“They said it really loud. They said it on the air.”

“I've gotta tell you, boys, I couldn't be more excited about this...When people hear me describing it over the radio, they are going to remember that AM radio is a viable and modern source for news and entertainment.”

I do not carry the same kind of idealistic belief in the revival of amplitude modulation that Barry Pasternak of KNER possesses, but as a child of the ‘70s, I have an enormous awe for the massive power it once carried over the nation. It helped that I grew up in Cincinnati, the home of “The Big One” WLW, still 50,000 watts strong 24/7, and the place where Ruth Lyons, Rod Serling, and Jean Shepherd made their bones. I heard lots of stories from my father of listening to his favorite programs in his childhood. The classic Looney Tunes cartoons I watched on television were constantly referencing the stars of the medium for jokes. And in my middle school years, I even had an Old Time Radio phase, vainly proselytizing to my peers about the aural joys of “SUSPENSE,” “LIGHTS OUT!,” and the Lucky Strike Hour. I think this ad campaign in the catalog mailings I received should have been a big warning about that folly:

"We need some fun marketing: what's our demographic?"

"Never-married men over 40 with fiveheads who actually think amassing a library of these tapes will make them interesting."

“That’s quite the polycule.”

“Well, you have the normie, the substance abuser, the white knight, and the mind-fucker - sounds like a typical polyamorous hookup from my experience.”

In my defense however, amid the larger culture of the ‘70s, Old Time Radio was getting a significant celebration, arguably its last. In late November 1976, NBC marked its 50^th Anniversary of existence with a four and a half hour “THE BIG EVENT” special called “THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS,” covering its evolution from radio to television programming, with a cross-section of its famous personalities past and present, and narration by Orson Welles. The reception and ratings were strong enough to lead to two more similar anniversary programs, again narrated by Welles. Not to be outdone, when CBS marked its own 50^th Anniversary in September 1977, their radio affiliates aired a three-hour celebration, broken into six self-contained half-hour episodes. And six months later, when their television division hit 50, CBS aired a mammoth seven-night, 9.5 hour retrospective, “CBS ON THE AIR,” which opened with its beginnings as the first radio rival to NBC. And George Lucas, riding high off of STAR WARS, had announced his next intended directorial project would be a comedy about the OTR era called RADIOLAND MURDERS (though it would take another 15 years to finally happen with him shifting to producing).

Concurrently, a ‘50s culture renaissance, ostensibly initiated by Mr. Lucas’ AMERICAN GRAFFITI in 1973, but traceable all the way to 1968, was also holding the public interest longer than most trends. GREASE was a Broadway sensation and quickly optioned for film, “HAPPY DAYS” was a consistent television favorite, Richard Nader’s “Rock’n’Roll Revival” concert tours were selling out venues, and AM radio was happily blending the classics of the era with the new Top 40 hits of the day. Eventually, the cleaner sound and tighter formatting of FM radio would contribute to AM stations all but abandoning entertainment and music programming in favor of news and political talk formats. But for a while, it wouldn’t be uncommon for me to, say, turn on 55 WKRC, hear a classic Coasters track like “Charlie Brown,” and maybe half an hour later, hear Bad Company’s cover of the Coasters’ “Young Blood” in the same DJ shift.

It is within this climate that two modest films, both underwritten by Paramount, and both personal favorites of mine, were produced. And there are an uncanny amount of unintentional parallels and serendipitous connections between them, especially when watched in a double feature. Which can be difficult, because unfortunately, each film also has some accessibility issues for the average home viewer.

On Friday, October 31, 1975, ABC aired the World Premiere of an original made-for-television feature, THE NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA, a semi-fictional portrayal of Orson Welles and his game-changing October 30, 1938 Mercury Theatre of the Air broadcast of H.G. Wells’ WAR OF THE WORLDS, and its repercussions on a cross-section of the audience who believed the wild depictions of Martians on Earth to be a very real threat. Anthony Wilson and Nicholas Meyer’s screenplay integrates the actual broadcast script written by Howard Koch, interspersed with speculative story threads about the spectrum of reactions, comical to near-tragic, based on press accounts of the day, though modern historians have disputed the coverage, suggesting these incidents were misrepresented by newspapers who saw radio as an upstart to their business and sought to discredit the medium. Director Joseph Sargent had earlier directed the 1974 hijack thriller masterpiece THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE, and again, on a smaller scale, juggles the multiple narratives nimbly, adding his own thoughtful (and uncredited) narration to the top and bottom of the film.

