Showing posts with label Valentina. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Valentina. Show all posts

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Female Comic Strip Character Movie No. 3: FRIDAY FOSTER

The only Friday Foster comic book ever
We have all experienced that feeling. We watch a movie that we thought was great when we first saw it, only to realize it is not that great. That was what I experienced with the 1975 Friday Foster movie. I probably should say the only Friday Foster movie, since the comic strip Friday Foster only lasted from 1970 until 1974. It is doubtful that there will ever be another Friday Foster movie.


This movie is a perfect example of what comic fans had to put up with in film adaptations prior to Superman the Movie and other more recent films. The producers licensed the characters but did not attempt to create the world of the comic strip/book. Granted, Friday Foster was a character of her times. Her story lines were similar to other soap opera strips as Mary Worth, Apartment 3-G or The Heart of Juliet Jones, with a dash of Brenda Starr thrown in, since Friday worked as a magazine photographer. Basically, the producers made a blaxploitation movie about Friday Foster.

Pam Grier as Friday Foster

First off, Friday is played by Pam Grier, who is absolutely beautiful and incredibly sexy in this movie. I also believe she is more attractive that the comic strip character. The character was created by Jorge Longarion and modeled after model Donyale Luna. As with Brooke Shields in Brenda Starr, Pam Grier plays Friday Foster as a cute and fashionable, but gutsy and resourceful photographer.

In looking at the few examples of the comic strip available on the web, I noticed most of the stories featured her boss, Shawn North, playing a major role. In the movie, Shawn has a small role. The actor playing the part is more Sean Cassidy than the Shawn North of the comic strip. Friday's version of Basil St. John is Blake Tarr (Thalmus Rasulala), who we are lead to believe is the villain for most of the movie. Colt Hawkins in the comic strip was an author of detective novels and good friend of Shawn North. In the movie, Colt (Yaphet Kotto) is Friday's boyfriend and a private eye. Friday's brother, Cleve (Tierre Turner), is not sweet, idolizing little brother of the comic strip, but a joking flimflam artist.

I'm Issac, I'll be your pimp in this movie.

Where the film has problems is when you incorporate the cliches of blaxiploitation films into a movie about a comic strip character. Cleve is making money selling the presents that are meant for his sister from a pimp named Fancy (played by The Love Boat's Ted Lange). He wants Friday to work for him. Fancy refers to his women with the B-word and his business using a word that beginning with S.

Friday's best friend from her modeling days is stabbed backstage at a fashion show hosted by Madame Rena (played by Eartha Kitt). When Colt and a potato chip munching police detective ask who would be behind the killing, she names a rival fashion designer, Ford Malotte (Godfrey Cambridge). She then calls him a "faggot who couldn't design a handkerchief." Friday and Colt goes to meet Mallote at a bar called the Butterfly. The bar is filled with drag queens. After speaking with a waitress with a manly voice, Colt says that "His muscles are bigger than mine." Friday replies "That isn't all that he has that is bigger than yours." Cambridge plays Malotte as an over-the-top gay stereotype.

The N-word is used quite a bit in the film. Friday is also naked in several scenes. Not that seeing Pam Grier naked is a bad thing, but unlike with Kiss Me, Kill Me, there was no nudity in the comic strip Friday Foster. One might say that Friday Foster had too much nudity in her movie and Valentina didn't have enough nudity in her movie.

The point to make about this film is that it doesn't capture the feel of the comic strip. It also goes off in another direction. Kiss Me, Kill Me and Brenda Starr work because they kept the story and situations true to their strips. Friday Foster tries to force the material to be something else. It seems like the attempt was made to turn tame soap opera comic into an oversexed, action packed drive-in movie.


With that said, I enjoyed this more than the other movies Pam Grier made at this time because it is lighthearted and fun. Instead of the usually grim, angry and vengeful woman she usually played at this time in her career, she plays Friday as a funny and flirtatious career woman. Friday Foster fails as a comic strip adaptation, but succeeds as an entertaining movie.  

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Female Comic Strip Character Movie No. 1: KISS ME KILL ME a.k.a BABA YAGA (VALENTINA)

Crepax's Valentina and actress De Funes
This is the movie that instigated this series of post. I had mentioned in a previous post the Valentina comic strip by Guido Crepax. I found this movie in a Mill Creek movie set, thinking it may have been a giallo film.

