Harry Moseby Confidential Opened For Business

As Moon In The Gutter has grown more and more in the past couple of months (I’ve seen the number of hits I am getting daily go from around 300 to more than 700) I am noticing that the people visiting seem to be attracted to the wide range of topics I cover ranging from more obscure foreign cinema to modern mainstream American work. It has been really reassuring to find that my all over the map tastes are shared by so many. I must admit though that the area of my interests that give me the most comfort is in the decade that brought me into this world, the 1970s.
So to give myself, and anyone who chooses to visit, a little seventies style sanctuary I have set up Harry Moseby Confidential. What exactly is this little new offshoot of Moon In The Gutter? Basically it is a spot dedicated to my love for the seventies. Here you will find older (and now revised) articles from Moon In The Gutter, pictures of some of my favorite people from the decade, songs, trailers and even clips of news events from the period that left a mark on me. I just started it over the weekend so right now it is fairly small but I am already feeling a sense of relief when I visit it.
So, if you dig the seventies and like the work I do here stop by Harry Moseby Confidential sometime. Think of it as a streamlined and much more specific stop than Moon In The Gutter.
Business will continue here as usual here and at Nostalgia Kinky and I really do appreciate all that continue to visit and comment. I suspect Harry Moseby Confidential will have a fairly limited crowd of visitors, which is totally fine. I have been a bit down and stressed lately and I just needed to set up a place to relax and remember. Hope it proves a pleasant stop.

All Eyes On Laura Mars At Harry Moseby Confidential

So far I have been using Moon In The Gutter's second spin off blog, Harry Moseby Confidential, as just a spot to revisit, clean up and enhance older Moon In The Gutter articles and to post visual tributes to some of my favorite people and moments from the seventies. However, I plan on it being much more than this so this morning I have posted my first Harry Moseby exclusive, a look at Irvin Kershner's Eyes Of Laura Mars, and I invite those interested to check it out.
I have also added a section over to the right linking to the major continuing series' I have at Harry Moseby Confidential for easy access. I have made it a much more streamlined affair than Moon In The Gutter since I am a little more experienced with the whole blogging thing now. I will continue posting exclusive looks at certain seventies films over there and will provide links here. Thanks to everyone who has already paid a visit to my tribute to my favorite decade, the support is very appreciated.
Also please accept my apologies for my delay in getting back to some of your recent comments, emails and meme invitations. I am hoping to catch up in the next couple of days.

Recently at Harry Moseby Confidential

I am continuing to add exclusive material to Harry Moseby Confidential on an almost daily basis. For those interested, this past week I posted a long article about Lamont Johnson's Lipstick and also a photo tribute to its star, Margaux Hemingway. I also posted a tribute to talented character actor Dave Groh who passed away last week.
Thanks to all who have been visiting and commenting at Moseby Confidential.

Harry Moseby Confidential's Main Investigative Series Begins

Some of the rarest films in my collection belong to one of my most beloved genres, namely the Blaxploitation films of the seventies. While films like Shaft and Coffy have had a lot of attention devoted to them, dozens upon dozens of other equally inventive and important films have been unjustly overlooked. Today at Harry Moseby Confidential I have started a new series that I hope will be a prosperous one where I will be writing in detail on some of the forgotten and overlooked films of this genre. I will alert readers here to my posts on them and will probably create a badge to the side with direct links as well. I hope they prove interesting and stir up some word of mouth as many are not currently out on DVD.
The first I have looked at is Noel Nossack's 1978 film for American International Pictures entitled Youngblood starring Lawrence Hilton Jacobs from Welcome Back Kotter fame. The review is joined by some exclusive screengrabs from my personal copy and I hope everyone will stop by and give it a look.

This Week at Harry Moseby Confidential.

Sandwiched between the most respected film in the Rocky series and one of the most popular, Sylvester Stallone's 1979 film Rocky II has never gotten the attention or respect it deserves. I will be paying tribute to this special film all week long starting tomorrow at Harry Moseby Confidential and invite everyone over throughout the week to give a look if they would like. I'll be focusing on different aspects of the film and offering some thoughts, exclusive screenshots and wallpapers...plus a look at the remarkable out of print novel Stallone himself wrote in 1979 to go along with the film.

Thanks to my readers here who came over for last week's Smokey and The Bandit tribute and left comments. It was a lot of fun and a great way to celebrate the week after graduation.

On a personal note, I would like to dedicate the upcoming tribute to Rocky II to my friend Casey who I just found out is expecting her first child. Casey is one of the only one of my old friends, that I know of, who visits Moon In The Gutter on a regular basis and she is also one of the only people I know who loves the Rocky films and Sylvester Stallone as much as I do. I hope she enjoys the posts and I wish her all the happiness in the world on her upcoming adventure.