The Halloween night broadcast of NIGHT proved to be a surprise success, ranked 18 in the weekly Nielsen Top 20, with a 21.1 rating and a 38 share. (By comparison, its lead-in, the TV series “BARBARY COAST,” was among the Bottom 10 in 65^th place with a 9.6 rating and a 17.0 share) It was eligible for three Emmy Awards as a Special Program - Drama or Comedy - Original Teleplay, nominated for Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Film Editing, and winning Outstanding Film Sound Editing. It also won both the Golden Nymph Grand Prix for Best Single Program entry and the Silver Nymph for Best Drama at the International Television Festival in Monte Carlo, a distinction no American television production had won since 1968; the award was announced by Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco. Newspaper critics particularly hailed Paul Shenar, then mostly known for stage work and some TV guest-star appearances, for his performance as Orson Welles, a uniquely challenging role since he was legally limited to speak only the actual dialogue Welles delivered in the original program. (Sargent had met with Welles to enlist his participation, but other obligations intervened.) A limited-run DVD-R edition was released as an Amazon exclusive in 2014, and as of this writing, only the Flix-Fling platform offers it for on-demand viewing.

Two and a half years later, on March 17, 1978, AMERICAN HOT WAX was released in theatres, a semi-fictional portrayal of Alan Freed and his game-changing broadcasts of rock and roll music in the late ‘50s, and its repercussions on a cross-section of the audience who believed the wild rhythms and lyrics to be a very real threat. The screenplay by author/playwright John Kaye streamlines several years of incidents in Freed’s history into a week’s timeline, and takes some outright liberties as well - “Teenage Louise,” the story’s Carole King avatar, claims to have written songs that were hits years before the September 1959 setting – but, to borrow the words of Tim Lucas in his January 1992 Video Watchdog review of Oliver Stone’s THE DOORS, it “addresses [his] life as a work of metaphorical biography, in which individual scenes may not be absolutely true to fact or chronology, but remain sedulously true to the chronology of the subject’s own times and emotions...in other words, the truth unencumbered by facts.” Floyd Mutrux’s direction alternates quiet individual reflection with accelerating group immersion, assisted by D.P. William Fraker’s use of up to eight cameras to cover the climactic concert. Though producers certainly would have wanted to draw the boomers who lived through these events, for this writer, the filmmakers’ intent was and is to convey to new generations, living in the wake of what rock wrought while listening to its derivatives, how it felt to be experiencing the movement for the first time. The poster tagline is not “Remember the good old days,” attempting to sell nostalgia; it is “You should’ve been there,” declaring that viewers will be thrust into the living moment.

Despite being beloved by Michael Eisner, who reportedly watched it 12 times, AMERICAN HOT WAX did not draw well in its 600 screen nationwide release, grossing only $9 million in its initial five weeks in the marketplace. “Top 10”-style box office reporting was not yet a widely popular or accessible public news priority, so specific ranking is not readily found, but seeing as its competition included the recently opened THE FURY and COMA, along with the extremely durable CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, THE GOODBYE GIRL, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER...and STAR WARS...it’s not surprising that it got lost in the crowd. Most print reviews accused it of hagiography and nitpicked its historical accuracy and its use of L.A. locations for a New York story. In contrast, rock critic Greil Marcus declared, “the film may have jumbled the facts, but it’s the most emotionally accurate movie about rock ‘n’ roll ever made...[with] a brooding, beautifully underplayed performance by Tim McIntire as Freed, this was the finest movie of any kind I saw this year.” Aside from a sublicense to Fotomat for their national videocassette rental operation, and a release in the RCA Capacitance Electronic Disc format, it has not received any further home video release, and is currently not available to stream legally.

