Rosalba Neri (born 19 June 1938) is a retired Italian actress.

Early life

Born in

Forlì Forlì ( ; ; ; ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) and city in Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy, and is, together with Cesena, the capital of the Province of Forlì-Cesena.The city is situated along the Via Emilia, to the east of the Montone river, ...

Emilia-Romagna Emilia-Romagna (, , both , ; or ; ) is an Regions of Italy, administrative region of northern Italy, comprising the historical regions of Emilia (region), Emilia and Romagna. Its capital is Bologna. It has an area of , and a population of 4.4 m ...

, Italy, Neri was regarded for her beauty even in youth, winning a

beauty pageant A beauty pageant is a competition in which the contestants are judged and ranked based on various physical and mental attributes. Per its name, beauty pageants traditionally focus on judging the contestants' physical attractiveness, sometimes sol ...

when she was still young. Eventually pursuing an acting career, she attended the

Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia The (; CSC), also referred to as the (), is an Italian national film school headquartered in Rome, with satellite educational hubs in five other Italian regions. It was established in 1935 and aims to promote the art and technique of cinemat ...

(Center for Experimental Cinematography) in Rome, graduating in 1959. She also received an offer to attend the

Actors Studio The Actors Studio is a membership organization for professional actors, theatre directors and playwrights located on West 44th Street in Hell's Kitchen in New York City. The studio is best known for its work refining and teaching method actin ...

in the United States, but did not accept.

Career

She made her film debut in 1958 in the film ''Mogli pericolose''. She is uncredited in this comedy which was directed by

Luigi Comencini Luigi Comencini (; 8 June 1916 – 6 April 2007) was an Italian film director. Together with Dino Risi, Ettore Scola, and Mario Monicelli, he was considered among the masters of the "commedia all'italiana" genre. His daughters Cristina Comencin ...

. Her second film role was in

Roberto Rossellini Roberto Gastone Zeffiro Rossellini (8 May 1906 – 3 June 1977) was an Italian film director, screenwriter and producer. He was one of the most prominent directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing to the movement with films such a ...

's prize-winning drama '' Era notte a Roma'' in 1960.

Historical roles

In 1960, she appeared in two sword and sandal films set in the Ancient world. The first was '' Il Sepolcro dei Re'' (AKA ''Cleopatra's Daughter'' or ''The Tomb of the King''). This film tells the story of Nemorat, an Egyptian pharaoh who was instrumental in the creation of the pyramids of

Giza Giza (; sometimes spelled ''Gizah, Gizeh, Geeza, Jiza''; , , ' ) is the third-largest city in Egypt by area after Cairo and Alexandria; and fourth-largest city in Africa by population after Kinshasa, Lagos, and Cairo. It is the capital of ...

due to the intrigues surrounding his death and entombment. The second was

Raoul Walsh Raoul Walsh (born Albert Edward Walsh; March 11, 1887December 31, 1980) was an American film director, actor, founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), and the brother of silent cinema actor George Walsh. He wa ...

's ''

Esther and the King ''Esther and the King'' () is a 1960 religious epic film produced and directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Joan Collins as Esther, Richard Egan as Ahasuerus, and Denis O'Dea as Mordecai. Walsh and Michael Elkins wrote the screenplay, which was ...

'' (1960), starring

Joan Collins Dame Joan Henrietta Collins (born 23 May 1933) is an English actress, author and columnist. She is the recipient of several accolades, including a Golden Globe Awards, a People's Choice Award, two Soap Opera Digest Awards and a Primetime Emm ...

as the Biblical Jewish Queen. Rosalba played Keresh and was assassinated by someone who mistook her for the Queen. Because of her dark, sultry beauty, Rosalba was often a natural fit to play certain legendary characters. She was Ramses' intended bride in the

Hercules Hercules (, ) is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures. The Romans adapted the Gr ...

Adventure, '' Il leone di Tebe (The Lion of Thebes)'' in 1964. She played

Delilah Delilah ( ; , meaning "delicate";Gesenius's ''Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon'' ; ) is a woman mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible. She is loved by Samson, a Nazirite who possesses great strength and serves as t ...

, the Biblical beauty who was the downfall of the Old Testament hero,

Samson SAMSON (Software for Adaptive Modeling and Simulation Of Nanosystems) is a computer software platform for molecular design being developed bOneAngstromand previously by the NANO-D group at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science an ...

