Been wanting to get my hands on this intriguing sounding little thriller from 1990 courtesy small time director Antonio Bonifacio (STRANGE STORY OF OLGA O '95).

An Italian/German co-production, APPUNTAMENTO IN NERO stars current blues musician and one time obscure American leading man of later Italian drama and B cinema, Andy J. Forrest, as a successful buisnessman who's wife stages a phony sexual assault, which Forrest finds as an opportunity for he and his mistress to plot her death. The film also stars Mirella Banti, Mary Lindstrom, Franco Citti, Daniele Stroppa (writer of several great films in one of his few on screen appearances), Roxana Cox, and a cameo by Marina Hedman(!)

I've had my eye out for this film for a while now and I'm confident I'll likely own it sooner than later, but I'm curious as to what some opinions are on this title? It's also known as APPOINTMENT IN BLACK (actual translation), SCANDAL IN BLACK, and apparently there was a North American VHS release as NAKED RAGE. Anyone know what label that was on and if it's uncut?

Thanks in advance!

http://film.spettacolo.virgilio.it/cinema/...ry.php?film=550

Actually, according to his website, Forrest was a blues musician first (and still is). He was "discovered" as an actor while performing in Rome (he's apparently made lots of appearances on Italian TV as a musician at the time and since then).

It's always interesting to find out stuff about Americans who get pulled into Eurocult filmmaking somehow. Side note: one wonders what all those American actors in the Filmirage productions must have thought about doing Italian horror films. In fact, one wonders what they must have thought of Italian horror itself working on these films.

Has anyone ever interviewed her about her screenwriting? I would be interested to hear about any screenwriter's experience with the Italian horror genre. It would be especially nice to hear the thoughts of a female screenwriter on the genre (another female horror genre screenwriter in a recent interview couldn't get a word in edgewise while being interviewed beside her better-known screenwriter husband).

Thanks for clearing that up Kit. She just looked so uncomfortable standing there while he spoke for such a long period of time that it was a bit uncomfortable to watch despite the interesting stuff that Sacchetti had to say - now I finally know who the associate producer was and what he contributed - his name was only in the English trailer and the Italian credits.

I often wonder about this too within the larger historical framework encompassing all those Americans abroad (and the types of them chosen) dragooned into all Italo productions of whatever genre from the day WW2 ended, onwards. In general, publications like Spaghetti Cinema, and Westerns all'Italiana are a good source to check (Thomas Hunter and Walter Barnes have been among those interviewed by one or both). Specifically, there have been a number of Andy J.'s over the decades, restless, guileless-seeming but sophisticated Bluesy white guys who seem to have embodied an archetype of the "cool American", as read about in a James M Cain novel and as met up with in person at some Roman bar after hours, and promptly cast to supply the visitor with a little income, and a film with something fresh and authentic. For example, Chet Baker was an idol of a generation of Roman jazz fans, and got a movie slot. He was just passing though. Others became long term exiles getting lost, ans hangers on of these productions, given much better roles than they'd have had a shot at back home. The very first, I suspect, was occupying GI and musician Gar Moore (stateside, a pretty obscure Broadway and screen actor, best known as a husband of funny chanteuse and Thelma-Ritter-type maid on TV, Nancy Walker) who did star turns in three big movies in 1946 alone. His proto-beatnik/Hoagey Carmichael act with slow drawled jazz piano stylings is heard to best effect in ROMA, CITTA LIBERA (the underknown, unofficial sequel to OPEN CITY, whose director Rossellini used him circa the same year in PAISAN). Black GI Joe John Kitzmiller, who appears in some of the same movies as Gar, is the African American prototype. Doris Dowling, of BITTER RICE and others, is the first of the femmes. I'd look beyond horror to the casting of Americans in general. These three, plus later arriving Lionel Stander, the closest to an authentic Hollywood Gangsta available cheap and living a few blocks away (on the run from the Black List) set the pattern for nearly all who came after.

LOL - sorry, and thanks KJG...knew Stroppa was a woman, not a clue why I said "he".