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Duke Mitchell (I) More at IMDbPro »

2010 | 2009

2 items from 2010

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Oscar-Nominated Editor Helps Release Long-Lost Exploitation Gem Gone with the Pope

5 March 2010 5:10 PM, PST | DreadCentral.com | See recent Dread Central news »

The name Duke Mitchell may not be recognizable to a lot of our readers, but fans of exploitation have probably heard of his first film as a writer/director, 1974’s Massacre Mafia Style, aka The Executioner. The next year he started filming a follow-up, then called Kiss the Ring, later given the awesome title of Gone with the Pope; however, Mitchell died before finishing the flick. Enter Grindhouse Releasing, which has undertaken a painstaking restoration.

In an interesting twist, in the same week that Gone with the Pope is having its world premiere (March 12th at Hollywood's Egyptian Theatre), Grindhouse Releasing's co-owner, Bob Murawski, is up for his first Oscar as editor of The Hurt Locker. Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous!

While most folks up for the Academy Award this year have “skeletons in their closets” that they have tucked away in that dark, dark eternal »

- Heather Buckley

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Revisiting Gone With the Pope, the Exploitation Jewel with an Unlikely Oscar Twist

4 March 2010 9:50 AM, PST | Movieline | See recent Movieline news »

The joy of cruising the movie margins is that one thing leads to another. So, a few years back, after I'd suffered through the 1952 Poverty Row comedy Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla for my bad-movie book, I couldn't help but get Googling to find out what happened to its leads, Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, whose comic act in the movie aped Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis to the very limits of copyright infringement. Turned out that Sammy did not much moviewise after that (he died last year), but Duke burned bright in the last years of his life. Mitchell's first film as writer-director was 1974's Massacre Mafia Style, aka The Executioner. While it didn't make him a household name or set the box office aflame, in 1975 Mitchell set about making a second flick, then called Kiss The Ring, later given the awesome title of Gone With The Pope. »

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2010 | 2009

2 items from 2010

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