Happy Birthday, Antonella Barba

On November 26th, 1986 one of America's Idols was born... or at least that is what the general public said when they voted Antonella Barba into the mid rounds of the American Idol competition a few years back. It was these very pictures that caused her downfall.

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Venus passing: Ingrid Pitt (1937-2010)

Agent Triple P lost one of his early cinematic crushes yesterday with the death of Hammer Films actress Ingrid Pitt, star of such films as Countess Dracula and The Vampire Lovers.

She was a famous  figure (in every sense!) in the British horror scene despite the fact that she made comparatively few films.  However, both Countess Dracula and The Vampire Lovers appeared at a time when Hammer was putting nudity in their films for the first time, after a relaxation in 1970 by the British Board of Film Censors as to what was allowable in an "X" certificate film.   Ingrid's memorably naked turns in these two films were enough to build a reputation that continues to this day, when other starlets from the same period are largely forgotten. 

She was a comparatively elderly 33 when she made The Vampire Lovers but the slightly exotic and statuesque actress was perfect for her role as a lesbian vampire who seduces younger women (notably a very young Madeleine Smith - above).  Despite having relaxed what could be shown on screen the censors were very concerned by the content of this film but the box office was tremendous.

The picture of her in the bath taken on the set of The Vampire Lovers is one of the most iconic from Hammer and, indeed, British films of the seventies.  Following that up as a blood drenched monster who was portrayed as bathing in virgins' blood sealed her reputation as Britain's Queen of Horror.  

Countess Dracula

Pitt had a very hard start in life.  She was born Ingoushka Petrov on 21st November 1937 in Poland to a Jewish mother and a German father who was trying to flee Nazi Germany.  Her mother, Ingrid, went into labour on a train, ending their attempt to leave the country.  Later the family was sent to a concentration camp when she was five after her father, a scientist, refused to work on the German rocket programme.  After three years in a concentration camp she and her mother were being marched, with other prisoners, back to Germany when an allied plane strafed the column and she and her mother escaped into the woods.  Eventually, weeks later, the Red Cross found them and explained that the war was over.  They took her to  East Berlin where she was reunited with her father.  It was her father, through taking her on regular visits to the cinema, who got her interested in acting. She briefly studied medicine and worked as a typist before joining Bertolt Brecht's Berliner Ensemble theatre company.  Her outspoken views on communism got her into trouble but in 1962 she escaped East Berlin by swimming across the River Spree, and was fished out by an American soldier, Roland Pitt, who she married.  She went to America and her first acting roles were on stage there. The marriage didn't last long and she returned to Europe getting bit parts in Spanish films after a Spanish film producer saw a picture of her taken at a bullfight.  In 1968 she got a larger part in Where Eagles Dare (1968) which was made at Borehamwood studios outside London; the first time she had been to the UK, where she would eventually settle.  The following year she met James Carreras, one of the founders of Hammer Films, at a post-premiere party for Alfred the Great and persuaded him that she wanted to appear in one of his films.   The next day he gave her the script of The Vampire Lovers (1970).

The film was a hit although she got into an argument with the film's producers Harry Fine and Michael Style which eventually resulted in them casting another actress, Yutte Stensgaard, for the follow-up Lust for a Vampire (1971).  She returned to Hammer for Countess Dracula (1971) which was very loosely based on the life of Countess Elizabeth Bathory (and had nothing to do with Dracula at all but obviously Hammer weren't too concerned about the difference between Romania and Hungary).  She was mortified to find out that her voice had been dubbed in the latter film  and next time she met director Peter Sasdy she pushed him into the sea.

She made a few more films in the seventies and eighties, notably The House That Dripped Blood (1971) for Hammer's rival Amicus, cult favourite The Wicker Man (1973) and SAS thriller Who Dares Wins (1982). She also returned to the US and made some TV appearances there as well as back in Britain, including Doctor Who. Later she turned to writing although she returned to the screen in 2008 for the Hammer homage, Sea of Dust (2008).

She certainly made an impression on Agent Triple P when he first saw her in The Vampire Lovers when it was first shown on late night TV in the mid-seventies.

She had been unwell for some time and died in a South London hospital yesterday at the age of seventy three.

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Venus in a Vest 1: Elizabeth Banks

When asked, as he once was, what article of clothing he finds sexiest on a woman, Agent Triple P has only one answer: a white cotton vest (closely followed by a grey cotton vest).  Whilst we appreciate the decorative effect of a finely wrought piece or two of La Perla or the clingy effectiveness of a Herge Leger bandage dress it is the simple vest which we enjoy the most as we find they can emphasise beautifully the female form.

Now we may need a word or two of clarification for our North American readers here.  In that part of the world a "vest" is what we would in Britain call a "waistcoat"  which is something a gentleman wears under his jacket but on top of his shirt.  In North America a "vest" in the British sense is more usually referred to as a "tank".  In the UK a "tank top" is a sleeveless sweater named (as is the US garment) after the padded, sleeveless jackets worn by the crews of His Majesty's Land Ships in the world's first tanks in World War 1.

