Spanish title: Jose Vendido en Egipto (Joseph Sold in Egypt)
Stars: Geoffrey Horne, Belinda Lee, Robert Morley, Carlo Giustini, Arturo Dominici, Finlay Currie, Mario Girotti
Directed by: Irving Rapper, Luciano Ricci
Distributor: Colorama Features (US)

"Extraordinary! Spectacular! Grandiose!" 

The tagline doesn’t quite describe the film correctly, but we can let that slide for now; this was one of the ongoing swords and sandals flicks that poured out of Italy like fine wine in the 50’s and 60’s, few of which were anything more than an excuse to flex muscles and shake hips around cardboard sets.

This particular flick was shot partly in Yugoslavia, where making movies was cheap as hell, with the Italian scenes taking place at Titanus Studios. The story followed the biblical tale of Joseph, and was quickly followed by another about Pontius Pilate, which was a tactic often used by producers who wanted to make stories that they didn’t need to pay any rights fees for.

The artwork in the lobby card design looks to have been acrylic paint, diluted to give a washed appearance, and if one looks really closely, they can spot the occasional pencil mark left in after the paint went down. What’s interesting, from a purely trivial point of view, is the long black stripe along the bottom of the card; that would indicate that, rather than being original Mexican art, this was likely the art taken from the Italian release, retitled, with the distributor’s name blacked out on the bottom.

Now, in order to put a new title on the lobby card, an artist would need to paint over the old title, make it blend with the background, and then cut’n'paste in the new title. They’d also likely have to get rid of the old taglines… which in this case wouldn’t be too hard, because two of the three tagline words are the same in Spanish as they are in Italian.

In fact, upon further investigation, we found the word ‘Eastmancolor’ painted over right above where the ‘Totalscope’ logo has been added – very sneaky!

Anyway, there you have it – a perfect example of a reworked lobby card.

Spanish title: El Zorro y Los Tres Mosqueteros
Stars: Gordon Scott, Jose Greci, Maria Grazia Spina, Gianni Rizzo, Giacomo Rossi
Directed by: Luigi Capuano
Distributor: United Producers de Mexico

"Thousands of emotions in this great adventure film! Athos, Portos,
Aramis, D’Artagnan, and Zorro fighting for their honor – and a lady!"

Luigi Capuano wasn’t exactly the king of serious drama; a look at his career filmography shows a veritable smorgasbord of classic B-list Saturday morning matinee franchises, with Sandokan, Zorro and Hercules being the three most prominent.

Like Capuano, Gordon Scott made his name in B-grade character films, having been discovered working as a Las Vegas lifeguard on his way to an acting career that took him across Europe as Goliath, Buffalo Bill, Julius Caesar and Tarzan, before donning the mask here as Zorro.

While "Zorro e i Tres Moschietteri" (as it as originally known in Italy) will never be offered as the pinnacle of the genre, nor of Capuano’s or Scott’s career, the lobby card for its Mexican release is nothing short of a thing of beauty. In fact, it looks so good framed, hanging on a wall, that we’ve been offered money for this card more times than just about any other three cards in the collection combined.

This particular film was released in Mexico by United Producers de Mexico, a company that doesn’t show up anywhere in Google searches, but then, if they were relying on low budget Italian films featuring Spanish and French characters for release in Mexico to make a living, chances are they wouldn’t have lasted long.