The comic book version

Most American comic strip/comic book adaptations are aimed at kids. The average child wouldn't be interested in this because Valentina is an Italian comic character. That is good, because this is not a children's movie. This is an adult foreign film. While a very good adaptation of Crepax's artwork and story, the best way to describe it to the average person is a kinky, psychedelic mind-f**k (Pardon my French).

Isabelle De Funes as Valentina

Valentina is played by Isabelle De Funes. She is a cute, hip, Marxist, magazine photographer, who is almost killed trying to save a cute, little dog from being smashed by an on-coming Rolls Royce. The driver is a mysterious woman called Baba Yaga, played by 60s American sex symbol Carroll Baker. As you can see from the picture of the comic, Baker looks nothing like the character in the comic book. Then again, do you want to see someone who looks like Crepax's Baba Yaga naked?

Carroll Baker is Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga shows up the next day at Valentina's studio, fondles her (wait for it) camera and invites her to home. After Baba Yaga leaves, the model Valentina is working with tells her that she thinks Baba Yaga is a lesbian. At one point, Baba Yaga steals the tab from Valentina's garter belt lick and suck on it like a Charms Blow Pop.

Can you get one of these at Toys R Us?

Valentina goes to Baba Yaga's spooky old house with a hole in the floor that Baba Yaga says is the entrance to Hell. Baba Yaga gives Valentina a doll, named Annette, that looks like an American Girl doll dressed like a dominatrix. Valentina begins having nightmares about being naked in front of Nazis. She also dreams that Annette turns into a real dominatrix and begins whipping her.

She tells her film director boyfriend, played by George Eastman, that she believes Baba Yaga is a witch. He doesn't believe it until the people Valentina photographs die suddenly. I'll stop here rather than spoil the ending.

Louise Brooks - Valentina's role model

Some interesting trivia about the Valentina strip. Guido Crepax modeled Valentina after an American silent movie actress named Louise Brooks. Her autobiography makes Valentina's exploits look like a Peanuts special. And speaking of Charlie Brown and the gang...

Good Grief! Valentina is naked again

Valentina first appeared in an Italian comic book called Linus that featured Peanuts reprints. She was the Lois Lane to a Superman-like character named Neutron. Eventually, Crepax dropped Neutron and Valentina became the focus of the comic strip.

The theme song is an instrumental entitled "Open Spaces" by Piero Umiliani, the man responsible for the song "Mah-Nah-Nah-Nah," which was made famous in this country by Jim Henson's Muppets.

The story was remade for a TV version of Valentina in the 90s, but it is not as good. It plays too much like a soap opera.

If you like Italian horror films and comic strip history, check this out. Granted, it is not for everyone, but it is interesting.

 

Monday, March 3, 2014

THE BOOK THAT MADE ME WHAT I AM TODAY


I've been working on a post on movie adaptation of female comic strip characters (Blonde, Little Orphan Annie, Brenda Star, Friday Foster, Wonder Woman, etc). I recently discovered a film based on Valentina, an erotic, psychedelic Italian comic strip illustrated by Guido Crepax (which I plan to mention in my post). I remember seeing sample of Valentina in a book my parents bought me when I was nine years old entitled The World Encyclopedia of Comics by Maurice Horn (I notice in this photo that the biography of Guido Crepax is on the front of the dust jacket, to the left of Yellow Kid).

I tried to look for some updated information of Maurice Horn, but found little on the Internet. I have a video with an interview with him on it and he speaks in French, however, the bio of him in the book indicates he is an American. He was very well-known as an expert on comic art. Milton Canniff even drew Maurice Horn into a Steve Canyon strip. 

The more I thought about this book, the more I realized how much of an influence this book had on my life. It really triggered not only my creative instincts but my need for more knowledge and the realization that somewhere in the world there were people taking the things I was interested in seriously. It also pointed that there were movies and TVs about these comic strip characters, so that made me interested in film and media history. There was a timeline in the front which sparked my interest in modern history. The foreign entries sparked my interest in other countries. This book told me that the was life beyond Laclede County and Lebanon, Missouri. For that I am ever thankful.

   
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