Cesare Danova Movies

This Italian musical drama was released to selected English-speaking theatres as The Holy Nun. The title character is played -- or, rather, sung -- by Eva Nova. Set in Naples, the film concerns a nun who can't quite get over the romantic entanglements of her previous life. Prominent in the cast is Cesare Danova, who went on to a substantial Hollywood career. Inexpensively filmed, Monaca Santa delivers full entertainment value within its modest limits. The music, which when all is said and done is this film's reason for being, was written by Ezio Carabella and Antonio Valli. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Errol Flynn's immediate followup to his 1953 swashbuckler Master of Ballantrae was Il Maestro di Don Giovanni--or, as it was known in America, Crossed Swords. Flynn plays a Don Juan-like adventurer named Renzo, who fights and romances his way through all sorts of Italian court intrigue. His principal foe is the wicked coucillor (Roldano Lupi) of the Duke of Sivona (Piero Tordi), who intends to oust the Duke and claim Sivona for himself. In between the usual sword duels, Renzo dallies with the Duke's buxom daughter (Gina Lollobrigida). Crossed Swords failed to make a dent in the US, a fact that Errol Flynn would attribute to United Artists' lack of interest in promoting the property. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cesare Danova and Jack Elam guest star in this episode of the popular The Rifleman television series. The town of North Fork is startled by the arrival of a genuine Italian count (Danova) and no one more so than brutish cattle buyer Sim Groder (Jack Elam), who does his best to rile the newcomer. After yet another unpleasant encounter in the saloon, Count Di Montova challenges Groder to a duel at dawn. With Lucas McCain (Chuck Connors) as his second, the count leaves the hotel to face Groder and four of his rabblerousing cohorts. The episode was directed by cult figure Joseph H. Lewis. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In this sci-fi fantasy, based on a Jules Verne story, two 18th-century men are preparing for a duel when they find themselves caught in the tremendous tailwind of a passing comet. They get sucked onto the comet's head where they find a strange world inhabited by dinosaurs and cave men. The rivals are forced to split up. When they see each other again, each has become the leader of rival cave-man clans during a war. Peace is restored when the heroes each fall for a woman belonging to the other's clan. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Gidget Goes to Rome was the third film to be inspired by the beach-happy characters created by Frederick Kohner back in the mid-1950s. This time, surfer gal Francie "Gidget" Lawrence is played by newcomer Cindy Carol. Per the title, the film finds Gidget vacationing in the Eternal City with faithful boyfriend Jeff, aka Moondoggie (James Darren). Chaperoning the pair is Aunt Albertina (Jessie Royce Landis), but that doesn't stop Gidge and Jeff from experiencing brief extracurricular flirtations in Rome. The question: how do the producers get Cindy Carol into a bikini without diverting from the plotline? The answer: a slapstick setpiece during a fashion show. The last of the theatrical Gidget features, Gidget Goes to Rome was followed by a handful of TV-movie sequels and two separate weekly sitcoms. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lucy (Lucille Ball) goes ga-ga over handsome Italian millionaire Umberto Fabriani (Cesare Danova). Alas, Fabriani speaks no English, and Lucy isn't much better at Italian, despite the "assistance" of that master linguist Mr. Mooney (Gale Gordon). Things get worse when, during an intimate dinner, Lucy accidentally spills spaghetti sauce all over Fabiani's tuxedo. This situation culminates with a nocturnal foray into a closed-up dry cleaning establishment--where Lucy is unceremoniously plunked into a vat of green dye! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Usually cited as the absolute nadir of Bob Hope's film career, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! is by no means a classic, but it isn't nearly as bad as some of his other sixties efforts (take a look a Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell sometime). The plot is set in motion by movie sex bomb Elke Sommer, who flees from the set of her latest picture when she refuses to do yet another bathtub sequence. Sommer hides out in the home of real estate agent Hope, who is forced to keep the buxom starlet under wraps lest his wife Marjorie Lord misunderstand. Phyllis Diller plays Hope's maid, who conspires with her boss to keep Sommer out of sight. The plot lumbers forward to a wild climax wherein Hope, accused of Sommer's murder (she's still very much alive), embarks upon a slapstick car chase, chock full of Sennett-like sight gags. Though cheaply produced and perilously anachronistic, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! is professionally assembled by director George Marshall, a Hope colleague from way back. The film turned a tidy profit, thanks largely to the popularity of Hope's costar Phyllis Diller. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this badly misconceived pseudo-biography of the legendary Cuban revolutionary -- played, incredibly, by Omar Sharif -- Che Guevara takes up the cause as a rebel fighter under the direction of Fidel Castro, played -- also incredibly -- by Jack Palance. Guevara, a young Argentine doctor, proves his worth under the heat of guerilla warfare and, gaining the respect of his men, becomes the leader of a patrol. Castro is impressed by Guevara's tactics and strict discipline and makes him his chief advisor. When Castro defeats the Cuban dictator Batista after two years of fighting, Guevara, under Castro's nod, directs a series of massive reprisals -- but Guevara dreams of fermenting a worldwide revolution. After Castro backs down during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Guevara accuses Castro of being a Soviet dupe and leaves Cuba. Under disguise, Guevara lands in Bolivia, where he attempts to begin his dream of a worldwide peasant revolution, but the Bolivian poor will not follow his lead, and his band find themselves starving in the Bolivian jungle and pursued by the Bolivian army. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

