So, the time has come.

I've been living and working in Iraq for the last 14 months, and am suddenly looking at the end of my time here in a matter of days. I've decided I'm going to travel around Europe until I can no longer afford to continue - something I've never done before. Before I went to Baghdad, I'd never even left the US! I'll be starting in Rome, somewhere around the first week of November.

I need a little help, and I'm calling on my more well-travelled Mobians for some pointers.

The only lynchpins to this trip are Rome to start, and somewhere storybook for Christmas in Germany (I have friends in Germany who will I'm sure find me just the place for that). Depending on how the finances hold, this could continue well past the holidays. We shall see.

Getting to my point - I think it'd be pretty nifty to loosely base my trip around hitting some of the EuroCult meccas I've only admired on screen: I'll be all over the various German SUSPIRIA locations for sure, and shouldn't have much trouble putting that together on my own - and there's always this to help:

SUSPIRIA - Where They Done It!

There are plenty I haven't thought of yet and still others I'm just beginning to put together: for instance, I *think* the same castle was used for BLOODY PIT OF HORROR, THE LICKERISH QUARTET, and REINCARNATION OF ISABEL, and I'm pretty sure I've found it:

Castle of Balsorano - or Crimzie's Castle?

Sure looks like the joint!

I've also found the following, here:

"About 25 miles from Pescasseroli, the Castello di Balsorano medieval castle (67025 Balsorano Sora; tel. 011-39-0863-951236) is a most economical 13th-century fortress whose rooms still preserve the atmosphere of a medieval castle, with luxurious furniture and modern bathrooms. Closed in November, no credit cards accepted, not advisable for the disabled."

So, good news - I could stay there?! Yay!! Bad news, the best time for me is in November, when apparently it's closed! D'oh!

So, this is where my head's at. I'll be thinking of more places to hit, and if you guys wanna pitch in, I'd dig it the most. Hell, might make a good travel book some day...

And there's also the matter of Argento shooting MOTHER OF TEARS in Turin in October/November...

The liner notes for THE LICKERISH QUARTET which was also filmed there list it as Balsorano so that's probably it. Take lots of pictures (especially if spot Rosalba Neri's countess from DEVIL'S WEDDING NIGHT)!

Gaack! Running out of time - gonna take this to some other boards as well...

The only ones I've been to (recently, verifiably) are not especially glamorous, and sometimes a bit of work to get to (for example, I wouldn't recommend finding the main local Spaghetti Western exterior set of locations (recognizable to those familiar as a rude white colored track in a dust-bowl ringed by mountains -- used for action scenes with stagecoaches clammering down it pursued by ambushers - unless you have an Iraq-type vehicle -groundbased or helicopter- at your disposal, or an expert guide to get you there otherwise. I get heatstroke just thinking about the trek)...though deeply interesting. Chief among them are a - Monte Gelato about 25 miles north of Rome: it has the little waterfall that's used in hundreds of movies of every kind, from peplum through horror through western through sexy and b - Pratica di Mare (about a half hour south out of Rome, along the coast, find the right exit ramp from the autostrada, just before the one for the World Wars I and II German Cemetery (featured in a bunch of films including Dino Risi's IL SORPASSO: Vittorio Gassman and Jean Trintignant follow some pretty German girls there to pick them up, thinking the grand gate leads into a fancy estate). In Pratica di Mare Sergio Leone is buried in the little cemetery on a hill (windy, steep road; gate locked, but tomb visible: modestly scaled but fancy marble monument with little sculptured lions, designed by Leone set-designer Carlo Simi); further up the hill is a little fortified medieval village which contains a favorite Leone restaurant still in operation; and the fortification was dressed up to serve as the exterior to James Woods' Mansion (with Garbage Truck going by) in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA.

The coastline, and tucks inland, in either direction round Rome supply a huge number of locations...obviously, since they were in easy distance. The beach at and around Fregene was used in many, many films as genre-movie generic 'coastline': see it used in Fellini's WHITE SHEIK, showing how it could be transformed into action-romance-spectacle location (it's not the same barren stretch it once was, however, be warned.) Look at the villas around it for the sorts of place DOLCE VITA orgies occured in the movies...one example among many of 'non haunted house' locations in traveling distance.

I'm sitting at an internet cafe across from Roma's Termini Station, where MOTHER OF TEARS is about to shoot its first night.

What're you guys up to?

So, things I've learned:

This was the *last* night in Rome, not the first. They move on to Turino for six weeks from here.

Asia Argento is a bit taller than I'd guessed. And very slim.

Dario is still a whirlwind, running ahead of the camera to keep onlookers from spoiling his shot. Very energetic. Well after they had wrapped, I told him it was good to see him shooting - and with such *gusto*. A bit redundant, maybe, but he accepted graciously. And anyway - whaddya want from me?!

