Difference between revisions of "Opera/Fun Facts"

From The Grindhouse Cinema Database

< Opera
(Created page with "* The last theatrical film of Ian Charleson. * In the book Profondo Argento Dario Argento cited star Cristina Marsillach as the most difficult actress he's ever worked with....")
 
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* The last theatrical film of Ian Charleson.
* The last theatrical film of Ian Charleson.



Revision as of 04:49, 23 November 2022

Operapic1.jpg

  • The last theatrical film of Ian Charleson.
  • In the book Profondo Argento Dario Argento cited star Cristina Marsillach as the most difficult actress he's ever worked with.
  • The idea of the pins-under-the-eyes torture device came from a joke of Argento's. Argento said it would annoy him when people would look away during the scary scenes in his films. He would jokingly suggest taping pins under people's eyes so they couldn't look away from the film. It would late materialize on the screen for this film.
  • Orion, the American distributor of the film, wanted Argento to cut the final scenes in the Swiss countryside out of the film. Argento refused.
  • Vanessa Redgrave was attached to appear as Mara Czekova, but dropped out shortly before production began. The role was then reduced to a minor one.
  • The ending of the movie is inspired by the ending of Thomas Harris's book "Red Dragon". In an interview in Luca M. Palmerini's book "Spaghetti Nightmares", Dario Argento states that he did not like Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986), the first film adaptation of "Red Dragon" which used a completely different ending from the one in the novel, but is a fan of Harris's novel. (Ted Tally's screenplay for Red Dragon (2002) later adapted this ending more faithfully.)
  • According to star Urbano Barberini, it would take hours for everyone to re-capture the crows after they were released in the opera house for filming. Around 140 crows were used, but only 60 sum were ever retrieved. The others apparently escaped from the opera house during filming.
  • The character of Marco, the horror director turned opera director, was based on Dario Argento himself.
  • Many mishaps on set, including the death of one of the actors, led director Dario Argento to believe that the "Macbeth curse" also struck during the making of this film.
  • Originally, Columbia Pictures intended to release the film theatrically in Germany in 1988 but after the FSK (Official German Censorship) demanded to cut out almost 25 minutes, mostly violence (among others the two scenes with Betty wearing the needles), it was released straight to VHS, even though a theatrical release has already been announced.
  • There has frequently been controversy about the film's aspect ratio since it was shot in the Super 35 process and released both in 2,35:1 and 1,85:1 on DVD with the general conclusion being that 2,35:1 was the ratio intended by Dario Argento since he had the film shown that way on various festivals and obviously chose to use Super 35 himself for this film.
  • During the filming, Ian Charleson got into a minor car accident and was hospitalized for a week where, after having some medical tests done, he was diagnosed being HIV-positive, a condition which he had suspected himself to be for nearly a year prior to filming.
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