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- Spider Shirt #01
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Alrugo Spider Shirts are finally here!! For a limited time, Alrugo is offering you the chance to BECOME Italian Spiderman with your very own Italian Spider Shirt! Featuring the mighty 7-legged spider! Express your interest by filling out the request form below and Alrugo will contact you soon with more details! gremmy!
From 1964 - 1968 the extravagant production of the feature film Italian Spiderman, bankrupted Alrugo Entertainment and it's founder, Alfonso Alrugo. Unable to distribute the film in Italy, Alfonso sent the only print of the film to a distributor friend of his in New York. The cargo ship containing the only print of Italian Spiderman sunk somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. On Alfonso's death bed, his two grandsons vowed to go in search of the sunken print. After four years at sea, in 2006 they located the sunken vessel and retrieved the film cans containing Italian Spiderman. For the last two years, the brothers have been restoring the print to prepare it for the world. The Alrugo brothers have faith in the internet as a method of communicating to a world audience and hence released the Italian Spiderman trailer on the net in November '07. After receiving nearly half a million hits on youtube alone, the Alrugo brothers have decided to release the rest of the Italian Spiderman feature to the world via the internet, beginning MAY 22 2008. The Italian Spiderman Story Alrugo Entertainment was founded in 1961 in Palermo, Italy by Orange Farming mogul Alfonso Alrugo. After collecting huge wealth in the citrus trade Alfonso decided to start a film production company that produced films that he felt "did the job". Alfonso was very supportive of up and coming practitioners and helped to nurture the blossoming career's of a spate of Italian Directors like Gianfranco Gatti, Massimilliano Buonatempi, Carlo Zoffa and of course Giacomo Dentibiachi. Alrugo Entertainment began producing low budget, nudie cutie pictures such as Busto Busto (1961) and Sex Cops II (1962). During this period, Alfonso was to discover two men who would play a large role in the next part of his life, director Gianfraco Gatti and Actor Franco Franchetti. In 1964 Alrugo went into production of Gatti's Opus, Italian Spiderman. Spiderman was a heavily adapted and abridged interpretation of a novel Gatti had read during a summer in Moldova entitled 'Death Wears a Hat'. When applying for the option, however the Author felt Italian Spiderman held such little resemblance to his work that payment was not necessary and felt that his name should be distanced as far a s possible form the production. After three years of turbulent production and about 15 million dollars later (a sum unheard of for any production of the time) Italian Spiderman was finally completed in 1968. Even though Alrugo had survived the epic production period, a venture that Gatti described as "Opening the gates of hell"* the company was in debt. There was no money left to distribute the picture, Alfonso pulled every last favour he had during the production process. In a desperate attempt to show Italian Spiderman to the world, Alfonso sent the only existing print across the atlantic on a cargo ship to a distributer friend of his in New York, the ship however, never reached it's destination. in the summer of 1969, Alfonso Alrugo closed the gates to Alrugo Entertainment and donned his orange picking glove once more. Gianfranco Gatti went on to direct hard core pornography and Franco Francheti died in a spear fishing accident. On Alfonso Alrugo's dying wishes, his two Grandsons Vivaldi and Verdi Alrugo led an expeditioan to scour the Atlantic for the cargo ship carrying the only existing print of Italian Spiderman. On the 9th of January 2006, after four years at sea, they discovered the sunken vessle with the cans intact inside. In the excitement of this amazing discovery, Vivaldi and Verdi re-opened Alrugo Entertainment and spent two years restoring the full length print of Italian Spiderman from it's water grave. Vivaldi and Verdi believe that the internet is the best device to expose Italian SPiderman to the world. In November 07, they uploaded the Theatrical Trailer and in 2008, ten remastered excerpts form the feature will be roadcast for free over myspace, youtube, yahoo and other video hosting websites. Hopefully through the internet, the world will now have a chance to behold Alfonso Alrugo's dream, Italian Spiderman. *you can read more about the Italian Spiderman story in Gianfranco Gatti's autobiography "Opening the Gates of Hell".
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