Whatever you call it, Agent Triple P thinks that it is a garment which carries an unusually high erotic charge.  However, to impart this charge there are a number of key requirements.  Firstly, and most importantly, it must be worn with nothing underneath. Secondly, it needs to be either fairly tight or very loose; so it either clings closely to the nipples, like Ms Banks' example here, or it must be loose enough that glimpses of the side of the breasts can be seen through the armholes.  Thirdly, ideally, it shouldn't be worn with anything else.  Now Ms Banks is a Hollywood actress and so is rather more modest than, say, her European equivalent might be.  Nevertheless, her brief black knickers work quite well in these shots.

Now an early experience of a young lady dressed this way was many years ago in Rome.  Triple P had been, for the first time, to a nightclub.  He was taken there by his aristocratic Italian friend M (actually all of Triple P's friends in Italy were aristocratic).  Now we admit we don't know much about nightclubs but this seemed a rather good establishment.  It was called Gilda (after the Rita Hayworth film) and is on 97 Via Mario de' Fiori off Via Frattini; not far from the Spanish steps.

Gilda had only been open a year or so but then, as now, it was the nightclub to be seen in in Rome.  It is certainly the only place that Triple P has been that had a selective door policy.  Oddly, we got in with no problem, largely because both M and Triple P worked at a very well known and venerable City institution which seemed more admired in Italy than in London.  Triple P's friend M made great play of this and it genuinely seemed to impress them!

We had a very good dinner in the upstairs restaurant and then went downstairs to the main floor.  By this time (midnight on a Friday night) the place was starting to fill up.  M and Agent Triple P soon had a group of around four or five nice young Italian girls at our table.  Most of them spoke very little English but they seemed very intrigued by Triple P.  We wouldn't have thought English people were that exotic but there you are.  All these girls, and indeed most of the women there, were wearing little black cocktail dresses.  Triple P, much to M's annoyance, as he was an inveterate ladies man, was doing rather well with three of these girls but M kept hinting (rather unsportingly, in retrospect) that Triple P shouldn't go near them (it was the height os the AIDS scare). 

Triple P, on one of those rare occasions brought on by a surfeit of Champagne, ended up on the dance floor with one P who wasn't part of the original group but had edged her way in latterly.  We were most impressed with P as she was tall (5'6" at least) whereas the other girls were all around the 5' to 5'2" mark (Roman girls are very petite compared with, say, Milanese girls).  She was also blonde and, most strikingly, was wearing a clingy, scarlet dress which was very short indeed (she had world class legs).  Nothing M could say was going to persuade Triple P to leave this young lady alone.   He could have told us that she had Bubonic Plague and it wouldn't have made any difference.  It was just one of those occasions when you just know that you are going to end up in bed by the end of the night.

In fact we were wrong, at least initially.  Whilst we did end up in P's rather rambling old apartment not far from Piazza Navona it was not, of course, the night but rather early in the morning.  Certainly 3.00am or later.  Triple P had P been together for a couple of hours but we had barely said a word to each other; given the noise in the nightclub.  One might have expected some sort of small talk inside but, no, we had literally only just got through the door to her apartment when P started to unbutton Triple P's New & Lingwood shirt. We didn't end up in bed as we never got further than the rug in the living room.  Triple P had had quite a lot to drink so we don't remember much about the activities except the next day we both had carpet burns on our knees which usually indicates a certain amount of dragging about.

Anyway, the point of this rather rambling reminiscence is that we awoke the following morning at around eleven thirty in P's bed but with no sign of P.  We were feeling not bad, considering, (we find that Champagne doesn't impart a hangover) but felt that we needed to locate P so that we could quickly establish the exact nature of our relationship the morning after (always a tricky thing in such encounters). 

We found P in the bathroom standing at the washbasin dressed in a white cotton vest and nothing else.  She was leaning forward towards the mirror which meant that the hem of the vest was just not quite showing her bottom.   Agreeably, she stayed dressed like this for the rest of the day which we spent in her apartment before gingerly venturing out to dinner in Trastevere that evening.  After this first memorable encounter with a young lady so dressed we have since become something of a connoisseur on the ideal hem length of said garment.  We have decided that it needs to just cover the posterior and the groin.  But only just; so that if the lady stretches up to reach anything or bends down for anything a delightful flash is given.  Anyway we will see more girls in vests in due course...

A quick word about the young lady decorating this post.  She is Elizabeth Banks, an American actress.  Born in Massachusetts in 1974 she got her first acting job in 1998 and has appeared in a number of films and TV series including all three Spiderman films, Seabiscuit, Catch Me if you Can and the TV series 30 Rock.  She is quite a busy actress averaging around four films a year.  We haven't seen any of her productions, other than Spiderman, and don't remember her in that but latterly her roles have been getting bigger.  Anyway, we think she looks lovely in her white vest and that is really the point (points?) of this post!

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Denise Milani says Happy Thanksgiving!

Nothing says Happy Thanksgiving like Denise Milani in a red hot corset. This Bastion favorite never disappoints when she shows off all her assets!

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The camera likes Amy Leigh Andrews

The Bastion of Man is compelled to share a few more pics from this Playboy photo shoot of Amy Leigh Andrews. They don't get much better than this.

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Amy Leigh Andrews is all natural

In these days of silicone injected goodness it's sometimes difficult to find a well endowed natural beauty with all the right dimensions but Amy Leigh Andrews is one of them. This photo spread is from a few years back so perhaps she has fallen to the temptation of implants. Let's hope not. She is outstanding just the way she is.

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