Skip to content

Category: Maurice Poli

Published on

Plot: aunt Marta will kill to see her estranged family – or are they already dead?

Don't Be Afraid Of Aunt Marta (released domestically as Non aver paura della zia Marta and for some reason released in North America as either The Murder Secret or The Broken Mirror) is part of I maestri del thriller (what the English-speaking world knows as Lucio Fulcio Presents), a nine-part television and home video series wherein producers Antonio Lucidi and Luigi Nannerini envisioned bringing Italian horror to the small screen with the help of ailing and over-the-hill horror master Lucio Fulci. Don't Be Afraid Of Aunt Marta is late-stage 80s Italian erotic thriller dirge masquerading as either a very lethargic giallo or a hugely ineffective suburban gothic. If it’s remembered for anything it’s that it pretty much was the last straight-up thriller Mario Bianchi would direct before his focus shifted entirely towards hardcore porn in 1989. Don't Be Afraid Of Aunt Marta is a sobering eulogy for the once-formidable Italian gothic. Twenty years after the innovations of Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava this is where the gothic dies. What other reason to check out Don't Be Afraid Of Aunt Marta than to see Maurice Poli hamming it up, a truly emaciated Gabriele Tinti a mere three years before he would succumb to cancer, and Luciana Ottaviani flaunting her delicious shapes and forms?

To keep costs as low as possible and make most of crew and locations this was filmed in between Reflections Of Light (1988) and The Ghosts Of Sodom (1988) retaining much of the principal cast with only the leads rotating. Mario Bianchi was a consummate professional who could be trusted to routinely direct whatever was doing well at the box office within the alloted budgets and time. As such Bianchi has directed spaghetti westerns, peplum, poliziottesco, sex comedies, and the occassional horror. After Satan’s Baby Doll (1982) he retired his long-time exploitation alias Alan W. Cools and like so many (Joe D’Amato, Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, et al) he focused almost exclusively on filming hardcore pornography (usually under his trusty nom de plume Martin White and frequently with Marina Hedman and Ilona Staller sucking a wholly different way) from 1983 onward.

Written by Bianchi and photographed by Silvano Tessicini there’s no way Don't Be Afraid Of Aunt Marta could in any way compete with Fulci’s classic tenure with director of photography Sergio Salvati or his giallo with Luigi Kuveiller and Sergio D'Offizi. Don't Be Afraid of Aunt Marta not only looks cheap the way only a television movie can the cast reflected just how impoverished of a production this was. Tinti and Poli ostensibly were the draw here with Russo and Ottaviani as elder and younger stars. Them excepted the remainder of the warm bodies were, for all intents and purposes, nobodies. If there wasn’t for the inclusion of brief flashes of nudity and extreme gore this could’ve been passed off as a failed 90-minute pilot to an unproduced television series. Here Fulci acted as co-producer and oversaw the gore effects with special effects technician Giuseppe Ferranti. Even in the Ottaviani/Moore canon this (and the two other titles that Luciana/Jessica appeared in) is but a curious and forgotten footnote.

In 1958 Richard Hamilton (Gabriele Tinti) was witness to his mother (Anna Maria Placido) confining her sister (and his aunt) Marta (Sacha Darwin, as Sacha M. Darwin) - who up to that point had acted as his guardian - to a psychiatric ward to get access to her fortune. Not helping is that his mother flung herself out of a window of the house later. Thirty years pass and one day Richard receives a letter from Aunt Marta. She cordially invites Richard and his family to come visit her at the old family seat in the sticks now that she has been released from the clinic. Coming along for the visit are Richard’s wife Nora (Adriana Russo), his daughter Giorgia (Luciana Ottaviani, as Jessica Moore), and his son Maurice (Edoardo Massimi). Also arranged to come over for the getaway at the estate is Richard’s son from a previous marriage, Charles (Massimiliano Massimi). At the estate they are welcomed by administrator (and groundskeeper) Thomas (Maurice Poli) who informs them that Marta has been delayed on some pressing business and will rejoin them the next morning. Richard spents the night in sweat-drenched panic upon receiving a silent phone call. When Marta fails to materialize in the days that follow tensions within the family start to mount. All of this prompts Richard to do some investigating of his own. As long-buried family secrets come to surface members of the family start dying… or were they already dead to begin with?