, in '' I Grandi Condottieri'' (''The Great Guides'') (1965). She returned to the genre in '' The Arena'' (1974). Although starring roles were few and far between for Neri, she worked steadily throughout the 1960s/70s in supporting and sometimes, nondescript roles, such as her turn as a harem girl in ''

El Cid Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar ( – 10 July 1099) was a Castilian knight and ruler in medieval Spain. Fighting both with Christian and Muslim armies during his lifetime, he earned the Arabic honorific ("the Lord" or "the Master"), which would evolve i ...

'' (1961).

Spy films

Neri had quite a few roles in Eurospy intrigue films, often playing a less than saintly character. She was Faddja in 1965's '' Superseven Chiama Cairo'' (''Superseven Calls on Cairo''), one of the dangerous women that the spy, a

James Bond The ''James Bond'' franchise focuses on James Bond (literary character), the titular character, a fictional Secret Intelligence Service, British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels ...

-like character, comes into contact with. Also in 1965, she appeared in '' Due Mafiosi contro Goldginger'' (''

Two Mafiosi Against Goldfinger ''Two Mafiosi Against Goldginger'' or ''Due mafiosi contro Goldginger'' is a 1965 Eurospy comedy film directed by Giorgio Simonelli starring the comic duo Franco and Ciccio. It is a spoof of the 1964 James Bond film, ''Goldfinger (film), Goldfinge ...

''). In 1967, she was Amalia in '' Password: Uccidete Agente Gordon'' ('' Password: Kill Agent Gordon''). The same year she played her first part for Spanish director Jess Franco in a spy film send-up done in comic book style, '' Lucky, the Inscrutable'', starring

Ray Danton Ray Danton (born Raymond Caplan; September 19, 1931 – February 11, 1992) was an American radio, film, stage, and television actor, director, and producer whose most famous roles were in the screen biographies ''The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamo ...

. In the following year she appeared in '' OSS 117 - Double Agent'' (1968).

Spaghetti Westerns

She followed the trends of European cinema by appearing in several

Spaghetti Western The spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's filmmaking style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most o ...

s such as '' Johnny Yuma'' (1966), '' Arizona Colt'' (1966), '' Long Days of Hate'' (1968), '' A Long Ride from Hell'' (1968), '' The Reward's Yours... The Man's Mine'' (1969), '' Arizona Colt Returns'' (1971), '' Drummer of Vengeance'' (1971) and '' Man Called Invincible'' (1973).

Erotic horror films

Neri, the bombshell, was also much in demand for erotic ''

giallo In Italian cinema, (; : ; from , ) is a genre that often contains Slasher film, slasher, thriller (genre), thriller, psychological horror, psychological thriller, Sexploitation film, sexploitation, and, less frequently, supernatural, supernat ...

'' thrillers, horror, and

sexploitation film A sexploitation film (or sex-exploitation film) is a class of independently produced, low-budget feature film that is generally associated with the 1960s and early 1970s, and that serves largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit se ...

s. She was in Jess Franco's box office hit '' 99 Women'' (1969), one of the first

women in prison film The women-in-prison film (or WiP film) is a subgenre of exploitation film that began in the early 20th century and continues to the present day. Their stories feature imprisoned women who are subjected to sexual and physical abuse, typically by ...

s, and '' Top Sensation'' (''The Seducers'') (1969) opposite

Edwige Fenech Edwige Fenech (, ; born 24 December 1948) is a French-Italian actress and film producer. She is mostly known as the star of a series of ''commedia sexy all'italiana'' and ''giallo'' films released predominantly through her 20 year career in the ...

. In 1972 she played

Farley Granger Farley Earle Granger Jr. (July 1, 1925 – March 27, 2011) was an American actor. Granger was first noticed in a small stage production in Hollywood by a Goldwyn casting director, and given a significant role in '' The North Star'' (1943), a co ...

's wife in '' Amuck!''. Granger plays a wealthy author who hires a beautiful secretary (

Barbara Bouchet Barbara Bouchet (born Bärbel Gutscher; 15 August 1943)
, glamourgirlsofthesilverscreen.com; ...

) and engages in kinky sex games with her and his wife. Also in 1972, Neri played the lead role in the erotic horror flick '' Lucifera: Demon Lover''. Bouchet and Neri would team up in 1972 in another movie combining sex with horror, ''Casa d’appuntamento'' ('' French Sex Murders''). A jewel thief is accused of murdering a prostitute but is decapitated in a motorcycle accident prior to the trial. When those involved in the trial start dying off, everyone wonders if the dead man has come back to exact his revenge. Perhaps Neri's best-known films are from the horror genre. Credited as Sara Bay, she played Tania Frankenstein, the daughter of the

monster A monster is a type of imaginary or fictional creature found in literature, folklore, mythology, fiction and religion. They are very often depicted as dangerous and aggressive, with a strange or grotesque appearance that causes Anxiety, terror ...

's creator, in 1971's '' Lady Frankenstein''. Tania was willing to take her father's work to new – and frightening – levels. It is considered a

B movie A B movie, or B film, is a type of cheap, low-budget commercial motion picture. Originally, during the Classical Hollywood cinema, Golden Age of Hollywood, this term specifically referred to films meant to be shown as the lesser-known second ...

classic. In 1972, she starred in '' The Devil's Wedding Night'' as Lady Dracula, a vampire who uses

Dracula ''Dracula'' is an 1897 Gothic fiction, Gothic horror fiction, horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. The narrative is Epistolary novel, related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist and opens ...

's ring to lure young virgins to her home so she can murder them and bathe in their blood (à la the medieval Countess Elizabeth Báthory). In Italy it was released as ''Il Plenilunio dell Vergini'' (''Full Moon of the Virgins'').

Retirement

Neri would appear in a few more films such as: '' No Way Out'' (1973), ''Loving Cousins'' (1974), ''Blood River'' (1974) and ''Il pomicione'' (1976), which is her last credited film. In 1985 she did appear in the Italian miniseries ''Olga e I suoi figli'' (''Olga and her children'').

Selected filmography

*'' Escape by Night'' (1960) *''

'' (1960) *''

Cleopatra's Daughter ''Cleopatra's Daughter'' () is a 1960 list of historical drama films, historical drama film set in Ancient Egypt, Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Khufu (r. 2589-2566 BC). The film stars Debra Paget and was directed by Fernando Cerchio. For ...

'' (1962) *'' Hercules vs. Moloch'' (1963) *'' Hercules and the Black Pirates'' (1964) *''

The Lion of Thebes ''The Lion of Thebes'' (, ) is a ''peplum'' film written and directed by Giorgio Ferroni. Plot When the Greek army conquers Troy, Helen is exiled from the city. Her loyal guard Arion and Helene ends up shipwrecked on the shores of Egypt, they ...

'' (1964) *'' Corpse for the Lady'' (1964) * '' Desert Raiders'' (1964) *'' 3 Avengers'' (1964) *''

I Kill, You Kill ''I Kill, You Kill'' or ''Io uccido, tu uccidi'' is a 1965 Italian comedy film directed by Gianni Puccini starring the comic duo Franco and Ciccio. Cast *Franco Franchi as Franco (segment "Cavalleria Rusticana, oggi") *Ciccio Ingrassia as Turid ...

'' (1965) * '' Marvelous Angelique'' (1965) *'' Super Seven Calling Cairo'' (1965) *'' Gideon and Samson'' (1965) *''

'' (1965) *''

The Spy with Ten Faces ''The Spy with Ten Faces'' (, ) is a 1966 Italian-West German Eurospy film written and directed by Alberto De Martino. Plot Paul Finney aka Upperseven; played by Paul Hubschmitt, is a master of disguise by the use of masks. His task is to secur ...

'' (1966) *'' Password: Kill Agent Gordon'' (1966) *'' Johnny Yuma'' (1966) *'' Arizona Colt'' (1966) *'' Lucky, the Inscrutable'' (1967) *'' Long Days of Hate'' (1968) *'' A Long Ride from Hell'' (1968) *'' OSS 117 - Double Agent'' (1968) *'' 99 Women'' (1969) *'' The Seducers'' (1969) *'' Marquis de Sade: Justine'' (1969) *'' The Castle of Fu Manchu'' (1969) *'' The Reward's Yours... The Man's Mine'' (1969) *'' Arizona Colt Returns'' (1970) *'' Slaughter Hotel'' (1971) *'' Drummer of Vengeance'' (1971) *'' Lady Frankenstein'' (1971) *'' Lucifera: Demon Lover'' (1972) *'' Amuck!'' (1972) *'' Smile Before Death'' (1972) *'' French Sex Murders'' (1972) *'' The Mighty Anselmo and His Squire'' (1972) * '' Watch Out Gringo! Sabata Will Return'' (1972) as kidnapped girl *'' The Devil's Wedding Night'' (1973) *'' No Way Out'' (1973) *'' Man Called Invincible'' (1973) *'' The Arena'' (1974) *'' The Visitor'' (1974) *'' Libera, My Love'' (1975)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Neri, Rosalba 1939 births Italian film actresses 20th-century Italian actresses Living people People from Forlì Actresses from Emilia-Romagna