So here are two period dramas made by Paramount, based on real events but with wholly fictional story elements, centered on radio, taking place in New York City, but for budgetary purposes, filmed in Los Angeles. Each in their own fashion presenting a sort of “Great Man” narrative about their protagonists, as they individually reign calm and contentedly before a ribbon microphone. There’s even scenes where they each directly rebel against their bosses – Welles, forbidden to namecheck President Roosevelt in his script, decides that the Secretary of the Interior talks exactly like the President, while Freed’s first order of business is to play his supervisor’s number one “Do Not Play” single. Naturally, the actors themselves playing these figures had voices so rich, they were often hired to provide them for narrations, commercials, animated films, and other offscreen performances. Sadly, these actors also died much too young: Tim McIntire died from congestive heart failure at 41 on April 15, 1986, while Paul Shenar succumbed to AIDS at 53 on October 11, 1989. And for those who can’t resist “Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy” tales, Tim McIntire was widely rumored by many, including Floyd Mutrux himself, to be the unacknowledged son of Orson Welles, so in a sense the former film presents the “imposter” Welles, followed by the “real” progeny in the latter.

But what really makes these two films siblings from a different sire are how they touch on the relative newness of radio as a medium for the masses, and how the older established forces of government and print journalism treat it and its products as a threat.

While NIGHT remains confined to the evening of the Welles broadcast, the sudden scrum of police and reporters racing into the CBS studio upon its finish hints at the fallout to come. As documented by Jefferson Pooley andMichael J. Socolow for Slate, “the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted.” And while the real level of panic will always be up for debate, in a retrospective for his blog Musings of aMiddle-Aged Geek, Sebastian S. writes, “Watching THE NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA today, in our terrifying ‘post-truth’ era, where private citizens have raided pizzerias based on deliberately false information about baby-smuggling rings, it seems we’ve learned absolutely nothing about the incredible power and sway of electronic media since 1938, whether it’s radio, television, or the internet. [The] movie arguably holds a lot more value as a cautionary tale today than it did in 1975.”

Meanwhile in HOT WAX, forces of the state, in the roles of a District Attorney, detectives, and Internal Revenue agents, react with horror to the themes and possibilities that rock and roll music offer: sexual liberation, race-mixing, rebellion against authority. Openly racist terminology as “jungle instincts” and “spook music” casually drip out of their mouths. But they can’t, say, arrest singers, or record company executives – they’re engaging in free enterprise. The only parties they can see being successfully throttled are disc jockeys like Alan Freed, on the premise that if radio didn’t make rock popular, its influence would diminish. After all, when so many years of safe unoffensive ditties by respectable WASP performers dominated the air without incident, why, it must be crime that brought this disrputive force to power, harumph. And it is that reductive belief that fuels the one weapon they do possess to threaten him; his willingness to accept reimbursement from record labels for playing their singles without public disclosure of the exchange. And in a crucial scene, Freed refuses to officially deny that he’s culpable – his rebuttal is that any other d.j. who says they haven’t is lying. Critics of the time said the movie was giving Freed a pass for engaging in payola, but it seems more logical that he knows he’s in the crosshairs either way, and better he own his transgression than lie and be caught anyway. Maybe the real topic of discussion should be whether the law was only being enforced in this moment because black artists and businesses were benefiting from radio exposure that had to be obtained through a back channel. At story’s end, yes, Freed loses his platform and influence, but a thousand other d.j.’s keep playing the music. Oh, and payola continues on: the participants just find better ways to conceal it.

But lest the conversation get too dark, these movies also share the exhilaration of a whole mess of people in a studio either contributing to making magic happen, or merely bearing witness to it. As the Mercury Players in NIGHT create audio illusions through opening jars inside toilets and feeding noises through whistles and cones, and the actors switch voices and dialects on the flip of a finger, they are totally serious about their job, but the joy in bringing a scary story to life is palpable on their faces. While in a bravura HOT WAX sequence, a frustrated producer asks Freed to help direct a song recording, and Freed brings his traveling feast of friends, fans, and random bystanders into the room as well, and somehow, “Come Go With Me” emerges, with the cramped multitude reacting as ecstatic as if the Holy Ghost had joined them for Pentecost and brought chips.

