Franco Nero Movies
Handsome, blue-eyed Italian actor Franco Nero was a film leading man from 1965. Nero starred in the popular spaghetti western Django, and later played the chop-socky leading role in Enter the Ninja (1980). Never trepidatious about playing non-heroic or psychologically complex roles, Nero has been seen as the villainous Esperanza in Die Hard 2 (1990) and as the "outed" gay ship's captain in the French Querelle (1982). Nero's most famous American screen roles include Abel in John Huston's The Bible and Sir Lancelot in Joshua Logan's Camelot (1967); his romantic relationship with Camelot leading lady Vanessa Redgrave resulted in a son named Carlos. On American television, Nero essayed the leading role in The Legend of Valentino (1975). More recently, Franco Nero both wrote and starred in the 1994 theatrical feature Jonathan of the Bears. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi- 1988
- PG
Father Joseph Mohr (Steve Bond) comes to stay with the family of Franz Guber (Cyrus Elias) in this romantic costume drama. The region is plagued by the evil Baron Von Seidl (David Warner) who delights in persecuting everyone including his own family. Magdalena (Nastassja Kinski) works at the local inn and falls in love with the unavailable Father Mohr. Janza (Franco Nero) is the insurgent who tries to incite a revolution against the despotic Baron. This drama of unrequited love contains nudity. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
- 1988
When a secretary comes up missing after she witnessed a murder taking place, an unlikely couple of "relative-sleuths" (a duke and his uncle) team up to find the kidnapped woman. ~ Rovi
- 1988
This biographical costume drama from director Franco Zeffirelli covers the early life of Arturo Toscanini and stars C. Thomas Howell as the famous composer. When Arturo lands a job with the orchestra of Claudio Rossi (John Rhys-Davies), he soon finds himself bound for a tour of South America and lands in idyllic Rio. Arturo is given the task of convincing the famed prima donna diva Nadina Bulichoff (Elizabeth Taylor) to rehearse for an upcoming show with the orchestra, but in the process, Toscanini attempts to change the minds of both Nadina and her lover, Brazilian Emperor Don Pedro II (Philippe Noiret) on the issue of slavery. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi
- Starring:
- C. Thomas Howell, Elizabeth Taylor, (more)
- 1988
Windmills of the Gods was adapted for television by John Gay from a best-selling novel by Sidney Sheldon. Jaclyn Smith plays an American college professor, appointed US ambassador to Romania. While attending a peace conference, Jaclyn's life is placed in jeopardy by an all-powerful secret organization. Whom can she trust: American president Michael Moriarty, Rumanian top dog Franco Nero, fellow scholar David Ackroyd, or confrence chairman Ian McKellan? Or none of the above? This wide-ranging romantic adventure was lensed in several exotic locales, from Bucharest to Chile. Originally presented in two parts, Windmills of the Gods debuted February 7, 1988, directly opposite the ratings-busting TV-movie Elvis and Me. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1987
- R
The Chilean Revolution of 1973 provides the framework of this propaganda drama that chronicles the aftermath of the assassination of President Salvador Allende. Much of the story centers on the effects the revolution has upon an American couple who lived there during the tumult. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jane Alexander, John Cullum, (more)
- 1987
Django was a successful and highly influential "spaghetti western," spawning over 30 pseudo-sequels that borrowed the name and the main character's bloodthirsty ways, but Django 2: Il Grande Ritorno (aka Django Strikes Again) was the first follow-up to feature Franco Nero reprising the title role from the original film, and the only one made with the participation of the director of Django, Sergio Corbucci (though only in an advisory capacity.) In this story, Django (Franco Nero) has spent a decade in a monastery, trying to live down his violent past as a gunman. However, Django is forced to renounce his vows when word gets back to him that a villainous slave trader, Orlowsky (Christopher Connelly), has kidnapped his daughter. Enraged and determined to bring the abductors to justice, Django digs up his old Gatling gun (literally - he had buried it in a graveyard, under a headstone with the name "Django" on it) and once again begins cutting a swath through the countryside as he seeks to free his daughter. Django 2: Il Grande Ritorno also starred Donald Pleasence, William Berger and Robert Posse; some prints are missing a five minute prologue sequence. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Franco Nero, Donald Pleasence, (more)
