Building the Ultimate Superhero

Richard Harrison plays a banker who gets transformed into a superhero against his will in the 1968 fantasy adventure FANTABULOUS INC.

Richard Harrison is not a name most moviegoers in the U.S. are probably familiar with but film buffs around the world know him as one of the American actors who relocated to Italy in the early sixties and enjoyed a long and prolific career there in B-movie fare and low-budget genre films. In a career of more than 100 feature films, there may not be a bona fide classic among them but there are several cult gems and entertaining oddities to enjoy and one of my favorites is La Donna, il Sesso e il Superuomo (English title: Fantabulous Inc., 1968), directed by Sergio Spina. Although it is usually classified as a Eurospy flick released in the wake of the James Bond craze, it is actually a fantasy/adventure/satire that sends up the whole concept of the superhero in comic books and films. It also works as a subversive cautionary tale about the dangers of fascism delivered in the form of a comic cartoon.

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Now You See Him, Now You Don’t

Ever notice how every secret agent in the movies seems to have a gimmick? Well, Perry Liston – code name: Matchless – has got a winner. When confronted with unavoidable capture or certain death from enemies, he can literally vanish into thin air. He’s not superhuman though. His ability to become invisible at will is completely dependent on a unique ring given to him by a fellow prisoner in a Chinese jail. And the ring’s powers are limited: it can only be used once every 10 hours and the wearer can expect his invisible state to last no more than twenty minutes. Those are the rules and Matchless (1966), a quirky genre offering from Italy, plays fast and loose with the gimmick [In some markets it was released under the title Mission TS (Top Secret)].

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