"You don't make up for your sins in church; you do it in the streets; you do it at home. The rest is bulls--t, and you know it." Returning to the autobiographical milieu of his 1968 debut Who's That Knocking at My Door? for his third feature, Martin Scorsese examined the daily struggles of a wannabe hood to keep his morals straight on the streets of Little Italy. Driven equally by his wish to become a respectable gangster like his uncle (Cesare Danova) and his desire to live his life like St. Francis, Charlie (Harvey Keitel) takes on his energetically unhinged friend Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) as his own personal penance, intervening to get Johnny Boy to pay off a debt to the local loan shark Michael (Richard Romanus). Despite his promises to his epileptic girlfriend Teresa (Amy Robinson) that they will move out of Little Italy once he strengthens his position in his uncle's world, Charlie's involvement with Johnny Boy further ensnares him in the neighborhood. When Johnny Boy decides to mouth off to Michael rather than pay him, Charlie, Johnny Boy, and Teresa try to flee Michael's murderous anger (and an assassin played by Scorsese), forcing Charlie to realize that the rules of the streets do not mesh with absolution. Whereas fellow "film school generation" director Francis Ford Coppola transformed the Hollywood gangster movie into metaphorical epics about the Mafia and capitalism in The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), Scorsese revised the genre in the opposite direction, focusing on the gritty minutiae of daily life and drawing from personal memory. Combining documentary-style realism (even though most of the film was shot in L.A.); kinetic editing and camera movement; and expressionistic lighting, angles, and film speed, Scorsese presents an intimate picture of the trivial incidents and latent violence of Charlie's and Johnny Boy's world, naturalistically unfolding their experiences rather than simply explaining what motivates them. They lead a claustrophobic, petty existence that Scorsese and screenwriter Mardik Martin witnessed growing up in Little Italy, complete with a soundtrack of hit songs like "Be My Baby" and "Jumping Jack Flash" that had poured out of neighborhood radios. Mean Streets opened at the New York Film Festival to excellent notices and played strongly in New York but failed to duplicate that level of business elsewhere. Even so, Mean Streets established Scorsese and De Niro as formidable young talents and marked the beginning of a long-running and fertile collaboration that continued in such films as Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), and Goodfellas (1990). Scorsese's exceptional grasp of the texture of day-to-day life, the rhythm and cadences of street talk, and cinema's visual and aural possibilities makes Mean Streets one of the pivotal films of the 1970s, as well as of Scorsese's career, and an influence on such future filmmakers as Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino, among many others. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

The crash of a private jet exposes a heroin-smuggling operation based in Mexico. The Angels head south of the border -- Kelly (Jaclyn Smith) posing as a vacationing schoolteacher, Jill (Farrah Fawcett-Majors) as a swimming instructor, Sabrina (Kate Jackson) as a stewardess -- to get the goods on the smugglers. Their main target is a drug kingpin known as Escobar, whom no one has ever seen, and thus could be any one of the episode's main characters (except, of course, the Angels). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Connie Stevens plays an undercover cop in Seattle who is out to break up a big-time drug ring. This low-budget gem is full of bloody violence. ~ All Movie Guide

Rod Taylor stars in this feature-length pilot film for the unsold TV series Shamus. The star is cast as Shamus McCoy, who befitting his name, makes his living as a private detective. While investigating the bomb killing over another gumshoe, McCoy picks up a trail of evidence leading to a major gambling operation. Anita Gillette played the "wife" in question, one Helen Baker. A Matter of Wife...and Death first aired April 10, 1976 on NBC -- an event unheralded by TV Guide, which mistakenly listed a telecast of the theatrical feature The Ballad of Cable Hogue on that same evening. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide