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Straightening out the Great SATANIK KRIMINAL KILLING SATANIK Mix Up!

posted 19 years ago by thescreamingmimi
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Some commentators on the movie Satanik (1968) have mixed up the European super-criminals named Satanik, which is easy because they both have links to skeleton-suited killers.

After the success of the Italian comic character Diabolik, Luciano Secchi, under the name Max Bunker, created KRIMINAL. This guy was an assassin running around in an expressionistic skull and crossbones outfit and two movies, Kriminal (1966) and Il Marchio di Kriminal (1968), were spun off.

Soon after, the Italian newsstands heralded the arrival of KILLING. His adventures were told with photographs instead of comics and he wore a more realistic skeleton costume. The adventures were printed in different languages and in a simultaneous French edition, KILLING was known as SATANIK.

Perhaps in spite, Secchi/Bunker took the name SATANIK for the Italian market and created a series about a disfigured woman who takes a potion to become beautiful and evil. This version was the basis for the 1968 film and ran hundreds of issues. The only connection to a skelton guy was Bunker's unassociated KRIMINAL character.

KILLING/SATANIK inspired 11 oddball Turkish films starting with Kilink Istanbul'da in 1967. This SATANIK magazine was banned by the French after 19 issues and KILLING ran for over 50 issues in Italy. It has appeared in various language editions over the years and is now being published for the first time in English by Comicfix as SADISTIK.

Many European actors and actresses appearing in the KILLING/SATANIK photo novels also performed in exploitation, sword-and-sandal, spy, horror and soft core films. The KILLING/SATANIK/SADISTIK adventures were directed by actor/singer Rosario Borelli.

[–] Professicchio 13 years ago

Perhaps in spite, Secchi/Bunker took the name SATANIK for the Italian market and created a series about a disfigured woman who takes a potion to become beautiful and evil.

Just wanted to say that information is not quite correct.
Secchi/Bunker's Satanik was first published in 1964, two years ahead of Killing, that was to be later known as "Satanik" in the French edition, therefore if it was a case of "borrowing" names from other characters it was not them who did it.