As a sidebar for levity, I am amused at how comedian Dickie Goodman, the inventor of the “break-in” novelty record, serves as an unofficial spiritual bridge between these two films. His first hit single, under the name Buchanan and Goodman, was “The Flying Saucer Parts 1 & 2,” presenting WAR OF THE WORLDS as a rogue alien aircheck. And while Communism is one of the few vices not being blamed on rock music by the villians in HOT WAX, I don’t think it’s an accident that in “Russian Bandstand,” Goodman’s followup track with Mickey Shorr (credited to Spencer and Spencer), the ostensible #1 song in Russia sounds an awful lot like Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline” played backwards.

And then, there’s the visual component. I don’t have the means to create a proper video mashup, and I don’t have an ace editor on retainer...yet...so, for this section, just like radio, we’ll be projecting in the theatre of the mind. So fire up a simultini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air…

"An invasion is being planned by a small group. And this man is part of it."

"Not the invasion one might expect, but an unwitting invasion of the mind, that will send a panicked nation fleeing into the streets."

"In exactly one hour and thirty-seven minutes, the nightmare will begin."

"This is rock and roll."

"And America listened to the distant thunder brought by this medium, wanting desperately to believe that they were secure from the lightning that was to come."

"A police spokesman has said that these rock and roll enthusiasts have been behaving relatively calmly. But one wonders [what] will be aroused when the doors are closed...the lights go down...and the caterwauling begins."

"We would bring you coverage...but apparently an AM radio station has the exclusive broadcasting rights.

  

In other news, riots broke out..."

"It's not goodbye, just goodnight."

"Many factors were blamed for what had driven America beyond the edge of blind panic on this night. But in the end, only one remained...
The frightening ability of a young medium to plunge a world into terror, from the sound of the spoken word."

Will you remember Jerry Lee

John Lennon, T. Rex and Ol' Moulty?

It's the end, the end of the 70's

It's the end, the end of the century

Summer Kisses, Winter Tears: Ornella Muti's American Sojourn

The Impetus

On July 11, 2025, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Sean Baker announced his participation in an upcoming BluRay box set of films starring one of his favorite performers, the regal Ornella Muti. He was quoted in very excited prose about his pleasure to be interviewing her about the four selected films, and other related topics.

Though never quite achieving the same name recognition in America other legendary daughters of Italy as Sophia Loren or Isabella Rossellini have won, regardless of the genres you favor in your movie love, you have seen her versatility in the company of several iconic stars: tackling the climates of Bukowski with Ben Gazzara in TALES OF ORDINARY MADNESS and Proust with Jeremy Irons in SWANN IN LOVE, confronting Gerard Depardieu’s toxic masculinity in THE LAST WOMAN, slow-burning (or stifling laughter) against the broad comedy of John Candy in ONCE UPON A CRIME, and, yes, tempting the Saviour of the Universe in FLASH GORDON.

The four films chosen for the set all represent Muti in her ascent, before 1980 and “that multi-million dollar work of art playing across town,” as the makers of FLESH GORDON liked to say in their advertising. Three of the films have previously had a limited availability in America. Her film debut, Damiano Damiani’s THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WIFE, did not get a US theatrical release, but was issued on a domestic DVD by the defunct NoShame label in 2006 (with booklet notes by Richard Harland Smith), and a domestic BluRay by the defunct Twilight Time label in 2016 (with booklet notes by Julie Kirgo). Dino Risi’s FIRST LOVE (aka LAST LOVE), also did not reach US theatres, but did get a substantial run in French-speaking Canada. By virtue of their longstanding relationship with Mars Film Produzione, Paramount opened Tonino Cervi’s NEST OF VIPERS in New York, but while wire services promoted it to readers in other cities, the studio never expanded their release beyond there, nor gave it a video release.

The fourth, however, had a surprisingly long and sustained presence on these shores, albeit long after its original production and release. It also arrived in substantially different condition than the rest of the world saw it in. And by plain dumb luck, its presence cast an inadvertent shadow on its otherwise luminous star’s push into Hollywood.

The Disclaimer

I have been a longtime fan and consumer of Sean Baker’s work since his 2015 breakout TANGERINE. I have also considered myself lucky that in the course of social media and my own smaller scale adventures in the screen trade, Sean Baker has been paying attention to my work and enjoys what I do. I will not succumb to hubris and claim him as a friend; after all, I’ve never sat down to dinner with him. But we exchange pleasantries in public, and he is a huge booster of my decade-long passion project, the Grindhouse Releasing BluRay of Christina Hornisher’s long lost HOLLYWOOD 90028.

