Cool, old Variety ads

I recently got hold of a bunch of old, big Variety magazines - well, not sure if magazine is actually the right term here since they're more like really big and fat catalogues. Anyway, these things are littered with old ads for films of that time - some of them ready for release, others in the early stages of production etc.

It's really cool to browse through all those great vintage ads. The amount of wonderful films being released all around the world back in the 1970s and 1980s is just amazing. Too bad it's not like that anymore.

Anyway, I started doing a few scans of some of the many nifty Euro-film ads. Here are the results - all from a May 1978 issue:



Very cool poster art for Antonio Margheriti's heist movie The Rip-Off - better known as The Squeeze and titled Controrapina in Italy. It's a pretty enjoyable little flick filmed in New York with a great cast of Americans in exile: Lee Van Cleef, Edward Albert, Karen Black and Lionel Stander.




Slick poster work for Blood Relatives, a murder mystery directed by French thriller expert Claude Chabrol. I haven't seen this one but I love the artwork!




And here's an ad for not one; not two; but three trashy Turkish films!
The first one, the adventure movie Karamurat - Tiger of Anatolia, is a Turkish/Italian co-production from 1977 starring Turkey's giant cult star Cüneyt Arkin (under the 'George Arkin' moniker) as Karamurat, and Italian beauty Daniela Giordana as the female lead.
The second one, That Man From Chicago, is a French/Turkish co-production directed by Jean Marie Pallardy, an actor as well as director of various erotica. The film appears to be a violent action/crime flick featuringng Jess Hahn, Gordon Mitchell and Pallardy himself in the cast.
And the final one, the Turkish/Italian Heart of a Father, looks to be a crime melodrama. Once again the star is Cüneyt Arkin, and once again he goes under the 'George Arkin' pseudonym.




This is a weird one! A Spanish/Italian softcore drama starring washed-up American actor Stuart Whitman and erotica queen Laura Gemser. The above ad uses the unfortunate tile Emotional Exchange, which makes it sound incredibly boring. It's better known under its US title Fury, or as The Woman from Torrid Land, which is more in accordance with the original Spanish and Italian titles (La mujer de la tierra caliente and La donna della calda terra, respectively).




And now for what I think is the coolest thing in the entire May 1978 issue: a two-page ad for Aldo Lado's fantastic Star Wars rip-off The Humanoid - starring former James Bond villain Richard Kiel as well as two former Bond Babes: Barbara Bach and Corinne Clery. One of the most enjoyable Italian sci-fi films ever. The film was first released in April 1979 so this appears to be a pretty early ad from before shooting had began. It doesn't look as if the casting was complete either at this point because Arthur Kennedy's name isn't listed, which it undoubtedly would be if he had been cast at this point.




And, finally, here's an ad for an Italian crime/cop flick called Play Cop - directed by Franco Prosperi and starring Luc Merenda. They didn't keep the Play Cop title, though, as I believe this ended up being released as Deadly Chase internationally (and as Il commissario Verrazzano in Italy). I haven't seen it myself, though, so I can't comment on whether or not the poster's claim that "the sex and action scenes of this film will leave you breathless" is true or not.


Anyway, that's all for now as I didn't have the patience to do any more scans right now but more will follow soon!