Jean Sorel

However, most of the scripts made major changes to the source material, including dropping of Diabolik's nemesis, Inspector Ginko, replaced with a Goldfinger-esque villain named Richness.

The cast included Jean Sorel as Di- Diabolik, El- Elsa Martinelli as Eva Kant, and George Raft as Richness.

However, Alain Delon was considered, but it was too expensive for playing Diabolik, and James Mason, Peter Ustinov, Orson Welles, and Goldfinger himself, Gert Fröbe, were all considered for Richness.

Okay, some of those names would've been the whole budget of the movie, though.

Regardless of his relationship with Fulci, this film effectively launched his career in Italian westerns, and he appeared in several of them over the following year, including Go Kill and Come Back, Any Gun Can Play, Professionals for a Massacre, and Hallelujah for Django.

As well as appearing in multiple westerns, in 1968 he made his giallo debut in the thriller The Sweet Body of Deborah, written by Ernesto Gastaldi and Luciano Martino, and co-starring Carol Baker, Jean Sorel and Ida Galley.

This introduced him to Luciano Martino, Sergio's brother, who allegedly told the actor that he needed to get out of the saddle.

This was advice that Hilton began to take seriously, saying, quote, I began to alternate to change my image because you can't only make westerns, obviously.

Deborah and Robert meet afterwards and toast a scheme of their own, run alongside Marcel's without his knowledge, aimed at double-crossing him and collecting his life insurance all along.

One of the things that sets the tone from the very beginning and one, one of the things that I think is signifying this particular strand of giallo is finding Baker on the beach in a fur, where she's joined by, uh, this, the suave Jean Sorel before briskly moving on to a ski resort in the Alps.

And this kind of travelogue footage, I think probably originated from the James Bond films, and it was used in the Eurospy films as well, and co-productions often came with stipulations that productions needed to film in, in the respective countries.

So I think they probably killed two birds with one stone here when they used these different exotic locations.

And again, I think it speaks to how good Sorel is as an actor, and you can very much see him in that Alain Delon kind of mold where he's so charismatic and obviously played, um, can't remember his character's name, but he was in La Belle du Jour the year before.

Yeah.

I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that Jean Sorel's so likable as a leading man as well, isn't he?

Yeah.