Film Forno

Here is a very cool 60’s B&W Giallo from one of the most talented and prolific screenwriters of Italian Cinema! Ernsto Gastaldi wrote screenplays for very amazing genre of the Golden Age of Italian Cinema! Peplum (aka Hercules, Maciste type historic films) Horror, Vampires, Westerns, Thrillers, Giallos, Science Fiction, you name it! Check out his IMDB page and prepare to be blown away. This thriller was co directed by Ernesto and Vittorio Salerno for almost no money! It features an unknown(at the time) Giancarlo Gianinni, appearing as John Charles John. Ernesto’s wife, the lovely Mara Gastaldi appears as Mara Maryl. This film was made to prove a theory that the two producers had a bet about, who makes a better film, a technician (like a cameraman for example) or a screenwriter. Ernesto won the bet. Featuring a great score by Carlo Rustichelli, a lovely Giallo! Here it is in the original Italian. There is also a BluRay version you can buy with a lot of extras.

I went to the NY Worlds Fair when I was a little kid. It was great. Bob Downey told me he worked at the fair as a young man from Forest Hills along with his friend Ron Neely, (who later played The Holy Ghost in Greaser’s Palace). Here is a film the great Alexander Hammind made about the Fair. He also did To Be Alive, both with Francis Thompson. Hammid was a true filmmaker, he could make a film about anything. He was involved with the development of IMax and was Supervising Editor on To Fly. He also made Meshes of The Afternoon with Maya Deren, one of the most influential underground Art Films of all time. They are having a major retrospective of his work at the Anthology Film Archives in NYC so if you are in the Big Apple go check it out!