Hugo Blanco Movies
Vittorio De Sica's A Brief Vacation (Una Breva Vacanza) stars Florinda Bolkan as a downtrodden working woman. Forced to support herself, her children, her physically incapacitated husband and her obtrusive brother and mother, Bolkan contracts tuberculosis. She is granted a brief vacation at a health spa, where a whole new world--and potential new life--is opened up to her. A Brief Vacation was scripted by the prolific Cesar Zavattini, who like De Sica had once been a guiding force in the Italian neorealist movement. Though not De Sica's final film, A Brief Vacation was the last of the director's work to be released in America. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1970
This is a biography of the painter Francisco Jose de Goya (1746-1828) who went from being a portrait artist for royalty and the notables of his day to painting searing images embodying his wholehearted disapproval of the atrocities of his time. In the middle of his life, the artist had a relationship with the Duchess of Alba, who served as the model for a series of paintings, collectively called "The Majas," including a painting known as "The Naked Maja," which scandalized the society of the time. The film uses Goya's paintings as tableau, which come alive and bring us into the scene. Francisco Rabal is Goya, Irina Demick the Duchess of Alba. Interestingly, despite the scandal caused by her ancestress, the current Duchess of Alba gave her approval of and was present at the premier of the film. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- 1969
Long before Shakespeare was revolutionizing English theater, great Spanish playwrights like Fernando de Rojas were writing popular, fully-scripted plays like La Celestina (1499). This international production is based on that play and concerns the tribulations of two star-crossed lovers who must rely on the arch-conniver Celestina to even manage to see one another briefly. However, one after another of them is betrayed in this grandmother of all subsequent tragicomedies of the modern age. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Julián Mateos, Amelia de la Torre, (more)
- 1968
In this spaghetti western, based on the Marvin H. Albert novel The Bounty Killer, a bounty hunter swears he will bring in a notorious Mexican outlaw. The outlaw is captured, but then, with the help of a pretty lady, escapes and goes to his hometown. There he enlists the aid of the locals and gets his old gang back together. The bounty hunter eventually catches up, but he is immediately captured and tortured by the outlaw who then robs and kills a few of the hapless townsfolk. This causes the woman to reconsider her actions. She frees the bounty hunter, and a violent shoot-out ensues. In the end, all of the bad-guys are slain, and the bounty hunter finds himself a rich man. There are no likeable or heroic characters in this film that is unfortunately marred by poor English-language dubbing. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Richard Wyler, Tomas Milian, (more)
- 1967
In this comical spaghetti western, a companion film to Seven Guns for the MacGregors, two immigrant families move to Texas during the 1800s. The MacGregors hail from Scotland while their neighbors the Donovans come from Ireland. The two families frequently engage in rivalry, but it is all in fun as all six MacGregor boys are engaged to the Donovan girls. The trouble begins during an engagement party for Bailey and Flori. The festivities are interrupted by an outlaw gang which steals the trunk containing all the MacGregor's money. Naturally the boys, including Bailey, take off in hot pursuit. Flori, afraid her beloved may be tempted by the outlaw's wanton women, follows them and ends up taken hostage. Bailey tries to save her but ends up captured also. Now his brothers, aided by helpful natives must save them both. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- David Bailey, Leo Anchoriz, (more)
The Continental cast and scenes of intense violence may earmark Texas, Addio as a spaghetti Western, but the plot of this Italian/Spanish production unspools very much like its Hollywood counterpart. Django star Franco Nero's character provides the link; his two-fisted, taciturn Texas sheriff, Burt Sullivan, is cut from the same unwavering in-his-duty cloth as Gary Cooper's lawmen as he crosses the border to bring wealthy and sadistic Mexican crime boss Cisco Delgado (José Suárez) to justice for the murder of his father. Sullivan's body count may be staggeringly high by the film's fade-out, but his kills are strictly in defense of himself, his greenhorn brother, Jim (Cole Kitosch, aka Alberto Dell'Acqua or Robert Widmark), or later, a group of Mexican revolutionaries led by lawyer Luigi Pistilli that attempts to overthrow Delgado's corrupt regime. Director Ferdinando Baldi (whose Western curriculum vitae includes the more European-flavored Blindman [1971] and Get Mean [1975], with American ex-pat actor Tony Anthony) makes excellent use of the Almeira, Spain, locations (well photographed by future Trinity Is Still My Name director Enzo Barboni); and if his pacing is occasionally draggy, he more than makes up for it with a wealth of well-staged brawls and shoot-outs. His script (written with Django co-scribe Franco Rossetti) is lean and solid, with a hint of noir in its central dark secret regarding Delgado's relationship with Sullivan's family. ~ Paul Gaita, Rovi
- Starring:
- Franco Nero
This dull sequel to Gritos en la Noche stars Marcelo Arroita Jauregui as Dr. Conrad Fisherman, a mad scientist whose experiments in mind control were spurred on by the dying Dr. Orloff. Angry that his brother Andros (Hugo Blanco) is having an affair with his wife (Luisa Sala), Fisherman turns the man into a radio-controlled robotic zombie. Using Andros, the bitter Fisherman then begins a series of murders targeting strippers and nightclub singers. His plans take an even more diabolical turn with the arrival of his vacationing niece, Melissa (Agnes Spaak). Director Jesus Franco's film is uneven and woodenly acted, with far too much screentime spent on teasing burlesque rather than genuine horror. Franco returned to the same themes in the following year's Miss Muerte with better results. Jose Rubio, Perla Cristal, and Marta Reves co-star, while Franco makes a cameo as a piano-player. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi
This plodding, sadistic horror film from director Jesus Franco concerns an Austrian legend about a ghostly Baron who supposedly rises from the swamps and murders women. When real murders are discovered, Inspector Borowsky (Georges Rollin) is immediately suspicious of the Baron's descendant, Max von Klaus (Howard Vernon), who lives in a creepy castle with his nephew Ludwig (Hugo Blanco) and sister Elisa (Maria Frances). Ludwig whips a pretty woman named Margaret (Gogo Rojo) and burns her with a heated poker in the film's only remotely shocking sequence, which has been excised in several of the release prints. A slow-moving story based on Franco's novel La Main d'Une Homme Mort leaves Godofredo Pacheco's cinematography and a deft performance by Howard Vernon as the film's only attractions. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi
- Starring:
- Georges Rollin, Howard Vernon, (more)
