The best Rosalba Neri’s thriller movies
She won a beauty pageant and attended il Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (The Center for Experimental Cinematography). In 1956, she received an offer to go to Hollywood and attend the Actor's Studio but didn't take the offer for undisclosed reasons.
She began her film career at the age of 15 with a role in the film I pinguini ci guardano (1956) (The Penguins Watch Us) in which the animals at the zoo watched the humans around them and cultivated some very interesting thoughts. Many sources, however, list her first film as Mogli pericolose (1958). She is uncredited in this comedy which was directed by Luigi Comencini.
Neri was also much in demand for erotic films. She played Zoe, in Jesús Franco's 99 Women (1969), a movie about women in prison who must turn to each other for comfort while dealing with a sadistic warden. In 1971 she was Eleanor Stuart, Farley Granger's 'wife' in Amuck (1972).
99 Women
4.7/10
Jesus Franco's campy women's prison film is worthwhile for genre devotees primarily due to an outstanding cast. Mercedes McCambridge is unintentionally hilarious as sadistic lesbian warden Thelma Diaz, spitting tacky dialogue with exuberant venom in a performance so overbearing that it verges on classic. The plot is standard for the genre, as three women (Maria Rohm, Elisa Montes, Luciana Paluzzi) are sentenced to an island prison off the Panamanian coast, only to encounter torture, rape, and lesbianism. When sympathetic Warden Caroll (Maria Schell) replaces Diaz, the prisoners assume that conditions will improve, but their agony only worsens until they decide to escape. Rosalba Neri co-stars, and Herbert Lom runs the corrupt men's prison nearby. 99 Mujeres was heavily censored in various prints, with versions running anywhere between 70 and 108 minutes. Edits running 84, 86, and 94 minutes are most commonly available.
Amuck!
6.2/10
Greta Franklin, a beautiful American blonde, arrives on an island near Venice and rings the door-bell of Richard Stuart, a famous novelist who lives in a beautiful house with his wife Elonora. She manages to be hired as Richard's new secretary, the former one having disappeared without a trace. What Richard and Eleonora do not know - yet- is that Greta has a secret motive for taking the job: not only did she know Sally, her predecessor, but she was her lover...
Slaughter Hotel
5/10
A masked killer stalks an institution for mentally disturbed rich women.
The Castle of Fu Manchu
2.9/10
The evil mastermind Fu Manchu plots his latest scheme to basically freeze over the Earth's oceans with his diabolical new device. Opposing him is his arch-nemesis, Interpol's very British Nayland Smith.
I Kill, You Kill
5.7/10
Six sketches with as many ways of murdering someone, and getting away with it.
Two Males for Alexa
5.9/10
Curd Jurgens as the betrayed husband is incredibly expressive and believable; Rosabla Neri, as the philandering Alexa, delivers her usual thoughtful performance and, in doing so, makes her potentially cardboard cut-out character multi-dimensional, and Juan Luis Galiardo, as Alexa'a heartthrob Pierre, also cares enough about his craft that he avoids the trappings of a potentially stereotypical character and, like Neri, makes him real and full of depth
The Girl in Room 2A
5.3/10
A sadistic killer cult kidnaps and sacrifices beautiful women. A young girl, just paroled from prison, moves into a strange house and appears to be the cult's next victim.
The Tough and the Mighty
6.4/10
Based on the story of real life Sardinian bandit Graziano Mesina.
Blackmail
4.9/10
A spoiled rich girl hatches a plot with her hippie friends to "kidnap" her so they can get a large ransom from her wealthy father.
