B GRADE SCREEN GODDESSES

B GRADE ITALIAN SCREEN GODDESS -Sabrina Siani
8 MARCH 2010

If you're familiar with the innumerable sword & sorcery flicks Italian cinema churned out during the 1980s, chances are you've seen Sabrina Siani.

Either naked or in extremely skimpy outfits. The beautiful, blond starlet (real name: Sabrina Seggiani, but sometimes billed Sabrina Sellers) graced many a cut-price fantasy epic, typecast as an Amazonian princess or gutsy jungle girl.

Jess Franco director of the 1980 Mondo Cannibale, wasn't a fan (calling her: "the stupidest person I've ever met"), but what does he know? Siani may not have set the screen alight as a teen cannibal queen in Franco's dreadful Mondo Cannibale (1980), but at least she didn't direct it.

Following a brief stint in sex comedies and Franco's calamitous gut-muncher, Siani soaked up the sun in Blue Lagoon rip-off Blue Island (1982) and played a feisty, female Tarzan in Umberto Lenzi's Incontro Nell'Ultimo Paradiso (1982), before making her mark as a sword-swinging maiden in Aristide Massaccesi's Ator the Fighting Eagle (1982).


Contrary to Franco's sentiments, Siani had a lot to offer: a winning athleticism, sex appeal, and a charismatic screen presence. Whether slaying monsters, befriending bears (!), or smouldering seductively, she frequently upstaged bland beefcake, leading men like Peter McCoy (Pietro Torrisi in The Throne of Fire 1983) and Miles O'Keefe (Ator the Invincible 1984).

Siani played a memorable wicked witch in Lucio Fulci's deliriously daffy Conquest (1983), naked save for a leather g-string and a python, with her face hidden beneath a metal mask. During the surreal climax, it splits open to reveal a hideous, rotting visage (which says something about Fulci's feelings towards women).

Arguably Siani's finest hour, was appearing as the aptly named Golden Goddess in Michele Massimo Taranti's superior, Sangraal la Spaada di Fuoco/Sword of the Barbarians (1982). Here, she emerges amidst a shower of glitter, delectably half nude as usual in a crown and jewelled thong, to romp with an understandably smitten barbarian hero.

Films like Sangraal, Gunan Il Guerriro/The Invincible Barbarian (1982), and Throne of Fire (1983) feature Siani in a curious cocktail of childish stories, extreme gore and soft-core eroticism - leaving you wandering who the target audience were.

After reuniting with Massacesi for a substantial sci-fi role in 2020: Texas Gladiators (1984), Siani hit the big time when respected Italian auteur Dino Risi cast her in his medieval comedy Dagobert (1984) alongside Euro stars like Michele Serrault and Carole Bouquet.

Thereafter, Siani graced one last film, Stelvio Massi's Black Cobra (1986) - a vehicle for blaxploitation legend Fred Williamson - before she disappeared like a lovely mirage. Hopefully, half-naked amidst a shower of glitter.