At present, little is known about the European actress
and dancer Aurora de Alba. Her film
career is varied, although consisting mostly of rare, hard-to-find movies, with
a handful of Spanish horror films being the most well-known and accessible. What little I
could find out is that her name was Aurora Galisteo before being known as Aurora de Alba, and she is the cousin of famed Spanish dancer/actress Carmen Sevilla,
who was born Maria del Carmen Garcia
Galisteo. This would also make Aurora
cousins with Spanish cinematographer Jose
Garcia Galisteo. Aurora danced at
the Venice Film Festival in 1953, from which a number of historical photos were
made. She married Chico Scimone on June 23, 1954, in Taormina, Sicily, and later had a son, Gianfranco Scimone on March 11, 1955. She died February 24th, 2005.
Throughout the ‘50s,
Aurora starred in a number of
Spanish/Italian comedies and dramas, most of which seem to either have been
forgotten or fallen into obscurity. As the Euro film industry shifted its
output to different genres in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Aurora managed to land roles in Euro-westerns: Un hombre vino a matar (1967) and Su le mani, cadavere! Sei in arresto (1971) (under the direction of
Leon Klimovsky); Euro-spies, Agente X 1-7 operazione Oceano (1965)
and Top Secret (1967); and Euro-horrors
La Marca del Hombre-lobo (1968), La rebelión de las muertas (1973), and La orgía de los muertos (1973). The
three aforementioned horror films also starred Paul Naschy and seem to have been the most accessible. In addition,
she was frequently directed by José Luis
Merino. After starring in a line of comedies and dramas in the latter half
of the ‘70s, her movie career seemed to have taken an abrupt halt at the end of
the decade. What she was up to after that is probably anyone’s guess.
Some
sources list her as an Italian actress,
while others show her as a Spanish actress. Aurora is actually of Spanish origin, however she did get married in Italy and most likely lived there for a time. Another source lists her birth date as February 2nd, 1948;
this cannot be true, however, because, as was mentioned before, she was married in 1954, and the following image of her below is from the 1953 Venice Film
Festival, and looking to be somewhere in her early twenties at that time, it is
probably not a far cry to assume she was born sometime in the ‘20s or ‘30s.
I think It’s been too long since I last covered a Paul Naschy movie, and to make up for
this, I’ve chosen to cover one of the best and easiest to recommend, aside from
Horror Rises from the Tomb, that you
Naschy fans out there have no doubt
already seen.
Vengeance of the Zombies
aka La Rebelion de las Muertas is a
huge slice of awesome from Naschy and
director Leon Klimovsky that delivers
a good deal of bloody fun to go with its heavy-handed themes of religion,
betrayal, and vengeance, partly thanks to some extraordinary gore and plenty of
sassy female zombies in see-thru negligees who’ve managed to maintain fabulous
looking hair despite being dead and partially decayed. It’s also a Spanish
horror babe-fest, complete with some of the best from the era: Aurora de Alba (Mark of the Wolfman), Maria
Kosty (A Dragonfly for each Corpse),
my personal favorite from the movie Mirta
Miller (Count Dracula’s Great Love),
and an adorable redhead lead actress that just seems to go by Romy.
This one’s notorious for having an
off-kilter score, by Juan Carlos Calderon,
but I rather like it. I personally don’t think it’s bad; it just has a tone
that some may find mismatching. With the fearsome personality of the picture,
one could say that the upbeat, jazzy score seems intrusive and misplaced at
times, overthrowing suspense and possibly inciting failed restrained laughter
from some of the more uninitiated audience members (as an aside I want to mention that the sounds heard during the morgue scene, as the zombies rise, are some of the most eerie and unnerving I've ever heard and fit in perfectly; listen for it). But this is part of what
makes cult film so fascinating and kitsch. I was initially hooked at the
beginning when a resurrected zombie lady (Norma
Kastel) began running over concrete graves in slow motion. The credits roll
over an up-close shot of this creepy living dead woman walking a fixed distance
from the camera, as dark, reality transcending jazz music can be heard before the movie
transitions into a bright and cheerful day in London with a another hip Jazzy
piece and some embarrassingly catchy “dow-dow-dow” vocals that are a bigger
earworm than Gangnam Style. It’s my kind of way to start a horror film. Totally
off the wall!