Arguably the last of the great Italian screamqueens (together with Florence Guérin, Lara Wendel, and Margie Newton) we have warmed up considerably to Luciana Ottaviani over the years. Ottaviani had both the curls and the curves and she was never afraid about flaunting either when and where it mattered. In a blitz career that lasted only four years and 9 movies (three of which were made-for-television bilge) luscious Luciana hid behind 3 different aliases (Jessica Moore being her most widely known) and worked with the likes of Bruno Corbucci, Joe D'Amato, and Mario Bianchi. If there’s one way to describe Luciana’s career it’s that she was the figurehead in lamentable late-stage abortions of once-great Italian exploitation subgenres. While mostly identified with her role as escort-turned-journalist Sarah Asproon in Eleven Days Eleven Nights (1987) and Top Model (1988) Ottaviani debuted in the nunsploitationer Convent Of Sinners (1986) and just before being typecast as the latest softcore sex sensation with the turgid Reflections Of Light (1988) (where she starred alongside Pamela Prati, Loredana Romito, and Laura Gemser) she took on the ghost horror with our current subject, a mild il sadiconazista with The Ghosts Of Sodom (1988), and a light giallo murder mystery with Escape From Death (1989). Suffice to say, in each and without fault Ottaviani was reduced to tits requiring nothing more from her than her usual routine of smiling pretty, flaunting her curls and curves, and getting horrendously murdered for her trouble. Ottaviani was pretty much forced into an early retirement the moment she stopped accepting erotic roles at behest of her partner. No doubt miss Ottaviani could have made a fortune in Spain’s Cine-S and it’s a question for the ages why we were forever denied a Tinto Brass feature with her.

Don't Be Afraid of Aunt Marta was the second in the nine-part I maestri del thriller (or Lucio Fulci presents in the English-speaking world) series of made-for-television and home video horror. As legend has it was cinematographer Silvano Tessicini who got Fulci involved with the operation. Old Lucio had just returned after his Zombi 3 (1988) ran into production woes on the Philippines. With his health deteriorating and cranky the project being overtaken by hired hands Claudio Fragasso and Bruno Mattei (with none of whom Fulci got along), Tessicini figured that this was the distraction Fulci needed. The main series comprises of The Curse (1987), Don't Be Afraid of Aunt Marta, The Red Monks (1988), Massacre (1989), Bloody Psycho (1989), Escape from Death (1989), and Hansel and Gretel (1989). Initially attracted as supervisor Fulci ended up directing two features - Touch of Death (1988) and The Ghosts Of Sodom (1988) – from scripts he had penned earlier with Carlo Alberto Alfieri years before all the same. Even under the most optimistic circumstances Fulci’s involvement throughout was tenuous at best and completely hands-off at worst. Whatever his feelings on the subject Fulci and producers Antonio Lucidi and Luigi Nannerini mined six of these features for special effects footage for the supreme cut-and-paste hackjob A Cat in the Brain (1990).

You know just how impoverished a production is when pulp veteran Gabriele Tinti, Euroshock pillar Maurice Poli from Cross Mission (1988), Adriana Russo (the lesser known sister of comedy evergreen Carmen Russo), and Luciana Ottaviani retroactively can be considered the marquee stars. Tinti and Poli were old hands at this sort of thing and by 1988 both Russo and Ottaviani had carved out enough of a niche for themselves to be considered semi-stars. Sacha Darwin and Anna Maria Placido both were nobodies with mostly indistinct filmographies. To be charitable, Darwin was the daughter of Austrian Golden Age actors Wolf Albach-Retty and Trude Marlen and she was the younger half-sister of Romy Schneider – which probably accounts for how she parlayed her world-famous pedigree into a modest acting career. Placido on the other hand had none such luck – and she was no Mariangela Giordano, Dagmar Lassander, Daria Nicolodi, or Franca Stoppi either. Not even Tinti (who starred in his fair amount of dreck during the wicked and wild seventies) nor Poli deserved ending up in something as lamentable as this. Tinti had at least the good fortune of sharing the sheets with miss Laura Gemser. For a television movie this is quite explicit (Ottaviani has an extended soapy shower scene straight out of the Gloria Guida playbook) and the gore is off the charts when and where it appears. As a sort-of-but-not-really hybrid of Psycho (1960) and Carnival of Souls (1962) it is deadly dull in parts and only sort of gains a faint pulse whenever Poli or Ottaviani enliven proceedings with their hams. Unfortunately there’s more of the former than of the latter. After all, not even luscious Luciana’s ever so inviting tits and ass could save something this dreadful.

Published on

Plot: journalist and mercenary take down corrupt South American dictator.

