About a year and a half ago we put up a Mystery Movie post about THE BODY, an Independent Artists release from 1981 that we could find no additional information about. Some people wrote in and suggested that it was the Lugi Scattini erotic thriller I CORPO/THE BODY (1974), while John Charles of Video Watchdog smartly theorized that, given that graphic and a tag line hinting at a metamorphosis of some kind, it could be a reissue of León Klimovsky’s sci-fi gender-bender I HATE MY BODY (1974). Wellllll, just last week our friend Bill Van Ryn of Groovy Doom, "The ghastly home of horror fanzine Drive-In Asylum," sent us the newspaper ad below...
Miami - December 12, 1980
...which confirms that it is indeed a re-release of IL CORPO/THE BODY, starring Carroll (not Carol) Baker, Leonard Mann, Zeudi Araya and Enrico Maria Salerno. Thanks to the 1978 edition of John Willis' Screen World (Volume 29), we were under the impression that THE BODY was first released in the U.S. in April of 1977...
...but the ad above, which tries to sell it as a blaxploitation female empowerment actioner (like the second feature), is from Newport News, Virginia on November 27, 1975.
(Above) THE BODY in Boston on April 27, 1977, with CLEOPATRA JONES AND THE CASINO OF GOLD as the second feature. (Below) Here it is again, this time in Hartford, Connecticut on May 6, 1977.