To use Garrett Morris parlance, Sean Baker been berry berry good to me.

Also, as will be revealed later, I have another personal iron in this fiery story, which will explain why I am so pleased for this opportunity he has taken on, and a teensy bit jealous to boot.

The Precedent

Damiano Damiani’s 1970 film THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WIFE was a sensation in Italy for several reasons. Its story came from the real-life actions of Franca Viola, a Sicilian teenager who, after being kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a former boyfriend with organized crime connections, refused his family’s offer of a “rehabilitation marriage” and instead pressed charges, which despite threats and smear campaigns, successfully resulted in a guilty verdict and imprisonment. (For context: in Italy, divorce was not legalized until 1970, birth control not legalized until 1971, and rape was not reclassified to a crime against a person rather than “public morality” until 1996!) It was the debut performance for Ornella Muti, who was 14 at the time of production, with only some modeling experience in her background; the performance won her a Grollo d’oro Award for Best Debut Actress. It was also the debut performance for her co-star, Alessio Orano, who portrayed her would-be lover and antagonist.

This would not be the last time the two actors worked together. Or that Orano would embody both characteristics.

The Document

Writer/director Giorgio Stegani Casorati (most often credited without his surname), who, like many Italian filmmakers, previously turned out a standard array of espionage and western potboilers through the ‘60s, and before that had scripted MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN for Giorgio Ferroni, switched genres again for his 1971 production, IL SOLE NELLA PELLE, colloquially translated as SUN ON THE SKIN (though the intended translation had been SUN IN YOUR SKIN). Since the 1968 Franco Zefferelli film adaptation of ROMEO & JULIET with Olivia Hussey was still a popular revival title worldwide, and LOVE STORY was setting records in 1970, tragic romances set among beautiful youths with an economic divide between them was a good hook. And a chance to send an open rebuke to the sensationalist tendencies of both the State and the Fourth Estate, who in later years would become world-notorious for excessive behaviors, even better.

SUN ON THE SKIN uses an outwardly incongruent framing device of police investigators and reporters gathering interviews and gossiping among themselves to tell its real story of a doomed romantic interlude between Lisa, the 15 year-old daughter of a car magnate, and Robert, a 19 year old itinerant musician. The two meet when Lisa’s affluent friends crash a campsite nicknamed “Polynesia” where Robert and several unclothed friends hang out. Smitten, she attempts to introduce Robert to her otherwise laissez-faire parents, but her father, brewing prejudice about the counterculture and his inability to see her as anything but a child, forbids her to continue seeing him. Robert himself says he intends to move on to another city anyway, but Lisa coaxes him to spend another day with her. After taking a sailboat from one of her family’s vacation homes, the vessel wrecks on a shoal and the two end up on a deserted island. As they share intimate thoughts and gestures with each other, oblivious to the outside world, her father calls in favors with several government authorities to find them, in a nightmarish interpretation of MOONRISE KINGDOM. When a pair of hunters who come to the island for game find the boat wreckage and spot them in lovemaking, upon returning to the city, they misreport the tone of their behavior, suggesting a scenario, well, not unlike that in their earlier pairing from WIFE, which in turn creates further confirmation bias with all the wrong people. As Jonathan Swift wrote, “[If] a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work,” and when the adult world finally finds Lisa and Robert, it’ll take less time than that yield its consequence.

