Ultra Pictures released an English-dubbed version of critic turned filmmaker Rafael The Ship of Damned Women Matarazzo's 1956 La risaia ("rice field") with a campaign capitalizing on the sex appeal of star Elsa Martinelli as title character Elena. Apparently made to cash in on Giuseppe De Santis' earlier hit Bitter Rice with Silvana Mangano, the moralistic Rice Girl is middling melodrama steeped in Catholicism. Also with Michel Auclair from Cocteau's classic Beauty and the Beast and Folco Lulli from the Henri Georges-Clouzot thriller The Wages Of Fear. Martinelli would subsequently appear in films by everyone from Roger Vadim (Blood and Roses) to Howard Hawks (Hatari).
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