Andrea Checchi Movies

This lavishly costumed historical epic had an estimated $100 million price tag. Spectacularly photographed battle action contrasts with often plodding individual scenes that bog down the plot. Fearing his growing power, European monarchs force Napoleon Bonaparte (Rod Steiger) to abdicate as Emperor and retire to Elba, and the French are concerned they will be outnumbered by a force of combined armies from many countries in Europe. Napoleon no sooner says goodbye to his loyalist troops than he begins to rally his men and prepare for another takeover. King Louis XVIII (Orson Welles) sends Marshal Michel Ney (Dan O'Herlihy) and his men to counter Bonaparte, but upon seeing his old commander (and ally), Ney thrusts his sword to the ground and takes up arms with the deposed emperor. They all return to Paris by popular demand, defying the orders of Louis (who flees from the palace) and running the monarchy tout seul. Soon England, Austria, Prussia and Russia unite to try and stop the dictator. Wellington (Christopher Plummer) readies his troops near Waterloo, refuses to retreat anymore, and waits for Prussian Marshall Blucher (Sergei Zakhariadze) and his army to join up with the British as the only hope to stop the French juggernaut. Jack Hawkins and Michael Wilding portray key military commanders Picton and Ponosby, respectively. Napoleon and his troops cut into the Prussian and British forces dramatically, weakening their power, but three problems arise. First, Ney refuses to lead his segment of the troops onward; and second, Bonaparte's men are plagued by the wet weather, which causes
the cannon brigade to become immobilized in mud (when Wellington strategically gives Bonaparte's troops the lower ground) rendering it ineffective until late in the day. And even more calamitously, Bonaparte - growing increasingly ill -- insists on leading his men from the rear, which causes the information to become outdated as soon as it gets to him. The Russian version of this film was nearly four hours long, while western audiences saw an edited version slightly over two hours long. Unfortunately, Waterloo bombed at the box office. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Made in Italy is a multistoried film, set...in Italy, of course. An all-star cast appears in brief seriocomic vignettes about rich and poor, tourist and native. Director Nanni Loy exhibits the realistic and somewhat earthy technique he'd used on his earlier documentaries, with heavy emphasis on ironic punch lines. Filmed in 1965 by a Franco/Italian production team, Made in Italy received the best possible exposure upon its 1967 American release when clips were showcased on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Best bit: The "give to the poor" poster in an impoverished Italian mountain village. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, two bank robbers foil their own plans to commit the perfect crime when they begin fighting over a woman. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this WW II drama, a captain attempts to navigate his Italian submarine through enemy waters. He is stalked by a British commander assigned to destroy the sub. The Italian captain somehow succeeds in getting into neutral waters and is granted permission to stay there a fortnight. The British commander also stays in Tangiers so he can monitor the Italian. During their stay, the two agree not to fight and gradually come to respect each other. Meanwhile an intelligence officer, tries to upset the careful balance between the men. He uses the Italian's lover to get him to make a move. It works, and the Italian accuses his girl of spying and leaves the safety of port. The British commander follows and ends up losing his ship to the Italian's torpedoes. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Generally considered to be the foremost example of Italian Gothic horror, this darkly atmospheric black-and-white chiller put director Mario Bava on the international map and made the bewitching Barbara Steele a star. Steele plays Princess Asa, a high priestess of Satan who is gruesomely executed in 1600s Moldavia by having a spiked mask hammered into her face. Before she dies, Asa vows revenge on the family who killed her and returns from the grave two centuries later to keep her promise. In a striking resurrection scene replete with bats, scorpions and fog, Asa rises from the tomb to claim her bloody vengeance. With vampires, bubbling flesh, dank crypts, undead servants and torch-bearing mobs, the plot is a little ripe, but the visuals are Bava's primary consideration. The atmosphere is so heavy and the imagery so dense that the film becomes nearly too rich in texture, but the sheer, ghastly beauty of it all is entrancing. Although this was only the second of Bava's twenty-six films as director, it is undoubtedly his best and the one upon which most of his considerable reputation rests. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Back in Germany for the first time since 1933, director Fritz Lang returned to the screen character that brought him enormous success in his pre-Hollywood years. The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse is not so much a sequel as an extension of Lang's early Dr. Mabuse (1922) and Testament of Dr. Mabuse. Set in 1960, the film begins with a series of unsolved murders in a Berlin hotel. The modus operandi of the murderer is the same as that of long-dead megalomaniac Dr. Mabuse. Police detective Gert Frobe and amateur sleuths Peter Van Eyck and Dawn Addams suspect that the killer is a man who believes that he is the reincarnation of Mabuse. Could the culprit be secretive insurance salesman Werner Peters, or blind seer Wolfgang Preiss? The title refers to the hotel's sophisticated TV surveillance system--dozens of roving cameras and TV monitors, inspired (claimed Lang) by a sophisticated bugging method used by the Nazis during World War II. The renewed popularity of the Dr. Mabuse character spawned five movie sequels, none of which were directed by Lang, who had washed his hands of the project. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The search for the notorious German Field Marshal's legendary treasure forms the basis of this adventure that chronicles the efforts of a small group of people, each with a different design on the loot, to find it. One fellow wants to use the money to help the families of war veterans; another wants to get a scoop for his newspaper, and one wants to sell the treasure to enemy foreign powers. Though they eventually find it, all their efforts end up in vain. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

When a woman is found murdered, her lover is accused in this crime comedy. (AKA The Assassin) ~ All Movie Guide

Told in pageantlike fashion, Casa Ricordi is the story of the Ricordi family, the most prestigious music publishers in all Italy. It was the Ricordis who, for better or worse, came up with the "royalty" concept, paying artists (and their families) for their work in perpetuity. As the family's fortune grows, the Ricordis rub shoulders with the musical glitterati of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Verdi, Donizetti, Puccini, Bellini and Rossini. Naturally, this allows the film to showcase some of these composers' most famous works--and in true Hollywood-by-the-Mediterranean fashion, the principal influence for these compositions are the various members of the Ricordi family. The soundtrack of Casa Ricordi reverberates with the voices of such musical immortals as Tito Gobbi, Renata Tibaldi, Mario Del Monaco and Gianni Poggi, among many others. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Despite their questionable behavior during WWII, the Italians were generally cast in a sympathetic light in war films of the 1950s. In Siluri Umani (Human Torpedoes), Raf Vallone stars as a member of an elite Italian navy unit. Their mission: to attack a British convoy in motorboats armed with explosive warheads. The only way by which these courageous guerillas can avoid being blown up themselves is to jump from their boats at the last minute. It goes without saying the some don't make it. Siluri Umani is based on an actually military maneuver which occurred in March of 1941. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide