Have you seen Italian Spiderman yet?
The premise is that Italian Spiderman was a 1968 Italian action-adventure film made by Alrugo Entertainment, which was deemed “un-viewable” by Italian distributors and never released. The story has the only 35mm print of the film being lost at sea, but recovered in the present day, thereby allowing Alrugo Entertainment to release the film through YouTube.
Unearthed for the first time in 40 years and lovingly restored at Alrugo Studios Milan, this rare theatrical trailer for the 1968 Italian classic ‘Italian Spiderman’ is a real treat. Featuring Franco Franchetti of ‘Mondo Sexo’ fame in his last ever role before being killed in a spear fishing accident in 1969.
Here’s the first three-and-a-half minute episode, featuring the high-stakes gambling set piece:
As I write this there is another episode available, and there will be more over the next eight weeks. Here’s a trailer for the entire film:
Actione! Velocita! Terrore! Suspenso! Romanza! GOBLIN!
You can find out more at the site of Alrugo Entertainment.
What you won’t find out there, but which won’t be a surprise to any but the most credulous of you, and which you can dig up with a very small amount of Googling, is that the trailer for this fake film was a student project at Flinders University in South Australia, and that “Italian” film company Alrugo is actually the work of four Australians who set out to parody Italian action films from the 60s and 70s and foreign films that appropriate American superheros while heroically missing the point.
