Gina Lollobrigida as Queen Sheba tries to tempt Yul Brynner in the 1959 Biblical epic Solomon & Sheba, but a fiery God signals his disapproval of the accompanying pagan rituals and statues. Tyrone Power originally played Solomon, but died of a heart attack after three-fourths of the picture had been shot, forcing United Artists to hastily elevate Brynner to the lead role. Lollobrigida, who was 42 at the time of this production, once famously quipped, “A woman at 20 is like ice, at 30 she is warm and at 40 she is hot.”
Tag Archives: Gina Lollobrigida
The Horrible Dr. Hichcock
Italy in the 1960s produced two enduring classics of Gothic horror cinema — both starring Barbara Steele. One of those pictures, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, is today’s Trillion $ Movie. It’s got style and atmosphere to spare, over and above a controversial theme and the always-appealing presence of Steele.
Steele plays Cynthia, the second wife of Dr. Bernard Hichcock, a highly respected surgeon with truly perverse personal habits. His first wife dies satisfying his kinky whims. As part of their bedtime rituals, he injects her with an anesthetic that causes her heartbeat to drop, simulating death, before proceeding to make love with her limpid “corpse.” One night, he administers an overdose, and she doesn’t appear to regain consciousness.
Much of what’s here is stock-in-trade for haunted house movies, but director Riccardo Freda (using the pseudonym Robert Hampton) kicks the visuals into hyperdrive, caressing each ornate fixture with his camera in a way that transforms the house into a delirious embodiment of the not-so-good doctor’s psycho-sexual fantasies. He’s called “Hichcock” for a reason — references abound to the thrillers of Albert Hitchcock, especially Rebecca, but also Suspicion. The performances by Robert Flemyng as Hichcock and Steele are powerfully expressive, even though some diehard Steele fans pooh-pooh her in this outing, because she does more screaming and batting her haunted eyes rather than flashing them in a menacing fashion.
One fun note of trivia: Harriet Medin, who plays the maid, moonlighted on the side as the English-language dialect coach for Italian starlet Gina Lollobrigida. Do enjoy, and return next Friday for another Trillion $ Movie.