- 1986
A short and strange storyline emboldens this thriller with sci-fi overtones by Didier Grousset. Albert (Michel Galabru) is an electronics genius who gets the ax from his company and then goes over the edge. At first he packs off to his attic, turns on the television, and opts for vegetating. But he gets a little irritated by what he sees on TV and is especially miffed at some inept announcers. So his solution is to invent a "ray gun" that can travel through the TV screen and the camera in the studios and kill the idiots, one at a time. A detective (Richard Bohringer) starts to figure out how the murders are happening and develops a scheme to eliminate the unknown, attic assassin. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Richard Bohringer, Dominique Lavanant, (more)
- 1986
- R
The Girl is 14-year-old Swedish schoolgirl Pat Carlsson (Clare Powney). Though very young, she is also very wise in the ways of the world, thus she has no qualms about offering her sexual services, for a price, to middle-aged attorney John Berg (Franco Nero). Like Humbert Humbert, Berg cannot prevent himself from succumbing to Pat's charms. What starts as an illicit affair, ends in a tangled web of tragedy and duplicity involving blackmail, kidnapping and murder. The Girl switches moods so often that it seems like three different films cobbled together. Though hardly a model of restraint, the film is surprisingly prudish when it comes to nudity: still, this is not a film for the easily offended. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Franco Nero, Bernice Stegers, (more)
- 1985
In this fast-paced actioner, mobsters fight each other as well as the law with no one clearly winning either way. Judge Falco (Franco Nero) has been sent to Palermo under heavy-duty security to investigate mob bosses. Older Mafiosos are in a deadly war for power with the up-and-coming younger men, and in the middle of all of this, Judge Falco is supposed to bring law and order. When a gang member in New York makes his way back to Palermo to confront some of the Dons about monies due him, his sidekick Vanni (Tony Musante) considers testifying before the Judge's tribunal -- if only to indict his own enemies. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Franco Nero, Tony Musante, (more)
- 1984
This three-part, seven-hour TV adaptation of Edgar Bulwer-Lytton's 1834 best-seller The Last Days of Pompeii was arguably more faithful to its source than any of the earlier film versions -- and inarguably the most expensive version of all, boasting a 19,000,000-dollar budget and a truly spectacular cast. In recounting the events leading up to the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., the film, like the novel, introduces a veritable coliseum full of colorful fictional characters: stalwart Athenian Glaucus (Nicholas Clay), religious-zealot Egyptian Arbaces (Franco Nero), and mighty gladiator Lydon (Duncan Regehr), all of whom vie for the affections of high-born Ione (Olivia Hussey) and lowly, sightless slave girl Nydia (Linda Purl). Also around and about are Ned Beatty as wealthy merchant Diomed, Lesley-Anne Down as belly-dancing courtesan Chloe, and a handful of theatrical stalwarts like Laurence Olivier and Anthony Quayle. Mercilessly drubbed by the critics, who chortled at such dialogue as "Turn the other cheek, Christian lover!" and "Christians. They're everywhere I go. They're spreading through the empire like a pox!," The Last Days of Pompeii nonetheless garnered healthy ratings when it aired over ABC from May 6 to 8, 1984, despite the formidable opposition of the NBC blockbuster miniseries V: The Final Battle. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1984
The oddly backward attitudes of a remote Alpine village are highlighted in this story about Bohme (Franco Nero) a stranger who arrives in town one day and creates suspicious looks and queries among the villagers when he appears to have some secret or another. Two disparate brothers, one shy and the other not, are curious about the stranger for their own reasons. Eventually, Bohme lets the townspeople know that he is actually investigating the murder of his mother who lived in a nearby village. As the evidence against the killer grows, Bohme's life is in jeopardy, but the villagers do not seem to be greatly affected one way or another with either his quest or its outcome. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Franco Nero
