurous life. Theft of three paintings committed by an adversary leads him to the treasure of the Golden Fleece.
Ursula finishes her studies and returns to her aunt Florentine and uncle, Ribera who is the count. She falls in love with Lambert, the killer of her uncle.
Squarciò, a fisherman, lives with his family on a small island off the Dalmatian coast of Italy. Like his fellow villagers, Squarciò struggles against harsh living conditions, a scarcity of fish in nearby waters and exploitation by the local wholesaler. But while the other fishermen continue to use nets, he goes out to the open sea to fish illegally with bombs. But Squarciò borrows money, loses his boat, and in a moment of supreme desperation, has to bomb directly off-shore, causing the hatred and rejection of his fellow fishermen. Trying to save his family, Squarciò and his young sons sail their new boat out beyond the local waters and bomb-fish again. But this time, the sea exacts a terrible toll…
Twenty-year-old Joseph (Perkins) and his sixteen-year-old sister Suzanne (Mangano) live in the merciless conditions of an intemperate foreign land with their widowed mother (Van Fleet). Their mother attempts to exert a hold on her children by involving them in the family's run-down rice plantation. However the siblings seek liberation, and look for this in their romantic lives. Suzanne becomes involved with Michael (Conte) and Joseph finds a love interest in Claude (Valli).
Eight-year-old Roger Court is in Venice expecting to reunite with his father, British diplomat Major Court (Trevor Howard), whom he hasn't seen in three years. Roger lives with his Aunt Rose since his mother abandoned him.
Forced by her lover to sell her body, Renata is saved from a suicide attempt by Paolo Martelli, an engineer. She asks him to help her find a job. When Paolo's wife humiliates her, Renata gains revenge by seducing the woman's husband.
Five portraits of actresses in their "common" life, seen as women rather than movie stars.
1939 : what a beautiful year for Claudia and Jerôme. No sooner do they meet that they are under each other's spell. 1939 : what a horrible year for the two lovers : war breaks out before they can get married. They meet again after the war but the enchantment has vanished. They decide to marry but it will be for reason, not for love. Miracles only happen once.
A petty crook (Joseph Cotten) moves to an Ohio town and courts a factory owner's disabled daughter (Valli).
Mountain climbers in the Swiss Alps mull over past problems while trying to conquer a perilous peak.
In postwar Vienna, Austria, Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, arrives penniless as a guest of his childhood chum Harry Lime, only to learn he has died. Martins develops a conspiracy theory after learning of a "third man" present at the time of Harry's death, running into interference from British officer Major Calloway, and falling head-over-heels for Harry's grief-stricken lover, Anna.
The body of a young actress is brought to her home town by the man who loved her. He knows that she wanted all the church bells to ring for three days after she was buried, but is told that this will cost a lot of money. The cheques that he writes to the various churches all bounce, but it is the weekend and, in desperation, he prays that a miracle will happen before the banks reopen. It does, but not in the way he hoped.
The beautiful Mrs. Paradine is accused of poisoning her older, blind husband. She hires married Anthony Keane as her lawyer and when he begins to fall in love with her, she encourages him.
Eugenia is a daughter of a wealthy but miserly man living a simple life in the provincial town of Saumur. Eugenia's inexperience leads her to fall in love with an unworthy man.
The famous actor Amedeo Nazzari is forced to stay overnight in a small local hotel because of a car breakdown...
At 18, the beautiful and smart Kira comes to Petersburg as the Communists consolidate power. She rebuffs a cousin who rises in the Party and may remember the slight. She falls in love with Leo, the son of an aristocrat, who gets into political trouble and never gets out. Meanwhile, a Party leader, Andrei, also loves her, and she feigns love for him to get political protection for Leo and money to pay for his TB treatment. But can Leo forgive her being Andrei's mistress?
Alberto Serrani, a mining engineer, meets doctor's daughter Marina, sweet and simple, and the notorious and frivolous Clara who falls for him immediately.
Franco, a young man of noble descent, decides to marry Luisa, daughter of a humble clerk, against his grandmother's will. But a terrible tragedy upsets the life of the newly married couple: their little daughter Ombretta drowns in Lake Como and Luisa goes to the brink of madness.
A taxi driver finds a baby in his cab after the mother accidentally leaves him behind.
A comedy about a governor who wants a miller's wife and tries to fix a night with her by putting the miller in jail.
