20. Macha Méril
Macha Méril is a Princess. She really is. Macha is descended from Ukrainian nobility on her mother's side and the Russian House of Gagarin on her father's side. She has starred in over 125 films and she has worked for the great directors - Jean Luc Goddard, Luis Buñuel and Rainer Werner Fassbinder - to name but a few. However, Méril's work on high brow art films is subsumed by her foray into the world of Euro Cult movies. These are the roles she has gained fame from. Macha played an ill fated blind psychic medium in what I consider to be Dario Argento's best film - Deep Red. And she will forever linger in infamy as the unnamed perverted degenerate woman in Aldo Lado's Night Train Murders - a film that landed on the DPP 72 Video Nasty list. Fancy that! A Princess in a Video Nasty!
19. Marisa Mell
Born in Austria, Marisa Mell was a cult figure in Italian genre cinema. She actually shunned a lucrative Hollywood contract to stay in Italy, reasoning that the rules in the contract were too restrictive. In 1963, Marisa was involved in a terrible car accident in which she nearly lost an eye. The crash left her disfigured, but competent plastic surgery over the course of two years restored her incredible beauty. Marisa was notorious for her love life off the screen (she is said to have dated Warren Beatty) and to be honest, the gossip surrounding her and her off screen antics is more interesting than her filmography. She did, however, star in Lucio Fulci's under-rated Una sull'altra - Perversion Story (great title!) - in which she displays lots of nudity in a dual role of a dying wife and a stripper. This film is worth watching for the eye candy alone. Marisa died in 1992 of cancer. Her career never reached dizzying heights but her statuesque beauty is fondly remembered by Euro Cult fans.