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A title is always a good start to piquing my interest; the more bold, clever, or assertive the better. So let’s take a look see at Murder Mansion (1972), an engaging Italian/Spanish co-production with a catchy moniker and even better content to back it up.

Released it Italy in August and Spain in September, with a U.S. release November of ’73, Murder Mansion bounced around under various titles for different regions: Maniac Mansion, Exorcism Mansion, The Scream, Quando Marta urlò dalla tomba, and This House is Too Crowded, Let’s Kill Some People all containing the same neo-Gothic graveyard and fog stomper with a better than usual cast and a plot that just won’t quit. Murder is sly and fun.

Oh boy, where do I even start? We open by meeting a disparate group of folk on an Italian highway: a motorcyclist, Fred (Andre Resino – The Werewolf Versus...

Alfredo Landa, Cannes Best Actor winner dead at 80 Cannes Film Festival Best Actor winner Alfredo Landa, who was featured in more than 100 Spanish movies, died May 9 in his birthplace of Pamplona, in the Spanish province of Navarra. Landa, who underwent colon cancer treatment in 2004 and suffered a stroke in 2009, was 80. The son of a Civil Guard officer, Alfredo Landa quit his law studies to enter show business in the mid-’50s. According to the IMDb, he was an extra in Michael Anderson’s 1956 Best Picture Academy Award winner Around the World in 80 Days, though Landa’s first credited role was in Rafael J. Salvia El puente de la paz ("The Bridge of Peace") two years later. Landa kept busy throughout the ’60s, coming into his own as a star of lowbrow, post-Francisco Franco sex comedies in the mid-’70s, e.g., Mariano Ozores’ Los pecados de una chica...

Ato Pictures will release The Monk in select theaters and for on-demand viewing and download starting Friday, March 8. The French-language film was directed by With A Friend Like Harry…’s Dominik Moll and stars Vincent Cassel (from Black Swan, Brotherhood Of The Wolf and many others) as Brother Ambrosio, a devout man of the cloth in a 16th-century Madrid monestary who believes himself immune from temptation, until the arrival of a mysterious apprentice leads him down a path of sin and corruption. The movie also stars Déborah François, Joséphine Japy, Sergi Lopez, Catherine Mouchet, Jordi Dauder and Geraldine Chaplin; Moll and Anne Louise-Trividic adapted Lewis’ book, which has been filmed twice before by directors Adonis Kyruo and Francisco Lara Polop.

{mp4}TheMonk_USTHEATRICALTRL_010713_h264{/mp4}...

Ato Pictures will release The Monk in select theaters and for on-demand viewing and download starting Friday, March 8. The French-language film was directed by With A Friend Like Harry…’s Dominik Moll and stars Vincent Cassel (from Black Swan, Brotherhood Of The Wolf and many others) as Brother Ambrosio, a devout man of the cloth in a 16th-century Madrid monestary who believes himself immune from temptation, until the arrival of a mysterious apprentice leads him down a path of sin and corruption. The movie also stars Déborah François, Joséphine Japy, Sergi Lopez, Catherine Mouchet, Jordi Dauder and Geraldine Chaplin; Moll and Anne Louise-Trividic adapted Lewis’ book, which has been filmed twice before by directors Adonis Kyruo and Francisco Lara Polop.

{mp4}TheMonk_USTHEATRICALTRL_010713_h264{/mp4}...