Of all the talentless hacks working the Italian exploitation circuit from the 60s to 80s shlockmeister Alfonso Brescia by far was the most seasoned and mercenary. Over a three-decade career Brescia built a reputation on doing it quicker and cheaper than everyone else. He made whatever was fashionable (or profitable) irrespective of whether he had any affinity or interest in the genre he was contributing to. As such old Alfonso made everything from peplum, superhero movies, and comedy (or some cross-pollination thereof) to commedia sexy all’italiana, World War II epics, a Shaw Bros co-produced martial arts slapstick romp and helmed a series of five of the cruddiest, sloppiest, and frequently most incoherent space operas ever to come out of Italy following the box office success of George Lucas’ Star Wars (1977). Strangely he never partook in either the cannibal craze of the seventies or the zombie fad of the eighties. While Brescia was a director of dubious merit he occassionally stumbled onto a good idea, either by design or by pure dumb luck. That serendipity struck again on Cross Mission (released domestically as Fuoco incrociato). In North America it was part of Cannon’s four-part Action Adventure Theater series, introduced by the king of low-budget action himself, Michael Dudikoff. All things being cyclical Cross Mission ended up inspiring the sixteenth James Bond episode Licence to Kill (1989).

While there’s no contesting that Brescia’s oeuvre mainly consists of some of the worst genre exercises ever conceived old Alfonso could actually make a decent feature if given the chance. He, after all, directed the very enjoyable duo of peplum The Revolt of the Pretorians (1964) (featuring Richard Harrison a full twenty years before he got lost in the wacky world of Godfrey Ho Chi-Keung (何誌強)), the The Giant Of Metropolis (1961) plagiate The Conqueror Of Atlantis (1965), the early (and relatively tame) giallo Naked Girl Killed In the Park (1972), the The Amazons (1973) derivate Battle Of the Amazons (1973), the bootleg Ator sequel Iron Warrior (1987) (which Joe D’Amato, not exactly a paragon of integrity, famously denounced), and the Zalman King inspired erotic thriller Homicide In Blue Light (1991) (with French sexbomb Florence Guérin). In between those last two Brescia helmed a globe-trotting and explosive international action movie so hopelessly inept (and completely enjoyable for exactly that reason) that it makes the body of work of Cirio H. Santiago, Chalong Pakdeevijit, and Wilfredo dela Cruz look measured and sophisticated in comparison. What was he ripping off this time, you ask? Well, the thing every Italian director was back then… Rambo, or more specifically, Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and Rambo III (1988). The only reason to stay awake during the endless montages of jeeps driving, stilted firefights, and bamboo huts blowing up is Caribbean one-hit wonder Brigitte Porsche. Porsche not only gets to wear a Versace dress but also does karate… We love you, miss B – wherever you are!

General Romero (Maurice Poli) is the tyrannical dictator of some unspecified backwater banana republic somewhere in the Latin American jungles. With Nancy Reagan’s War On Drugs in full swing Romero shows UN inspectors that he’s dealing with his country’s narcotics manufacturing and - trafficking problem by very publicly burning some smaller marijuana plantations whilst secretly still controlling the bigger ones for his own personal enrichment. A press attachee releases a statement that there are no Contra-rebels in the region. Plucky photojournalist Helen (Brigitte Porsche, as Brigitte Porsh) doesn’t believe the official story and convinces the General’s former right-hand-man, and sometime Marine, William Corbett (Riccardo Acerbi, as Richard Randall) to help her in taking down his former employer, the self-proclaimed "El Predestinato". Along the way Helen and Corbett fall in with local guerrillas led by Myra (Anna Silvia Grullon, as Ana Silvia Grullon) and Ramirez (Riccardo Petrazzi). It’s all fairly standard jungle action fare until General Romero summons Astaroth (Nelson de la Rosa), a pint-sized warlock, and makes people do his bidding by putting them under macumba spells. Will the combined firepower of Helen, Corbett and the local Contra-rebel enclave be enough to overthrow an enemy of such awesome magnitude and influence?

The screenplay from brothers Donald and Gaetano Russo is about as terrible as their collective filmography. There’s no chemistry between Porsche and Acerbi, and their characters are so terribly underwritten that it makes you wonder why they even bothered differentiating them. Helen’s only character trait is that she’s a journalist. Corbett is a mercenary who sees the wrongs of his way, and tries to better himself. Corbett nor Helen have any signature lines or moves, and the only memorable scene is when Corbett gears up for vengeance in a montage clearly imitated from the Arnold Schwarzenegger body count movie Commando (1988). That said montage isn’t followed up upon is, of course, expected in a cheap, cruddy Alfonso Brescia production. That is to say, Corbett is the only character to even have an arc. General Romero is the fairly standard greedy, megalomaniac evil dictator until Brescia pulls the voodoo act towards the second half. It’s exactly the kind of stunt that made him famous some two decades prior with the sudden explosion into 1950s science fiction insanity on the otherwise perfectly enjoyable but otherwise unassuming peplum The Conqueror Of Atlantis (1965). If Cross Mission is remembered for anything (if it’s remembered at all, that is) it’s solely for the duo of Nelson de la Rosa and Brigitte Porsche.

