Welcome back to Name that Movie Monday!
It's time for Challenge #20 here at the ol' Arcana! Can you identify this week's mystery photo, scanned direct from The Holecheck Archives? If you think you recognize it, post a comment below. As the week goes on, if no one guesses correctly I'll begin adding some pretty useless hints. Easy, right?
Here ya' go -- good luck!
UPDATE:
Solved at last! After seven long months, our reigning champion has finally been identified! Thumbs up to "docvoltage" for recognizing Jess Franco's The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969). The fifth and final entry in Harry Alan Towers' series of pulp adventures featuring Christopher Lee as the titular villain, this one details a preposterous plotline involving heart transplants, frozen oceans and the usual world domination attempts. Not a great film by any stretch, it's still fun enough Saturday afternoon filler, and is helped a bit in the eye candy department by co-stars Rosalba Neri and Maria Perschy, who pretty much steal the show.
Belatedly hitting U.S. screens in 1972 courtesy of International Cinema Corporation, as compared to the Warner Bros.-handled earlier efforts, it didn't exactly light the box office on fire and producer Towers has been quoted saying director Franco effectively killed the series. Obscure label Electric Video Inc. released the film to VHS in 1981 with silly cover art and a transfer that didn't do many favors to its already-questionable reputation. In 2003 Blue Underground performed a minor rescuing act and dropped Castle and its immediate prequel The Blood of Fu Manchu in their Christopher Lee Collection box set, which also house the superior Circus of Fear and a restored uncut The Bloody Judge. All four films look great, are complete, and are packed with a wide array of supplements including featurettes, stills collections, commentaries, trailers, etc. It's well worth picking up.
VHS cover courtesy of Jayson Kennedy's Basement of Ghoulish Decadence.
For a look at our last entry, click here. And don't forget, our Upcoming Releases List (the best on the 'net) is constantly updated, so stop by and preorder some cool stuff!
© 2010 -- Bruce Holecheck. All Rights Reserved.
(1973). Ostensibly a giallo following the demented goings-on at a way-out boardinghouse, it's usually derided for being slow or nonsensical, but when has that ever bothered us? For the less-demanding viewer, there's plenty of fun to be found here. 
and the 
. Production duties were shared with notorious exploitation producer Dick Randall. The cast is a hodgepodge of Eurotrash perennials, including Daniela Giordano, Brad Harris, Karin Schubert and even a small role for Rosalba Neri!
(1973)), later reissuing it under its less recognized moniker, Maniac Mansion (double-billed with Living Nightmare, their retitling of Mario Caiano's Nazi Love Camp #27 (1977)). Keeping all that straight? Its eventual VHS, like most Group 1 offerings, was issued through Catalina Home Video in an uncut but brutally cropped transfer. However, in the '90s Something Weird Video released a true oddity: they found and transferred a theatrical print under the previously unknown alternate title Leather and Whips. The good news is that it retained the full 'scope 2.35:1 aspect ratio, the bad news is that it's been shorn of almost 20 minutes! Of course it's way out-of-print now, so good luck finding a copy!
