Ernesto Gastaldi Movies

As an ex-husband (Johnny Dorelli), his wife (Laura Antonelli), and their two children take a vacation on the ex's new yacht, the scene is set for disaster when it becomes clear that the ex-husband knows absolutely nothing about yachting. The crew quickly find out that the Mediterranean has its own challenges, and the wife discovers her particular nemesis in a thoroughly unlikeable playboy (Christian De Sica) who has his sights set a little too firmly on her alone. The interaction between the triad of wife, ex-husband, and playboy reaches a final resolution as the yacht moves closer to its own special fate. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

An amiable con man sets out to land a big score from a man even less honorable than himself in this comic spaghetti western. Joe Thanks (Terence Hill) is a swindler and quick-draw artist who wanders into a dusty little town after literally falling out of a stagecoach while asleep. After besting card-sharp Doc Foster (Klaus Kinski) in a public shootout, Joe reconnects with his old friend Steam Engine Bill (Robert Charlebois), who is traveling with his beautiful but dizzy-headed girlfriend Lucy (Miou-Miou). Joe has learned that Major Cabot (Patrick McGoohan), an officer in the U.S. Cavalry, is escorting a $300,000 fortune that's been earmarked for Indian relief efforts; however, Cabot has no intention of actually delivering the cash, so Joe hatches a scheme to take it for himself. Bill, who bears a slight resemblance to Cabot, will pose as the officer and intercept the money, but when Bill and Lucy are found out and jailed, Joe must come to their rescue. While his name does not appear in the credits, Sergio Leone is said to have co-produced Un Genio, Due Compari, Un Pollo (aka A Genius, Two Partners, and a Dupe) and directed the pre-credit sequence, with Damiano Damiani helming the rest of the picture and receiving screen credit. In Germany, the film was released as Nobody ist der Grosste (aka Nobody is the Greatest) and marketed as an unofficial sequel to Il Mio Nome e Nessuno (aka My Name Is Nobody). ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A naïve but beautiful girl enters into a volatile relationship with an abusive crime boss who plunges her headlong into a sordid world of prostitution and debauchery. Desperate, Anna (Edwige Fenech) flees from Guido (Corrado Pani) into the arms of kindhearted doctor Lorenzo (John Richardson). When Guido tracks Anna down and attempts to punish her for leaving him, the frightened girl must summon all of her inner strength to personally confront the man who made her suffer for so long. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A favorite among fans of outrageously bad films, this bloody, convoluted thriller deals with a model named Val (Nieves Navarro), whose tabloid-reporter boyfriend, Gio (Simon Andreu), talks her into experimenting with drugs. While she hallucinates, Val looks out the window and sees a man in dark glasses smashing a spiked iron glove into a woman's head until blood splashes into the camera lens. When Gio publishes the story, Val gets fired and is stalked by a psychopath. Before it's all over, there are trips to mental hospitals and graveyards, as many as four different killers taking part in three separate frame-ups, a cat with a slashed throat, and a ludicrous rooftop fight scene featuring choreography rarely seen outside of bad Asian karate films. The high point has a hitman (who laughs like a hyena) throwing a knife between two buildings only to have Gio catch it in a shovel-handle. Most of the film consists of people calling Val crazy or stupid, only to have Val slap them or knee them in the groin, spitting "Go to Hell!" before marching out of the room. The remaining scenes have Val herself being slapped around, followed by all the men she previously told to go to Hell smashing each other through skylights and pushing each other's faces into bags of quicklime. The screenplay (by Ernesto Gastaldi, Sergio Corbucci, and others) makes very little sense, but is such laughably camp fun that it doesn't matter. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