Considering the onscreen emnity their respective roles required in WIFE, Italian moviegoers may have been surprised that Orano and Muti would appear together again as comparably gentle lovers. According to co-star Stella Carnacina, she and Muti were both courted to play Lisa, and Muti’s blue eyes were the clincher, so perhaps it could just as easily had been Carnacina on that island. But seeing as Stegani wrote his character to have blue eyes, perhaps also he already had plans for a reunion for the couple. And seeing that they had already effectively explored the worst case scenario a man and woman could experience in their previous film, the actors understood the chemistry that fueled their hatred in one movie could be steered in the other direction. Orano in particular strikes a curious balance between mellow and menace as the hunky hippie drifter Robert; he knows the danger he could pose to Lisa, and frequently tries to warn her away from fixating on him. Even when they’re alone in their ersatz paradise, he never brings overt or passive-aggressive pressure to her to give herself to him: she makes the choice to expose herself completely. (Or at least, as the Italian credits make clear, the then-16-year-old Muti’s adult body double exposes herself.) And in the climax, when both reporters in a helicopter and police with guns send him running for his life, it does play out like hunters gleefully pursuing a beast, albeit a model-handsome, shirtless beast. In this spirit, in Germany, while the film had been released as A SUMMER OF TENDERNESS, some home video releases retitled it HUNTED TO DEATH.

As with several Italian films from the mid-’60s onward, there was an eye for getting SUN seen in other territories. A full English dub track was prepared, complete with the requisite voices of Peter Fernandez and Frank Wolff. Score composer Gianni Marchetti, whose dozens of alternate credit names in his prolific career include “Johnny Bravo,” enlisted expatriate Scottish band Middle of the Road, famous for their #1 UK hit “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep,” to write and sing original songs in English for the soundtrack, which was released in almost all territories. The export version of SUN opened in Hammersmith, London, on a double feature with COUNTDOWN TO VENGEANCE starring Serge Reggiani and Jeanne Moreau, in June of 1972. However, the movie did not make it to America.

Not until several years, and several changes, later.

The Lure

By 1979. movies featuring Ornella Muti in their casts were making their way to American theatres: DIRTY PICTURES, ITALIAN GRAFFITI, COME HOME AND MEET MY WIFE, LEONOR, VIVA ITALIA!, and the aforementioned NEST OF VIPERS, all received substantial, if not nationwide, releases. Plus some outings as LA CASA DE LAS PALOMAS, EXPERIENCIA PREMATRIMONIAL, and UNA CHICA Y UN SENOR, while not given regular runs, did pop up in Spanish-language theatres in the South. However, while her visage was often featured on poster art, and her name mentioned in critics quotes, as the entertainment press terminology would say, she was not yet in a position to “open” a picture here. 

Meanwhile, much as Muti had found stardom in a controversial film whilst essentially still being enrolled in middle school, America had produced their own similar precocious prodigy: Ford model-turned-actress Brooke Shields, who garnered both critical praise and lots of outraged letters-to-the-editor for playing a child prostitute in Louis Malle’s 1978 film PRETTY BABY. While her immediate follow-up projects – JUST YOU AND ME KID, WANDA NEVADA, and TILT – were not box office hits, she still commanded a fan base and stayed constantly in the press through her modeling, including an infamous campaign for Calvin Klein jeans, and there was high anticipation for her leading role in Randal Kleiser’s adaptation of the 1908 coming-of-age-in-isolation novel THE BLUE LAGOON, scheduled for release in June 1980. A movie where she and Christopher Atkins would spend lots of time on a desert island, minimally clothed.

No published source has yet been located to confirm what precisely motivated Lew Ginsburg to ultimately acquire the US rights to SUN ON THE SKIN for his Transvue Pictures Corporation in 1979. The small outfit, operating since 1968, did not have many releases, but covered all bases with their picks: spaghetti westerns (THE DIRTY OUTLAWS), Vietnam trauma (HOA BINH), biker action (THE PEACE KILLERS), stoner freakout (THE PREMONITION), family-friendly adventure (WHO SAYS I CAN’T RIDE A RAINBOW)...their best known releases being RAINBOW BRIDGE, featuring a seminal Jimi Hendrix performance, and DISCO GODFATHER with Rudy Ray Moore. And seeing as Ginsburg had been both a studio acquisition executive and cinema booker before founding Transvue, he likely kept an eye on pending events. Thus he would have been aware that Brooke Shields would (allegedly) be naked again in THE BLUE LAGOON in summer 1980, and that Muti was about to deliver her first completely English-language performance in Dino DeLaurentiis’ highly promoted production of FLASH GORDON, opening at Christmas the same year. 

So when he came across another photogenic teens on a desert island movie that could beat the big studio movie to theatres, starring an equally radiant model-turned-actress about to get a full court media press, logic suggests why not get the jump on both of them?

