Hors-Série edition of Belgian magazine CINE REVUE, Dossier 75, "L'erotisme dans les films d'epouvante," released in Spring 1975.
Filled with amazing images, some full page while also featuring several colour folds, focusing on nudity and eroticism in horror cinema, this one totally blew me away as a kid in the early 1980s discovering horror movies and... ahem, naked girls! Spread across several evocative chapters like 'Les Vamps de L'Effroi, 'L'Ecran des Maniaques, 'Frankenstein et le beau sexe,' 'Les Monstres Amoureux, 'Le Charme des Vampires, and 'La Volupté de la Mort,' the images are a treasure trove of discoveries. Thanks to the fabulous French magazine, 'Midi-Minuit Fantastique,' and wonderful books such as Barrie Pattison's 'The Seal of Dracula' and David Pirie's 'The Vampire Cinema' - which both led me to discovering...
| Jean Rollin and Jesus Franco - I was already aware of the link between sex and death
in horror films but the sheer amount of nudity featured in genre cinema
was still quite an eye opener for a young kid like me, that's for sure.
It's a thing of beauty! Of course, as a European kid browsing old bookstores for movie books and magazines, it was only the start of a journey of many fabulous discoveries as I would soon stumble upon Jean-Pierre Bouyxou's delectable 'Fascination,' a publishing that focused on all things 'vintage erotica' and thus regularly featured elements of genre cinema, and magazines like 'Sex Stars System,' 'Cinema X,' 'Continental Film Review' and 'Playcinema,' among various other. But more on these later... |
| During the First World War, the publication of the Belgian journal, 'Théâtra Revue,' whose editor was Jean Leempoel, was interrupted. After these difficult years, in 1944, Leempoel, along with editor-in-chief Joe Van Cottom, decided to relaunch the journal under a new formula as 'Théâtra Ciné Revue,' which in 1945 became 'Ciné Revue.' The success of the new magazine was immediate and the weekly magazine quickly established itself in several European countries, primarily in France. The idea for the new format was to focus on American cinema and thus Joe Van Cottom became one of the first European journalists to land across the Atlantic. As its success grew, the editorial team was expanded and Joan Mac Trevor (Jenny Dhont) became, for forty years, the exclusive correspondent of CINE REVUE in Hollywood. Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis were the first to open their doors to her, John Wayne took pleasure in finding her regularly on the filming locations of his movies, and when Kirk Douglas married a Belgian press attaché, it was only natural that Joan Mac Trevor was the first to know about it. Of course, the magazine also devoted lot of attention to European movies and their stars. Then, at the end of the 1950s, the decision was made to sparingly introduce the 'enemy of the big screen' into the weekly magazine by offering, in a very succinct way, the television program schedules, but still the main focus of the magazine remained cinema. Even so, from 1959 onward the magazine was to be called 'Cine Tele Revue.' |
| Towards the 1970s, going with the trend of the moment, the magazine focused considerably on eroticism, offering a central poster featuring an often suggestively naked, and mostly European starlet. Here's where it gets really interesting for fans of 60s and 70s European genre cinema. Pretty much all the gorgeous European starlets of the time passed the revue, and were featured heavily on the cover - again often tastefully nude - and/or represented in the centerfold. And as a bonus, these gorgeous photographs were often taken by the brilliant Angelo Frontoni, 'The Photographer of the Stars.' Now, apart from the regular weekly publishing, there were also occassional, cinema related, 'Hors-Série' issues on various interesting subjects... |
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