A publicity still for IRONMASTER (1983)
The movie is considered a low budget production but it actually has some fairly good effects in it, including this scene. Below is how it looks like in the movie. Paolo Ricci is credited for special effects, which, I assume, includes matte paintings. I have a quasi-HD copy of this and the effects hold up beautifully. Directed by Umberto Lenzi.
2 comments:
Two of my favorite aspects of the ?pepla/peplum? genre are the sets and the matte jobs. I haven't seen this one yet, but I love how the matte work makes the entire shot look unrealistic, and I mean this in the most flattering way. I don't care for realistic films at all and it was the sets, actresses and special effects that originally drew me to the genre. Thank Olympus I found the "Warriors" DVD box set.
I'm very fond of this one, maybe disproportionately so. Despite the unevenness, I keep coming back to it. George Eastman's villain and Pamela Prati's villainess are much more interesting than the bland hero Sam Pasco and his blonde gal pal. Spag western star William Berger shows up in a thankless role as well. The film manages an epic, pseudohistorical atmosphere with some splashes of FX work like the matte painting shown in the post, a stock footage/scale model volcano, and some gory bits with plague victims, cannibals, and apemen. The ape costumes turn up again in the post-nuke actioner 2019: After the Fall of New York, released the same year, also starring George Eastman!
As can be seen from this older peplumtv post, the VHS art tried to pass it off as a Conan-esque sword and sorcery flick instead of caveman adventure: http://www.peplumtv.com/2019/06/vhs-covers-ironmaster.html
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