In this flashy giallo from Italian filmmaker Sergio Martino, Julie Wardh (Edwige Fenech) is a lovely but jaded woman who is no longer satisfied in her relationship with husband Neil (Alberto de Mendoza), a wealthy but emotionally cold man of privilege. However, as she ponders the fate of her marriage, her thoughts often turn to her former lover Jean (Ivan Rassimov), a cruel libertine with a taste for inflicting pain. Julie meets handsome George (George Hilton) at a wild party and discovers he's attracted to her just as she's drawn to him. Julie and George are soon involved in a torrid affair, but it's Julie's poor fortune that Jean attended the party where they first met and knows about her new infidelity. Even worse, Jean is willing to blackmail Julie to get what he wants, forcing her into a desperate situation. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Like his more famous La Morte Accarezza a Mezzanotte (1972), this delirious Italian-Spanish co-production from filmmaker Luciano Ercoli is a star vehicle for his wife, Nieves Navarro, who appeared in several giallo thrillers (among other genre roles) under the name Susan Scott. Navarro plays Nicole, a famous French stripper whose father is stabbed to death on a late-night train. The police question her about some missing diamonds, she begins receiving threatening phone calls, and the poor woman is even assaulted in her own bedroom by a masked maniac with frighteningly blue eyes. Nicole's personal life is hardly less complicated, as she runs off to the seashore with a British eye surgeon (Frank Wolff), causing her insanely jealous boyfriend (Simon Andreu) -- who happens to own a pair of blue contact lenses -- to follow in a murderous rage. The loopy Ernesto Gastaldi screenplay is loaded with some outrageously contrived set pieces, and bears more than a passing resemblance to another one of his scripts, Lo Strano Vizio Della Signora Wardh (1970), in its concluding intrigue. The similarity is notable precisely because that film starred Edwige Fenech, whom Navarro was doing her best to unseat as the queen of giallo heroines at the time, as the lady in distress. She does a fairly good job here, burdened as she is with a demented screenplay and her husband's often overreaching direction. The overall effect isn't likely to win much crossover viewership, particularly in light of an avalanche of the genre's more noteworthy examples on DVD in the early 2000s. Giallo devotees, however, are likely to enjoy the film for its very artifice, as well as a nice score by Stelvio Cipriani and a cast including genre regulars Jorge Rigaud, Jose Manuel Martin, and Luciano Rossi. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

This 1967 spaghetti western stars a master of that genre, Lee Van Cleef, as an aging, half-mad gunfighter. In an effort to regain his fearsome reputation, Van Cleef shoots down a local sheriff. He then finds he must deal with his young protégé Giuliano Gemma, who happened to be the sheriff's best friend. The climactic showdown finds Van Cleef facing down his former Gemma, with each man knowing the other's every move and thought. Also known as Day of Anger, this superior Italian oater was originally released as I Giorni dell'Ira. Its director was onetime Sergio-Leone-assistant Tonino Valerii. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A bounty hunter is hired by a wealthy man to rescue his kidnapped daughter. But the bounty hunter likes the prospects of the kidnapper better--the two team up. After the kidnapper betrays him, though, the bounty hunter throws his lot back with the wealthy landowner, resolving to bring the girl back to her father. ~ Rovi

In the 15th century, a young woman is accused of being a witch and committing a murder. She is burned at the stake. Years later, during a plague, she is revived by lightning. She returns to her village to prevent her daughter from marrying the man who actually committed the murder for which she was executed. ~ Brian Gusse, Rovi

Marred by controversy at the time of its release, this horror fantasy from Italy's legendary horror director Mario Bava centers on the twisted desires of a nobleman's son (Christopher Lee). Lee is ostracized by his father for his dalliances with a servant girl (who later commits suicide), but is allowed to return to the fold by his brother, whose lovely wife (Dahlia Lavi) immediately becomes the object of Lee's mad lust. Lee is later found murdered, along with several other victims from the surrounding village, leading superstitious locals to believe that Lee's evil spirit has returned to destroy them; the twist ending reveals the real evil at work. The kinky, sadomasochistic relationship between Lee and Lavi raised more than a few censors' eyebrows, leading to some harsh cuts. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

A group of extremely glamourous college coeds (Suzy Kendall among them) are being stalked by a hooded sex-killer whose weapon of choice is a hacksaw. Despite this perverse premise and an equally sick title (which translates as "The Bodies Show Signs of Carnal Violence"), this remains a rather dull exercise, representing the lower end of the Italian giallo thriller spectrum and lacking much of the violence common to films of the same genre, thus failing to keep its flimsy plot in motion. What gore was present in the Italian cut has been all but wiped out by the film's U.S. distributor. Released on video as Torso. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi