Faux Movie Trailer #2 - Galaxy of Space Wars

Galaxy of Space Wars began life as Guerre Nello Spazio Infinito (Wars in Infinite Space). Seeing the remarkable success of Star Wars, Italian director-producer Sergio Guippepo (Death House on the Corner, Macabre, I Feast on Your Soul) saw an opportunity. In December 1978, he hired writer Luigi Bolinvo (who had worked with Guippepo on Macabre and Flies on the Face) to write a version of Star Wars that would be easy and inexpensive to make. After 5 days, Bolinvo delivered the first version of Guerre Nello Spazio Infinito.

With the straightforward story of a sexy, but virtuous heroine (Lux Astra) who is fighting to overthrow a fascistic space empire in hand, Guippepo began raising money and recruiting a cast. Max Von Sydow was the first to sign on, agreeing to play Emperor Bellzerbog, with the understanding that all of his scenes would be shot in one day. B-movie starlets Caroline Munro and Sybil Danning joined the cast next. Both were looking for work after the box office failures of their last films Dracula is My Brother (Munro) and Operation Blunderbuss (Danning).

Filming began in February of 1979 at Rome’s premier studio, Pesce Grosso. Guippepo lived up to his reputation for economical shooting schedules, completing principle photography by the end of March. However, as post-production work was being done - primarily the finishing the special effects - a new science fiction phenomenon swept into theaters...Alien.

Upon seeing the movie, Guippepo hastily wrote new scenes to be inserted into Guerre. Erin Moran, vacationing in Rome at the time, was contacted, offered a substantial salary, and in the space of 8 days, an entirely new cast filmed what would ultimately result in 30 minutes of new footage. Unfortunately, the sets for Guerre had already been torn down. New sets were built, which were more in keeping with the style of Alien...and which looked nothing like those in Guerre.

On July 12, 1979, Guerre Nello Spazio Infinito premiered in Rome. Reviews of the film were mixed. Positive reviews cited the colorful effects and a “sense of absurd fun” (La Republicca). Negative reviews focused on the incoherent story, poor acting and the “assumption that the audience is made up of drooling chimps” (BBC).

After being acquired by American Filmways, the movie was dubbed and released in the United States to the drive-ins and second-rate theaters, where it performed well until it was swamped by similar films flooding the market. Today, it is mostly remembered as an odd hybrid of two very different movies - Star Wars and Alien - filtered through European sensibilities and propelled by the most powerful force in cinema: the desire to make money.

When asked for a comment on the film, Guippepo (now running an olive oil exporting business in Salerno) said,”What was that? Some space shit...I was doing a lot of cocaine in those days, so I don’t remember much.”

The Secret History of Monopoly

Did you know that the game Monopoly was used to help thousands of POWs escape from German prison camps during the Second World War? Nope, neither did I until today. MI9, the branch of British intelligence responsible for helping resistance fighters in Europe and for assisting in the escape and retrieval of Allied POWs. To this end, they were on the look-out for methods of getting equipment to POWs that could aid in their escape. This from The Atlantic;

During the war, large numbers of British airmen were felled over enemy airspace and then held as prisoners behind enemy lines. Germany, however -- in part as a nod to the Geneva Convention -- allowed humanitarian groups like the Red Cross to distribute care packages to those prisoners. And one of the categories of items that could be included in those packages was "games and pastimes." So the Allies took military advantage of this human kindness: Posing as "charities" (one of the better fake names: the Licensed Victuallers Prisoners Relief Fund), they sent packages to their POWs that featured clandestine escape kits -- kits that included tools like compasses, metal files, money, and, most importantly, maps. And: They disguised those kits as Monopoly games. The compasses and files? Both disguised as playing pieces. The money, in the form of French, German, and Italian bank notes? Hidden below the Monopoly money. The maps? Concealed within the board itself. "The game was too innocent to raise suspicion," ABC News's Ki Mae Heussner put it -- but "it was the ideal size for a top-secret escape kit." [...] ...Before departing for missions, Royal Air Force airmen were told that, if they happened to be captured, they should look for Monopoly games in the "care packages" sent to them -- and for the escape maps and kits that were hidden within them. The "special edition" Monopoly sets would be designated with a red dot on the Free Parking space -- something that would look to anyone who didn't know about the trick like a standard-issue printing error ... but which might, to a captured soldier, look something a little more like freedom.

So, the next time you're playing and pull a "Get Out of Jail Free" card, remember that for a lot of Allied soldiers, this game was just that.