Michelle’s Video Rundown: Superheroes and Campy Throwbacks
By Michelle DeForest.There are a few things that most of us at the company have in common: We like to have fun, we wish we were rock stars (well, we’re already rock stars, but I mean actual rock stars), we love movies, and we are superhero fanatics!
To my delight, I was able to catch the Superhero Fashion & Fantasy exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this weekend (which I highly suggest), and it reminded me of a fantastic series that I saw a trailer for a few months ago.
Italian Superman was something of a mystery to me after I watched the trailer. I thought it was a brilliant, campy one-off, and nothing more. To my surprise, I saw an episode featured on Yahoo! Video last week, and was psyched to find the first two episodes up on YouTube, MySpace, and Yahoo!. The story that accompanies it is just as outlandish as the series, explaining that Italian Spiderman was adapted from the novel, Death Wears A Hat, and filmed in 1964 by Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Gatti, and produced by Alrugo Entertainment.
Taking four years to complete, and costing 15 million dollars (in the 60s), Alrugo Entertainment was left in debt and unable to distribute the film. Alfonso Alrugo, the aging founder of Alrugo Entertainment, sent the print by sea to an associate in New York to seek distribution, but the ship never made it across the Atlantic and the ship, along with the film, sank. Before his death, Alrugo asked his two grandsons, Vivaldi and Verdi, to find the film. The search began 34 years later in 2002, and ended after four years at sea in 2006. Vivaldi and Verdi Alrugo spent two years restoring the film, and are now releasing it on the Internet in an episodic format.
While that’s a fun and intriguing story, I find the real story just as interesting. Italian Spiderman was conceived at Flinders Univeristy in Australia by Screen Production student, Dario Russo. Upon graduation Russo and his friends, who have formed Alrugo Entertainment, have begun producing what will end up being a 20-part series to be released over 10 weeks. They’ve even set up a MySpace music page, and they are selling the film’s soundtrack on a limited release 7-inch vinyl record as well as iTunes.
Italian Spiderman isn’t the only nostalgic short up their sleeve. The Time That Time Forgot is a space travel adventure that takes place on earth during prehistoric times, and is vaguely reminiscent of the original Star Trek series, as well as all the subsequent space series capitalizing on Star Trek’s popularity, but never quite nailing it.
The Time That Time Forgot
Just Desserts (Part Deux)
Shot in black and white, Just Desserts (Part Deux) is a “1940’s noir thriller” that reminds me of half the films I watched in my film studies classes with brooding music and a dry dramatic voice over.
I think the success of these shorts, and those making them, is built upon the fact that not one element of style is ignored. There is a complete follow through in every aspect put into the finished project. From the music, set design, sound editing, cinematography, and even the acting, there is commitment to the style, no matter how campy, which I find refreshing. It’s actually the same reason I enjoyed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It’s not that I was looking for the fourth installment to carry on from its predecessors as a sequel, it’s that the style of the 1980’s action epic was carried through on the execution despite it being 20+ years later.
What are your thoughts on the Italian Spiderman?