Originally a nine-hour British miniseries, this film on the last four decades in the life of Richard Wagner may have taken its long-winded cue from the lengthy operas of the famous 19th-century German composer and musical theorist -- the Ring des Nibelungen is 14-15 hours in itself, divided into four separate operas. This biographical film begins when Wagner is first recognized for his work, yet in that same year, 1848, he was forced out of his homeland for his radical politics (he supported the unification of separate kingdoms under one Germany) and settled in Zurich for awhile. Focusing on character traits that are well-known and would not endear him to anyone, the film details his bigotry (a confirmed anti-Semitic), his insensitivity, and his obsession with money -- he went after the bottom line even if it meant losing friendships or ruining his marriage. Although Wagner is known for his music theory and the contribution he made to opera during his lifetime, very little attention is given to his actual works in this film. Venerable British thespians (Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave, Joan Plowright, and Richard Burton as Wagner) light up the cast but not always with the same brightness. In the final analysis, the slow-paced story is simply too long in the telling, and even the visually sumptuous costumes and production design cannot make up for a slow script, uneven acting, and problems in direction. The film version runs 300 minutes. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Richard Burton, Vanessa Redgrave, (more)
Among the first original anthology series to be produced for cable television, The Hitchhiker was a collection of tales of the supernatural and bizarre. The title character, played during the first season by Nicholas Campbell and thereafter by Page Fletcher, was an unnamed drifter who wandered ubiquitously from story to story, sometimes briefly commiserated with the main characters, sometimes acting as a disinterested observer, but always ready with a few pithy and occasional chilling comments of the events which had transpired. Inasmuch as the series carried on pay cable and not "mainstream" commercial TV, the stories contained an abundance of nudity, profanity, and violence. Even so, in most of the half-hour playlets, Evil was severely punished (usually in an ironic "postman always rings twice" fashion) and Virtue more or less triumphed. After 39 episodes on HBO, the series moved to a basic-cable channel, USA, for 46 additional installments. While censorship was somewhat more stringent on USA, The Hitchhiker still managed to serve up rawer and meatier fare than was customary on over-the-air TV of the period. The series was first-run on HBO from November 23, 1983, to May 12, 1987, and on USA from January 4, 1989, to February 22, 1991. ~ Rovi
- 1983
The Italian The Falcon has nothing to do with the RKO detective series of the same name. This Falcon is a medieval swashbuckler, played by Franco Nero. After several examples of derring-do, Nero sets about to rescue a damsel in distress. Given the Falcon's romantic nature, the girl may not be entirely out of danger once she's rescued, wink-wink nudge-nudge. At 105 minutes, The Falcon has aspirations to be an epic, but falls just a little short. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Franco Nero, Dragan Nikolic, (more)
- 1982
Marshall McLuhan's statement that the "media is the message" might well be amended by this film to say the "media creates the message." When two prisoners escape from jail and hole up in the apartment of a well-off yet middle-class family -- now held hostage -- the more forward of the two escapees calls the local television station, requesting that they broadcast his demand for a plane to get himself and his cohort out of the country. Once this concession to the power of the televised media is given, the rest follows logically behind. In essence, the television director brings his crew in to film the entire hostage crisis, but hardly satisfied with real-life drama as it unfolds, he proceeds to "direct" the drama for the camera crew, at one point even handing a gun back to the crook so his film coverage will not be interrupted. When a doctor (the apartment owner) removes a bullet from a guard whom the convicts brought with them, the director has him put the bullet back in so it can be filmed as it is taken out -- the world of "instant replay" taking on a reality that overcomes all logic. Needless to say, even when the convicts manage to escape from the building, the television crew is the first to catch up with them, recording every movement "live." ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Franco Nero, Gabriele Ferzetti, (more)
