Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, we salute another fallen star, Elke Sommer. We will raise a glass to her with a trio of wines paired with her film appearances.
Lisa and the Devil is a convoluted tale from 1974. Ms. Sommer plays a pretty traveler in Spain who encounters a haunted house, a crazy matriarch, a weird butler, gaslighting, gruesome deaths and just about any other horror movie trope in existence. As a bonus, we get Telly Savalas playing a weirdo with a thing for dummies. Reactions to the film have run the gamut from “unwatchable” to “required viewing.” Let us know where you fall in on that scale.
The wine pairing here comes from South Jersey’s Saddlehill Winery and Vineyards. Lisa’s 22 is a red blend of grapes you may have to travel east to find, Chambourcin, Regent, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Blaufränkisch. $25
After that film, Elke was probably ready for a laugh. The 1964 comedy, A Shot in the Dark, has Sommers alongside Peter Sellers, who plays the French detective Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Blake Edwards directed this one, as he did the others in the Pink Panther series. Shot was the follow-up to the previous year’s The Pink Panther.
Sommer plays a beautiful maid who becomes a prime murder suspect. While falling over himself, and most everything else in sight, Clouseau also falls for the maid. In real life, Sellers at this time was busy meeting, falling in love with, and marrying Britt Ekland, a sequence of events that took only ten days. Bad movies have longer shooting schedules.
A pink wine for a Pink Panther, please. Italian producer Usiglian de Vescovo makes a Pink Panther rosé. Their website is mildly hilarious. Their boast that the wine is packaged “with all the care we are capable of” sounds less like a brag and more like a disclaimer. It must have lost something in Google translation. It’s Sangiovese and it costs just under $20.
https://www.usigliandelvescovo.it/en/prodotto/pink-panther/
1963’s The Prize stars Sommer with Paul Newman and Edward G. Robinson in a dual role. Newman plays a drunk who wins the Nobel Prize in Literature. It probably isn’t the first time that’s happened. Eat your heart out, Trump.
While attending the awards ceremony, the plot unwinds as a spy movie and a romcom mashup. Sommer plays a beautiful woman (what a stretch, huh?) who is given the task of chaperoning the tippling wordsmith. Moderate hilarity and intense suspense ensue.
We can certainly toast a Nobel-themed performance with a wine that was served at the most recent Nobel Banquet. The Eric Rodez Blanc de Noirs Grand Cru is a Champagne, so don’t call it a bubbly, or a sparkler, or anything cute like that. It’s a serious wine, but the bubbles will still tickle your nose. It can be found for less than $100 if you get a deal.