What came forward from Transvue, however, under the new title SUMMER AFFAIR, was a significantly altered experience. The opening credits, where Robert is day napping in a city square and Lisa walks past him, were dropped. Almost all the investigators and interviews framing device was cut out, aside from a few scenes necessary to explain crucial plot developments. While some flourishes, such as a recurring motif of Lisa’s father at crucial interactions literally seeing her in her younger years before seeing her in the present day, were retained, the overall sociopolitical lens hovering on the story was dropped to focus almost entirely on the rise and crash of the teens’ idyll. The instrumental cues of Gianni Marchetti and most of the Middle of the Road tracks stayed in place, but several scenes had their music replaced with multiple incarnations of a newly-recorded song, “Don’t Wake Me Up Tonight,” produced by longtime recording engineer Robert de la Garza, written by guitarist Bucky Barrett & songwriter Bobbi Cole Meyer, and sung by Deborah Mosely, a former Miss Georgia who, according to the hype on the American soundtrack album, was the “winner of Transvue Pictures’ National Talent Search Contest.”

Most distinctly, and jarringly to anyone who did see it in its original European cut, an entirely new 10 minute opening, with Anglicized talent credits (Alessio Orano was now “Les Rannow,” Luigi Pistilli now “Louis Pistilli”), was attached, featuring American actors completely unconnected to the film! Holly Gagnier, later to play Sarah Jessica Parker’s nemesis in GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN, and Gregory Labaqui portray Susie and Tony, carefree friends in San Francisco who, after a pas de deux in Union Plaza during the credits, meet up in a discotheque to watch some impressive (if thematically out of place) breakdancing by L.A.-based group The Stylistic Dancers, and provide an exposition dump to somehow connect them to the actual protagonists, before a rotating wipe (the kind notorious to edited reruns of ‘70s sitcoms) finally takes us to the real movie and the “Polynesia” hippie encounter. UCLA Film & Television School alumna and PENTITENTIARY producer Alicia J. Dhanifu (pictured above) would write, direct, and choreograph this retconning footage. For having such a thankless task, she delivers above and beyond the call, even if what she has presented is tonally misleading.

SUMMER AFFAIR got its first US playdate in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on November 30, 1979, and slowly trickled through Southern theatres and drive-ins for a full year onward. Ad copy promised “A touching poignant look at love,” and “What you dreamed of but never dared to do,” and cautioned, “THIS PICTURE MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO THOSE PERSONS SENSITIVE TO TOTAL NUDITY!” As was typical of dubbed foreign pickups released by small distributors, almost no press reviews were filed in the markets where it opened, and where there were, such as Jeff Millar of the Houston Chronicle, they were dismissive: Millar’s review literally ended with, “The film is preposterous, and with newsprint over $400 a ton, I’ll not waste another ounce on it.” Transvue nonetheless treated the film as a perennial: it was still receiving first-run engagements as late as September 1983. And in 1986, it received a big-box VHS release from Active Home Video, in tandem with other Transvue titles.

The Landing

After completing SUN ON THE SKIN, Ornella Muti and Alessio Orano would make one more film together, EXPERIENCIA PREMATRIMONIAL, made and released in 1972. Again, they would play lovers in a fraught place and time: in this circumstance, Spain, in its final years of Catholic repression under Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Here, Alejandra and Luis, against the conventional morality of their families and the general society, choose what we Americans only half-jokingly used to call “living in sin,” to see if marriage is really for them. At first, flush with excitement, they are happy in their cohabitation. But, because this is a melodrama set in a country that was punishing subversion, Alejandra gets pregnant, Luis gets bored and cheats on her, their relationship falls apart, and everyone learns a lesson that anything other than church-sanctioned unions will end badly. In Franco’s Spain, anyhow.

While any possible previous romantic behavior during the making of their three films together was not mentioned or documented in the press, Muti and Orano would marry in 1975; she was 19, he was 29. One month earlier, Muti had given birth to her first daughter, Naike Rivelli, who was born in 1974; at the time, she alluded to an older and married man “not in the movie business” as the girl’s father. Shortly after their marriage, Orano formally adopted Naike. After three years together, Muti and Orano would separate in 1978. Muti would soon decamp with Naike to Los Angeles in late 1979 after completing production on FLASH, where she would be appearing in her first project for an American director: James Toback’s LOVE AND MONEY.