Something Strange Is Happening At Harry Moseby Confidential

Starting Sunday and running all through the week at Harry Moseby Confidential.

Patrizia Adiutori in Sergio Martino's Torso

This is part of my Torso Tribute Week at Harry Moseby Confidential.


Although she only appears in the first few scenes of Torso, mysterious Italian actress Patrizia Adiutori proves to be very memorable as the first victim in Sergio Martino’s seductively savage Giallo from 1973.

I was hoping to find out some information on the lovely Adiutori but I have been unable to locate anything really concrete, with even her date of birth proving allusive. She apparently made her film debut in the 1969 Edwige Fenech vehicle Madame Bovary and it seems that she had done some modeling before that as I found some images from the Italian Google that seem to pre-date that film.

Small roles in Bruno Corbucci’s When Women Played Ding-Dong (1971) and Duccio Tessari’s Winged Devils (also 1971) followed before a larger role in Giuseppe Vari’s 1971 Italian Western Shoot the Living and Pray For The Dead (a Klaus Kinski film featuring one of my favorite titles ever).

More roles followed, most of them small, for directors like Damiano Damiani and Mario Sequi and with actors like Alain Delon before she landed the role of Barbara in Alfonso Brescia’s underrated Naked Girl Killed in the Park (1972).

Her memorable work with Brescia should have led to many more roles but, according to IMDB at least, it marked nearly the end of the line for Adiutori. She appeared in two bawdy period comedies (including one with Sergio Martino) before filming Torso, the film which would provide her with her final role.

Adiutori is a striking presence in Torso and her death scene is one of the most perverse and disturbing in the film. These are some screen shots of Adiutori in, as far I can tell, her final role. I wonder what ever happened to this promising young actress and I wonder why she retired from the screen in 1973.

Mimsy, Morricone, Melt-Downs and Madness All This Week At Harry Moseby Confidential

My week long celebration of Dario Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet begins tomorrow at Harry Moseby Confidential.

Dust off Those Grooves (Chapter 21) Ennio Morricone's Four Flies on Grey Velvet

Part of my Four Flies on Grey Velvet Tribute Week at Harry Moseby Confidential.


Despite it being a work that ended one of the most important collaborations between a director and composer in the early seventies, the music Ennio Morricone wrote for Dario Argento's Four Flies On Grey Velvet remains more than worthy of a reappraisal.
After scoring both The Bird With The Crystal Plumage and Cat O Nine Tails for Argento, Morricone was the obvious choice for Four Flies On Grey Velvet. The fact that the film featured the character of a young rock musician as its lead and that Argento himself was was falling more and more under the spell of harder and more progressive modern rock sounds perhaps made the collaboration doomed from the beginning on their third film together though.
Argento recalled in Alan Jones' essential Profoundo Argento that, "I had huge problems with Ennio Morricone on this picture. He had composed music I didn't like and I asked him to change it." Argento continued in recalling that the disagreement actually "caused a huge scandal in Italy" and that he "had to finish directing the music" after "Morricone walked out in disgust."
It was a sad ending to what had been an extraordinary team and the two wouldn't mend the break until more than two decades later with the triumphant The Stendhal Syndrome, one of Argento's masterworks joined together with one of Morricone's finest modern scores.
Four Flies on Grey Velvet was originally not given a full soundtrack release in Italy, with only a 45 appearing at the time to suffice. It would finally appear decades later courtesy of Italy's Dagored Records. Featuring seven tracks totaling just over half an hour including the first cut, one of the funkiest stabs at modern rock the Maestro had ever attempted, and the absolutely gorgeous "Come Un Madrigale", the soundtrack to Four Flies on Grey Velvet is neither one of the best nor the worst of Morricone's phenomenally prolific career. It is essential though and its dustbin status is unfortunate.
Cinevox released an extended version of the score a year ago featuring an additional three tracks. I haven't yet heard this version but Cinevox typically does fine work and I have no doubt this is one of their most necessary and essential releases from the past few years.
Past the soundtrack album itself, I find the music works perfectly fine in the scheme of the film itself. Morricone's stab at what he thought a young rock band in Italy might sound like works well in a film that seems itself to be a part of some strange alternate universe and, while it's not at the level of either Bird or Cat, the music composed for Four Flies on Grey Velvet matches Argento's unforgettable images quite well.
Argento's next project, The Five Days of Milan, would mark the first time he worked with composer Giorgio Gasilini and he would of course hit pay dirt just a few years after Four Flies On Grey Velvet when he would meet a young Italian band called Cherry Five, a astonishing group whose musical ideas would meld perfectly with his cinematic ones. They would change their name to Goblin and the rest is history.
Morricone's often overlooked Four Flies on Grey Velvet score can be ordered in both the Dagord and Cinevox version at Xploited. It's a recommended inclusion for your musical library if it's not already part of it.

