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''Fantaghirò 2'' (also known as ''The Cave of the Golden Rose 2'') is the second
television film A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie, telefilm, telemovie or TV film/movie, is a film with a running time similar to a feature film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a Terrestr ...
in the '' Fantaghirò'' series, directed by
Lamberto Bava Lamberto Bava (born 3 April 1944) is an Italian film director. Born in Rome, Italy, Rome, Bava began working as an assistant director for his director father Mario Bava. Lamberto co-directed the 1979 television film ''La Venere d'Ille'' with his f ...
and originally aired in 1992 as a two-parter (and so is known in certain releases as ''Fantaghirò 3'' and ''Fantaghirò 4'' due to the previous instalment being a two-parter as well). Most of the principal cast of the previous film returned for this instalment. The story of ''Fantaghirò 2'' tells the continuing adventures of the titular princess ( Alessandra Martines), daughter of a king without a male heir (
Mario Adorf Mario Adorf (; born 8 September 1930) is a German actor, considered to be one of the great veteran character actors of European cinema. Since 1954, he has played both leading and supporting roles in over 200 film and television productions, am ...
), as she and Prince Romualdo ( Kim Rossi Stuart) are finally about to get married. However, Princess Fantaghirò is soon forced to fight for his heart against the wicked Dark Witch (
Brigitte Nielsen Brigitte Nielsen (; born Gitte Nielsen; 15 July 1963) is a Danish actress, model, and singer. She began her career modelling for Greg Gorman and Helmut Newton. She subsequently acted in the 1985 films ''Red Sonja'' and ''Rocky IV'', later retu ...
) who opposes their pure relationship and has cast her love spell over the prince, and so Fantaghirò heads towards the Dark Kingdom to defeat the evil queen.


Plot


Part 1

Following the events of the first film, Princess Fantaghirò and King Romualdo are due to be married. The love between the two youths pushes the King to abdicate in favour of Fantaghirò, who will marry Romualdo. But the Dark Witch, an evil ruler of the faraway Dark Kingdom, is disgusted by the purity of their love and wishes to destroy it, and to this end she kidnaps Fantaghirò's father, demanding the kingdom of Fantaghirò in exchange for her life. The couple holds off their wedding so Romualdo can lead their army to save Fantaghirò's father. On the journey to the Dark Kingdom, Romualdo, and his men encounter Forest Elves and their Queen, who force them to submit to a series of tests to prove that their intentions are pure. Romualdo passes them and the army continues on their way. They eventually reach the borders of the Dark Kingdom where they make camp for the night. As they are resting, the Dark Witch, magically disguised to look like Fantaghirò, arrives and gets Romualdo to kiss her. He faints and the evil queen takes him to her Dark Castle where she makes him her lover.


Part 2

The real Fantaghirò has decided to secretly go to the Dark Kingdom on her own. She cuts her hair again and travels with her horse Golden Mane and friend the White Witch who transforms herself into a goose. Along the way, she encounters bandits led by the Lemon Gobbler, but she manages to escape. When she arrives at Romualdo's camp, she finds it abandoned. Fantaghirò enters the Dark Castle and learns that Romualdo's men have all been thrown in the dungeon. She negotiates with the Dark King to have a single duel between Fantaghirò and the Dark Kingdom's champion to decide the victor to avoid a war, with the losing kingdom submitting to the other. The king agrees but, Fantaghirò is shocked to discover that she has to fight her beloved, Romualdo, who has forgotten all about her and now loves the witch to the point of worship. While Fantaghirò and Romualdo are duelling, the Dark Witch's minions Bolt and Lightning rebel against their mistress and drug her into sleep. Bolt and Lightning release Romualdo's men, who subdue Romualdo, stopping him from killing Fantaghirò. The group flees from the castle, taking Romualdo, as well as the Dark King as a hostage. Everyone's able to escape the Dark Kingdom except Romualdo, who runs back to the witch, and Fantaghirò, who chases after Romualdo and is forced to face the powerful witch in an uneven duel. Fantaghirò wins with her wits, by daring her enemy to turn herself into a crystal form, which the princess then smashes using a talking stone that she had found earlier in her adventure. With the Dark Witch gone, the Dark King is revealed to be Fantaghirò's father, who was bewitched to forget his true self. It seems that Fantaghirò's victory put an end to all the witch's spells, as the Dark King reverts to being himself and Fantaghirò and Romualdo return to their castle. However, Romualdo's memories do not return. The desperate Fantaghirò, with the help of her protector the White Witch, recreates the
events Event may refer to: Gatherings of people * Ceremony, an event of ritual significance, performed on a special occasion * Convention (meeting), a gathering of individuals engaged in some common interest * Event management, the organization of eve ...
where they crossed paths for the first time. Romualdo starts to regain his memories but it turns out that a magical remnant of the Dark Witch has been hiding in his mind. She reappears to transform Fantaghirò into a lowly creature, but the White Witch and Lightning together manage to destroy the Dark Witch completely. Romualdo then guesses correctly that Fantaghirò has been turned into an ugly toad, and upon kissing her, the two are reunited again as their true love triumphed over evil.