In the lead-up to Ornella Muti’s late 1980 American publicity tour to promote FLASH GORDON, and herself to English-speaking moviegoers, her estranged husband Orano filed litigation in Italy to gain sole custody of the now-six-year-old Naike. The challenge clearly rattled the young mother, as this subject would come up time and again in the interviews that were supposed to be simple innocuous junket chats. As she told writer Lloyd Shearer in a wire service interview running October 25, 1980, “After three years, Alessio leaves, wants nothing to do with me or Naike. We are separated. Now he come back and say he wants custody of Naike – that he is legal, official father. I will fight to the death not to give him my baby.”

And even though it was such an under-the-radar release that the closest it came to Los Angeles was a Fresno engagement in November 1980, it stands to reason insiders somehow got word to her that SUN ON THE SKIN, the movie from so long ago where she and her ex were au naturel, was currently in American theatres; and that surely would have felt like, well, salt in the wound.

The dissonance would come to a head on December 4, 1980, during the most-covered stop of Muti’s American charm offensive, in Cincinnati, Ohio – my home town. She had a very busy day of activity ahead of her: a TV interview with local talk show host Bob Braun, a mayoral welcome, and a meet-and-greet at posh department store Shillito’s in Downtown, followed by a mall appearance, a charity fundraiser, and a Showcase Cinemas multiplex opening in Eastgate 20 miles away. The embodiment of European glamour was entering a new world - the midwestern heartland - at warp speed.

As a child of a Franco-Italian mother who moved her parents to America a few years after my birth, and a film obsessive since fourth grade, I had a bit of a head start on Ornella Muti awareness. My grandparents had the big cultural magazines from the old country – Paris Match, Gente, Oggi – sent over, so I’d seen photos of her in them, and knew she was a big deal. I also knew that Cincinnati was a nice enough place by my standards, but wondered what a lady of culture like her would have made of it. I was fearing the worst.

From what I can find in the public record, it was not a good day for her. In separate interviews with the Cincinnati Post and Cincinnati Enquirer, which either took place during her media blitz or the morning after, it was brought up that sometime during her activities, there had been a fresh escalation from Orano’s camp in their ongoing custody fight. The Post’s writer, Jerry Stein, managed to speak to her when she was in a more convivial state of mind, but the Enquirer’s writer, critic Tom McElfresh, must have had his window of access right after the phone call, because his report was full of pissy commentary about Muti’s unloquacious demeanor, right down to the headline: “Ornella Has Little to Say About Flash.” When she admits to being brought down by troubling news and that she would be in a better mood in a few hours, McElfresh makes of point of telling the reader he didn’t have a few hours to wait for her mood to improve. (This is also a man who once fawned over Jayne Kennedy when she made a visit for the World Premiere of her action film DEATH FORCE, only to ridicule the film and the fact it premiered in Cincinnati days later.) In a post on Cinema Treasures, a Redstone Theatres employee working the inauguration of the Eastgate Showcase revealed that Muti arrived late for the FLASH premiere, which logic suggests may also have been caused by dealing with news from home. And while no video is readily available from her “BOB BRAUN SHOW” appearance, back then, everyone my age and older pretty much agreed he was probably very nice, but such a white bread square he made Mike Douglas look like George Carlin, so imagination yields cringey conclusions.

The Postscript

Ornella’s Muti’s Hollywood experiment did not last long. LOVE AND MONEY, which had its first test-screening in November 1980, received a small and publicity-free contractual-obligation release in February 1982, and was sent to cable nine months later. She and her daughter returned to Europe, and contentedly stayed there. She has acted in several English-language projects since, but in most of these situations, they have been made overseas – in short, American directors come to her rather than she to them.

As for her contentious ex-husband Alessio Orano, his trail runs cold after 1998.

And The Cincinnati Post, “THE BOB BRAUN SHOW,” Shillito’s, Showcase Cinemas Eastgate, and the luxury hotel where Muti rested...are all gone.

I can’t wait to hear what Baker and Muti talk about later this year.