Spoke briefly to a "Nicola" (tried to get Frederic Fasano, Dario's D.P. on this, and Asia's on SCARLET DIVA, but he moves too fast). Nicola says that they are shooting film (Fasano shot digital on DIVA), but - wait for it - the film will be Super 35 2.35 scope! I had already arrived at this conclusion looking at the camera packs and the monitor markings. Very good to have it confirmed. They will be going thru a digital grade. They shot all available light in the station, a mix of natural on the tracks, and fluorescents in the underground area.

Oh - and Nicola's contact info refers to the film as TERZA MADRAS, which isn't quite THE THIRD MOTHER, but certainly isn't even close to MOTHER OF TEARS...

Jeff:

AWESOME report, thanks! I envy you like you wouldn't believe for having had a chance to see Dario at work.

Vincent

Some kind person, perhaps reading Jeffrey's original post, sent me on business and R&R to Venice a week ago, less than a day to pack my bags.

The city's perfect for eurocult ambience...including any number of 'colle' and 'rame' and cul de sacs ending in canals in the course of trapping one within a labyrinth of profondo shocking red raincoats and glass figurines. Given the natural, frst hand resource, doesn't really need any stores dealing in such stuff as filtered through films, and it hasn't any that I've found.

On the other hand, some relevant stuff was close at hand. At train station Venezia Lucia, a bin of discounted Garzanti and Mondadori Gialli from the seventies and eighties. Among my One Euro Twenty finds, the original novel adapted for MILANO CALIBRO NOVE!

Also, wandered totally by chance into a "Trash Movie" night in a far flung section of town: classic polizzioteschi on a big screen TV.

AND, Halloween was celebrated here, a holiday development that's pretty recent. Mostly little girls dressed as witches, some of them with flashing neon capes...and the usual default of firecrackers. On my TV, a French channel was playing SUSPIRIA to round out the evening.

Earlier in the day, and for 24 hours prior, I'd been to Milan, which looks exactly like it does in the movies, but dwelling within it and striding through it to the center(my friends are in the outmost ring, just before the projects where Milian and scurrilous friends once lived) is like being in a video game virtual reality version of a crime film...though without the crime in my case, luckily. But with lots of places to shop for the related films and others...picked up roughly 27 dvds!

Anybody know where I can find either Bava's or Rollin's beaches?

K - good on the Bava, Courtesy of Tim Lucas (of course). It's a nature preserve just a tiny bit south of Rome.

Rollin's is in Dieppe. Near the beaches at Normandy, apparently. Anyone got anything even more specific?

Venice is a suggestion well-appreciated, James. One thing though - I know WHO SAW HER DIE?, while based in Venice, actually shot most if not all of it's location shots on an outlying island - not actually Venice. I imagine this is less true of something like DON'T LOOK NOW, but it may have cheated a bit as well. Anybody have the name of the likely look-alike handy?

And, as always, anywhere else...?

Probably Murano(?) where they do all the glass blowing. I think BLOODSTAINED SHADOW was shot there too.

Murano, Burrano, Torcello, Lido are often used. So are scores more little and large islands, closer and more remote.

This city of islands is ideally familiar yet forever new for directors and tourists alike because you can end up at or glimpse from afar the famous places from so many alien angles while roaming about.

My favorite film to date on this subject is Enrico Maria Salerno's 1970 L'ANONIMO VENEZIANO/Anonymous Venetian...the name of star Tony Musante's great concerto (composed in reality by Stelvio Cipriani) that he may yet conduct and perform before time runs out, movie-time, our time with him and with estranged, briefly reunited, wife Florinda Bolkan, his own brief purchase on this earth, or at least the most Serene ("La Serenissima" aka Venezia) place he dwells. They have one day together back in Venice where their marriage was consummated, which we breathlessly follow from train station arrival of 'She' to 'He' 's (or his) grand finale, everything depending on how this brief re-encounter plays out against the most glorious backdrops on earth evoking in autumn the springtime flashback places they used to visit.

Sounds like it could be corny and sappy, but not at all. This is a dream-itinerary of the "Anonymous Venice", what a Brit tourist passing through a lovers' spat somewhat pompously drones on about: "The Venice nobody knows, the real city".

Famed actor and Clint Eastwood dubber Salerno had one great auteur film in him (screenplay as well as direction), and this was it: scores of prizes (most of them from the Venice Film Festival, not surprisingly), a top five boxoffice smash of its year, and a remarkably unsentimental and intelligent yet ultra-romantic ode to first loves and Venezia. I highly recommend it...though the Italian dub without subs is much preferable to the old American VHS available.