Cast

* Alessandra Martines as Fantaghirò * Kim Rossi Stuart as Romualdo *
Brigitte Nielsen Brigitte Nielsen (; born Gitte Nielsen; 15 July 1963) is a Danish actress, model, and singer. She began her career modelling for Greg Gorman and Helmut Newton. She subsequently acted in the 1985 films ''Red Sonja'' and ''Rocky IV'', later retu ...
as the Dark Witch (voice: Aurora Cancian) * Stefano Davanzati as Cataldo (voice: Fabrizio Pucci) * Tomás Valík as Ivaldo (voice: Riccardo Onorato) *
Mario Adorf Mario Adorf (; born 8 September 1930) is a German actor, considered to be one of the great veteran character actors of European cinema. Since 1954, he has played both leading and supporting roles in over 200 film and television productions, am ...
as the King (voice:
Gianni Musy Giovanni "Gianni" Musy (3 August 1931 – 7 October 2011) was an Italian actor and voice actor. Biography Born in Milan, the son of actors Enrico Glori and Gianna Pacetti, he started working as a child actor at eleven years old and studied at ...
) * Lenca Kubálková as Bolt (voice: Rossella Acerbo) * Jakub Zdeněk as Lightning (voice: Laura Lenghi) * Katarina Kolajova as the White Witch (voice: Elettra Bisetti) * Karel Roden as Goldeye * Anna Geislerová as the Queen of Elves (voice: Stella Musy) * Barbora Kodetová as Catherine (voice: Francesca Draghetti) * Kateřina Brožová as Carolyn (voice: Paola Valentini) * Narrator: Gianni Giuliano


Production

Director and producer
Lamberto Bava Lamberto Bava (born 3 April 1944) is an Italian film director. Born in Rome, Italy, Rome, Bava began working as an assistant director for his director father Mario Bava. Lamberto co-directed the 1979 television film ''La Venere d'Ille'' with his f ...
made ''Fantaghirò 2'' in
Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...
to limit the costs. It was shot in July 1992 at Bojnice Castle,
Bouzov Castle Bouzov Castle () is a castle in Bouzov in the Olomouc Region of the Czech Republic. It is located on a hill above the village of Bouzov, about northwest of Olomouc. It was first mentioned in 1317. History Owners Bouzov was established in the sec ...
, a park and an artificial castle in Lednice, and in-studio in
Bratislava Bratislava (German: ''Pressburg'', Hungarian: ''Pozsony'') is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Slovakia, Slovak Republic and the fourth largest of all List of cities and towns on the river Danube, cities on the river Danube. ...
by a mixed Italian and Czechoslovak crew of over 100. The film's special effects were created by Armando Valcauda, known from his work on the horror film ''
Demons A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in folklore, mythology, religion, occultism, and literature; these beliefs are reflected in media including fiction, comics, film, t ...
'' and its sequels, and the costumes were designed by Marisa D 'Andrea. The production cost 6 billion
Italian lira The lira ( , ; : lire, , ) was the currency of Italy between 1861 and 2002. It was introduced by the Kingdom of Italy (Napoleonic), Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1807 at par with the French franc, and was subsequently adopted by the different s ...
. Kim Rossi Stuart claimed that he enjoyed the role of the evil Romulado, nicknamed "Romul' altro" ("Romul 'other") by the film crew, saying that "naughty second identity" was more fun to play than the "sympathetic cliché" of an honest and fair Romualdo, and especially liking the scenes of him being intimate with
Brigitte Nielsen Brigitte Nielsen (; born Gitte Nielsen; 15 July 1963) is a Danish actress, model, and singer. She began her career modelling for Greg Gorman and Helmut Newton. She subsequently acted in the 1985 films ''Red Sonja'' and ''Rocky IV'', later retu ...
's sultry Dark Witch. During the filming of the fight between Romualdo and Fantaghiro, performed with no stunt doubles, his sword actually struck Alessandra Martines in the head, luckily causing no severe injury; Martines went to the hospital while still wearing her costume. Nielsen said her character was to be "more than a witch, but a queen, the type of Grimilde" from Disney's ''
Snow White "Snow White" is a German fairy tale, first written down in the early 19th century. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection ''Grimms' Fairy Tales'', numbered as Tale 53. The original title was ''Sneewittch ...
''. Ángela Molina, who have both played both the White Witch and the White Knight in the first ''Fantaghirò'', was replaced by Katarina Kolajova for the second film; Kolajova later married Cataldo's actor Stefano Davanzati whom she met on the set.