A Hammer Horror Week at Harry Moseby Confidential

Why bother paying a week long tribute to Blood From The Mummy's Tomb, one of Hammer Horror's most maligned films from the seventies? Perhaps the first reason that comes to mind is because I can, but that really doesn't get it. Perhaps it has something more to do with what Kim Newman said in his spot on review of the film in issue 79 of Video Watchdog about how "few Hammer films are so consistent in their imagery". That's a truly perceptive thing to say about this very odd, troubling and finally hypnotic film from 1971. So, join me if you will starting later today at Harry Moseby Confidential to pay tribute to this rather baffling but actually quite unforgettable production from Britain's most legendary studio.

Harry Moseby Confidential Hits The Road

Starts Monday at Harry Moseby Confidential.

15 Years of Dazed and Confused

Over the next couple of weeks at Harry Moseby Confidential I will be offering up a visual tribute to Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused to mark its 15th anniversary. This is the the first time I have included a film about the seventies at Harry Moseby and I hope it proves a fun remembrance for fellow fans of the film.

You Can't Keep a Good Man Down

Since I put Harry Moseby Confidential on hiatus a couple of weeks ago I have gotten several emails asking me to reconsider and keep it going. Honestly, I don't have the time right now to bring it back completely but I thought at least I could do something. So, each week I will be offering a couple of screenshot wallpapers from a seventies' classic. Harry Moseby will return full time eventually and I hope this little weekly offering suffices in the mean time for the people who asked...as you can guess, the first film I have chose is Mike Hodges Get Carter and two wallpapers (including the one above) are now posted at Harry Moseby Confidential. Enjoy and thanks again for the support.

Harry Moseby Confidential's Laura Gemser Celebration is Complete

After working very sporadically on it for months, I have finally completed my tribute to Laura Gemser over at Harry Moseby Confidential. Fans of the iconic actress will find various lobby cards, posters and hundreds of screen shots I captured from her work in the seventies. I might be mistaken but I believe I have put together the largest collection of Gemser shots currently on the Internet, so I hope it proves interesting for other fans. Here is the link for those interested.

A New Project and the Return of an Old Friend

After about a year of being totally burned out and exhausted I have started to feel like I am back in business as the summer is drawing to a close.  I have several writing projects I have been working on (more details soon) and I am feeling reenergized, reorganized and revitalized personally, professionally and spiritually.  To capitalize on this I recently started a new project and am restarted an older one. 
First up we have the long gestating Jean Rollin Forum, a message board I recently created to go along with my Rollin blog Fascination.  Two weeks in and we already have over a dozen members and a number of great conversations going.  If you are interested in Rollin please visit the board and send me a membership request to access all of the forums. 
Also, I have just relaunched Harry Moseby Confidential, my tribute to the figures, films, sights and sounds of the seventies!  Consider this Moseby 2.0 as I am expanding it to include not just the seventies but the fifteen year period between 1968 and 1983, probably my favorite stretch of time in popular culture. 
So, pay me a visit to both places and Let's Rock Again!

A Youth Nabbed As Sniper At Harry Moseby Confidential

***My visits at Harry Moseby Confidential doubled this past week due to my tribute to Sergio Martino's Torso. Thanks for all that visited. I had to go out of town this weekend so I was unable to deliver all I wanted on the film but I hope what I did proved interesting...I will be finishing it up in the morning.***

I realize this would be the perfect time to pay tribute to Blondie's landmark 1978 album Parallel Lines at Harry Moseby Confidential. After all, this week marks the arrival of the special edition of the album and I will also be having the pleasure of witnessing the band perform it live in just a couple of days.
I decided to pay tribute instead to the often forgotten powerhouse of an L.P. that proceeded Blondie's Parallel Lines, 1977's Plastic Letters. Featuring some of their greatest songs and most spirited playing, Plastic Letters remains one of the seminal New York Punk albums of the seventies...a savagely infectious comic book for the ears performed by a band and singer on the brink of stardom.
I will be paying tribute to Blondie's Plastic Letters all this week at Harry Moseby Confidential and will be offering up a review to their concert Tuesday night in Louisville as well. Thanks to Jimmy Destri, Clem Burke, Chris Stein and especially Debbie Harry for continuing to provide me so much inspiration after so many years.