Brigitte Porsche is as much of an enigma as the girls from the Oasis Of the Zombies (1982) opening. Porsche seems to have no ties to the Austrian industrialist dynasty of luxury car manufacturers, or at least none of which there’s any historical documentation. As these things go, Cross Mission was her sole acting credit and her identity is shrouded in mystery – something not uncommon around this time with late Italian exploitation. Whether she was of Filipino or Dominican Republic descent is difficult to ascertain as in all likelihood Porsche used an Anglicized alias as many were prone to when working with Brescia. Writer Gaetano Russo famously was in The Red Monks (1988), a gothic horror throwback so tedious and directionless that not even the gratuitously exposed body of Lara Wendel could possibly redeem.

Also hiding under an alias is Riccardo Acerbi who, while not as prolific in exploitation as co-star Maurice Poli, starred in some of the worst latter-day Lucio Fulci and Joe D’Amato productions including Aenigma (1987) and Frankenstein 2000 – Return From Death (1991). Poli - who debuted in an uncredited role in the acclaimed World War II epic The Longest Day (1962) and became a spaghetti western and war movie regular afterwards - had been in Giuseppe Vari’s Urban Warriors (1987) just the year before. Maurice Poli and Peter Hintz were in Apocalypse Mercenaries (1987), while Anna Silvia Grullon and Nelson de la Rosa were both in Ratman (1988). Grullon would do nothing of particular interest afterwards, and de la Rosa would go to co-star alongside Marlon Brando in The Island Of Dr. Moreau (1996). Even by late 1980s Italian exploitation standards Cross Mission had a cast of complete and utter nobodies. Hell, Cross Mission is so much of a curio that not even The Italian Movie Database, nor the Caribbean Film Database for that matter, seem in any hurry to acknowledge its existence.

By the time Cross Mission went into production the Italian film industry was in shambles as television provided entertainment across all age brackets. In the late 1980s the famous Cinecittà studio compound was on the verge of bankruptcy, and budgets all but dried up. Italians went en masse to the multiplexes, while older movie theaters simply disappeared altogether, but primarily for big-budget Hollywood productions while domestic movies hardly attracted an audience. Much in the same way was the illustrious career of Alfonso Brescia, probably one of Italy’s most journeyed but least competent exploitation directors, coming to a crawl. Brescia would shoot only four more movies after Cross Mission before passing away in June 2001. Cross Mission was a Filipino co-production afforded location shooting in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

However there isn’t anything that Brescia and Ferrando can’t make look absolutely god-awful despite a wealth of natural beauty and scenic vistas. This could have been shot on decaying leftover sets from Zombi Holocaust (1980) or Devil Hunter (1980) and nobody would be any the wiser. Ferrando worked on All Colours Of the Dark (1972), La Liceale (1975), Mountain Of the Cannibal God (1978), and Hands Of Steel (1986) but apparently phoned it in here. The cinematography is as flat, hideous and ugly as Fausto Rossi’s work on Battle Of the Amazons (1973) more than a decade prior. Brescia could produce a decent movie if his heart was in it, as The Adolescent (1976), Frittata all'italiana (1976), Big Mamma (1979), and his many sceneggiatta with Mario Merola attest to. Clearly Alfonso didn’t care much, or at all, about the international action movie. We are a long way from Naked Girl Killed In the Park (1972) and an even a longer way from The Conqueror Of Atlantis (1965), indeed.

There’s probably a reason why Cross Mission is the only full-on action movie in the Alfonso Brescia repertoire. It’s emblematic for Brescia’s late eighties output as it generally moves too slow, has an inpenetrable plot, and the action is far more lethargic than it ought to be. Brescia would helm two more action-themed yarns with the buddy cop movie Miami Cops (1989) and Deadly Chase (1990) in the following years. The defining characteristic of Brescia’s career has always been that of underarchievement and Cross Mission is no different. Iron Warrior (1987) had Hong Kong written all over it – and you’d halfway expect Brescia to finally get a clue. That wasn’t exactly the case as with Homicide In Blue Light (1991) old Alfonso managed to fumble his way through an erotic thriller. Il faut le faire… Like any good obscurity Cross Mission deserves the proper high-definition digital remaster/restoration treatment, and hopefully some courageous company will rise to the task. It makes you wonder what Antonio Margheriti and Bruno Mattei could have done with a premise like this and what could have become of miss Porsche had she been employed by Cirio H. Santiago, Chalong Pakdeevijit, or Wilfredo dela Cruz. Alas, the world will never know…