Release

The film premiered on
Canale 5 Canale 5 () is an Italian free-to-air television channel of Mediaset, owned by MFE - MediaForEurope. It was the first private television network to have national coverage in Italy in 1980. On 4 December 2012, Mediaset launched Canale 5 HD, a ...
, broadcast in two parts. The first part was originally scheduled for 21 December but was aired one day earlier to avoid the competition of the final episode of the sixth season of crime drama '' La piovra''. The move sparked a "chain reaction" of programs being accordingly shuffled on other Italian channels. ''Fantaghirò 2'' was later dubbed into multiple languages for foreign television broadcasts and released on home video (
VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...
and
DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...
) in Italy and several other countries. The film and its prequel and sequel were recut (reduced and intersected with each other) into a 200-minute compilation film titled ''La meravigliosa storia di Fantaghirò'' ("The Wonderful Story of Fantaghirò") in 1995.


Reception

''Fantaghiro 2'' proved to be a commercial success, receiving the audience of 6,601,000 (25.11%) (first part) and 9,160,000 (30,6%) (second part) when first aired in Italy. Polish weekly ''Tele Tydzień'' gave it three stars out of five. Italian daily ''
Corriere della Sera (; ) is an Italian daily newspaper published in Milan with an average circulation of 246,278 copies in May 2023. First published on 5 March 1876, is one of Italy's oldest newspapers and is Italy's most read newspaper. Its masthead has remain ...
'' hailed the film maker Lamberto Bava, saying he has learnt the lessons of his father and comparing his work to
Ridley Scott Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November 1937) is an English film director and producer. He directs films in the Science fiction film, science fiction, Crime film, crime, and historical drama, historical epic genres, with an atmospheric and highly co ...
's ''
Legend A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human values, and possess certain qualities that give the ...
'', and also applauding Brigitte Nielsen for her "difficult" role as the Black Witch. Nielsen's character was received so well that the popular villainess later returned for three successive chapters of the saga. Critique Film's Erika Musiedlak retrospectively opined it was the last ''Fantaghirò'' film worth watching, also praising Nielsen's "flawless" acting as a "marvelously diabolical" antagonist.


Sequel

In the 1993 sequel, Fantaghirò fights against the handsome but cruel wizard Tarabas (Nicholas Rogers) and his mother, the witch Xellesia ( Ursula Andress), to bring back to life the prince Romualdo, turned into a stone statue, and save the child princess Esmeralda.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fantaghiro 2 1992 fantasy films 1992 television films 1992 films Fantaghirò films Italian fantasy adventure films 1990s Italian-language films Films about shapeshifting Films about witchcraft Films directed by Lamberto Bava Films shot in the Czech Republic Italian television films