A sailor learns to take, and give, it like a man in this surrealistic adaptation of writer and thief Jean Genet's novel Querelle de Brest by avant-garde German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In a colorful brothel in the port of Brest, proprietor Nono (Gunther Kaufmann) is known for wagering with his customers. Win a throw of the dice, and they get to make love with his wife, Lysiane (Jeanne Moreau); lose, and they must take it from behind by Nono himself. One day, Lysiane reads the tarot for her lover, Robert (Hanno Poschl), and learns in the cards of his intense passion for his brother, Querelle (Brad Davis). Querelle himself soon arrives, and the brothers enact a bizarre greeting halfway between a hug and a wrestling match. Querelle, it seems, is looking for partners in a drug deal; Robert points him in the right direction. An argument about the merits of sex between men soon leads Querelle to murder his fellow smuggler, Vic (Dieter Schidor). Back at the whorehouse, Querelle loses on purpose to Nono and finds he has a taste for passive gay sex. Meanwhile, fellow sailor Gil, who looks exactly like Querelle's brother (and is played by the same actor), murders one of his compatriots after the brute publicly impugns his manhood. Wanted by the police for both his own crime and Querelle's, Gil goes on the lam. Querelle soon crashes his hideout, and an intense bond develops between the two murderers -- a friendship that will lead Querelle to the greatest love, and the greatest treachery, of his life. Director Fassbinder was in the process of editing Querelle when he died of a drug overdose in June 1982. Gunther Kaufmann, who plays Nono, was Fassbinder's ex-lover; the film is dedicated to another former lover, El Hedi Ben Salem, the news of whose suicide had just reached the director. Critically derided even by many of Fassbinder's admirers, Querelle earned a Golden Raspberry award for Worst "Original" Song for "Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves," an Oscar Wilde poem set to music by Peer Raben and sung repeatedly by Jeanne Moreau. Moreau had previously starred in Mademoiselle, a Tony Richardson effort co-scripted by Genet. Look for Frank Ripploh, another pioneering German director, in a cameo. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi
- Starring:
- Brad Davis, Franco Nero, (more)
- 1982
In this, the first of a two-part Soviet-made historical epic, the life of journalist John Reed is chronicled. Much of the story centers around his love affair with a wealthy woman as he endeavors to write about the Mexican labor riots and revolutions from 1910-1915. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Franco Nero, Ursula Andress, (more)
- 1982
German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder died of a drug overdose on June 10, 1982, before his last film, Querelle was edited. This documentary is both about the filming of Querelle -- a sailor of that name whose love life left nothing to be desired -- and about director Fassbinder's working techniques and philosophy. While actors and workers comment on the filming of Querelle, a 14-minute interview with Fassbinder taped eight hours before he died was supposed to convey the first element, his own beliefs and working methods. Fassbinder's mother had the interview pulled by court order, leaving the Wizard of Babylon without the benefit of the wizard's own chemistry. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jeanne Moreau, (more)
- 1982
Unlike Warren Beatty's Reds, this film by director Sergei Bondarchuk does not create much human dimension to the character of John Reed (1887-1920), the well-known leftist journalist who first gained fame reporting on the Mexican Revolution and eventually wrote 10 Days that Shook the World on the 1917 Russian Revolution. His stormy relationship with fellow journalist Louise Bryant does not feature here either (though she appears in the film). The main attraction of this movie is the climactic storming of the Winter Palace. Reed was indicted for sedition in the U.S. and moved to Russia where he died at the age of 33 of typhus. He is one of two Americans buried in the Kremlin. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Franco Nero, Anatoliy Ustyuzhaninov, (more)
- 1982
Famed filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder stars as a futuristic cop who must sniff out a bomb stashed somewhere in a 30-story Berlin office building. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi
- Starring:
- Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Günther Kaufmann, (more)
- 1981
- R
A brave shark fisherman is forced to contend with baddies on land. ~ Kristie Hassen, Rovi
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