Sabrina Siani

If you're familiar with the innumerable sword & sorcery flicks Italian cinema churned out during the 1980s, chances are you've seen Sabrina Siani.  Either naked or in extremely skimpy outfits.  The beautiful, blonde starlet (real name: Sabrina Seggiani, but sometimes billed Sabrina Sellers) graced many a cut-price fantasy epic, typecast as an Amazonian princess or gutsy jungle girl.  Jess Franco wasn't a fan (calling her: "the stupidest person I've ever met"), but what does he know?  Siani may not have set the screen alight as a teen cannibal queen in Franco's dreadful Mondo Cannibale (1980), but at least she didn't direct it. 

Following a brief stint in sex comedies and Franco's calamitous gut-muncher, Siani soaked up the sun in Blue Lagoon rip-off Blue Island (1982) and played a feisty, female Tarzan in Umberto Lenzi's Incontro Nell'Ultimo Paradiso (1982), before making her mark as a sword-swinging maiden in Aristide Massaccesi's Ator the Fighting Eagle (1982).  Contrary to Franco's sentiments, Siani had a lot to offer: a winning athleticism, sex appeal, and a charismatic screen presence.  Whether slaying monsters, befriending bears (!), or smouldering seductively, she frequently upstaged bland beefcake, leading men like Peter McCoy (Pietro Torrisi) and Miles O'Keefe. 

Freddie Francis 1917-2007

The great British filmmaker and cinematographer Freddie Francis passed away on March 17th due to complications following a stroke, but information about his death has only just been made public.

Freddie Francis started his impressive career in cinema as a camera operator working with directors like Michael Powell, John Huston, Bernard Bernhardt and René Clement. In the late fifties he became a cinematographer and was responsible for ushering in the look of the British New Wave with great films like Room at the Top (1959, Jack Clayton) and Saturday Night And Sunday Morning (1960, Karel Reisz).

After working on the atmospheric horror film The Innocents (1961, Jack Clayton), Francis began directing his own films for British studios such as Hammer, Amicus and Trigon. During the sixties and seventies he made many memorable horror movies and thrillers including Paranoiac (1963), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965), The Skull (1965), Tales From the Crypt (1972), Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly (1969), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Torture Garden (1967), The Ghoul (1975) and The Creeping Flesh (1973).

In the eighties and nineties Freddie Francis continued to work as a cinematographer on critically acclaimed films such as The Elephant Man (1980, David Lynch), The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981, Karel Reisz), Glory (1989, Edward Zwick), Cape Fear (1991, Martin Scorsese) and The Straight Story (1999, David Lynch).

The Guardian has published an informative and thoughtful piece about Freddie Francis that you can find here: Freddie Francis Obituary

- Kimberly Lindbergs

Tribute to... Suzy Kendall

Who is she?
Emerging fashion designer turned 60s film star and pin-up. And first wife of Dudley Moore.

High point?
Many of her 60s roles, but the lead in Up The Junction is still the high point, along with a teaching role in To Sir With Love.

Low point?
Most of the 70s - despite still being big news with films like Assault and Uccello dalle piume di cristallo, L' (The Bird With The Crystal Plumage) in the early part of the decade, she drifted into average horror flicks and the occasional TV guest spot before disappearing altogether around 1977.

Where are they now?
In her 60s, remarried with grown-up children and no film/TV work in 30 years - so probably kicking back and enjoying life.

What to buy?
Up The Junction. Except, it's not been available to buy for a long time  - and with no sign of a reissue. To Sir With Love is probably the next best thing.

Tribute to...Sandor Eles

Who is he?
Hungarian-born actor and cult film and TV  regular in the 1960s and 1970s.

High point?
A leading role in the Avengers spin-off movie And Soon The Darkness (as the mysterious man on the Lambretta) and as the lover in Hammer's historical epic Countess Dracula, but was a regularly-seen as an "exotic" character in just about every cult TV show in the 60s.

Low point?
Long-running role as a maitre de in dodgy 1970s soap opera Crossroads.

Where are they now?
Sadly, Sandor died of a heart attack in 2002, aged just 66.

What to buy?
Everyone should own a copy of And Soon The Darkness, a tense thriller set in rural France.