Précurseurs et contemporains d'Ed Wood
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- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Robert J. Horner was a prolific, if spectacularly untalented, producer/director in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He had only one eye and no legs (accounts differ as to whether he was born that way or lost them in a traffic accident in his youth), but that didn't stop him from producing quite a few low-budget--very, VERY low-budget--westerns and action pictures and even directing a few of them. Contemporary accounts of the films, and a perusal of the few that exist today, indicate that Horner would not only equal but far surpass Edward D. Wood Jr. as the absolute worst director in film history.
Horner's silent pictures in the 1920s had a reputation for being among not only the cheapest (on par with his contemporary fellow hack director-producer actor Victor Adamson, a.k.a. Denver Dixon) but also the most spectacularly inept to ever come out of Hollywood. The advent of sound films by 1930 added a new and exciting dimension to Horner's incompetence. He appeared to have only the vaguest understanding of synchronization, apparently believing that "noise" and "sound" were synonymous. Audio volume would vary wildly between scenes, literally driving the few people brave (or masochistic) enough to endure a Horner feature--invariably on the lower half of a double bill--out into the comparative quiet of the street. His films seldom took more than three days to shoot and rarely, if ever, cost more than $2,000. Even with those chump-change budgets, though, he still found it difficult to obtain financing through conventional channels--mainly because no legitimate producer in his right mind would let Horner anywhere near him--and he was forced to be "creative" in obtaining financing. This "creativity" often consisted of such tactics as soliciting donations from aspiring actors and actresses in exchange for a part in one of his upcoming films, and those naive--or stupid--enough to give him money often ended up never hearing from him again (in addition, many of these aspiring actresses also charged him with trying to solicit more than just a financial donation). This and other schemes--such as hiring actors and actresses to work in his films and once they were finished refusing to pay them--invariably landed him in hot water with the authorities, among others. He was arrested several times by Los Angeles police on fraud and racketeering charges, resulting in a string of criminal convictions and civil-court assessments against him, and he spent a good deal of time dodging creditors and tax agents looking to take him to court and lawmen looking to take him to jail. If there was one word that could describe Robert J. Horner it would probably be "sleazeball", but given all his personal and professional shortcomings, he was still able to eke out a living on the far, far, far fringes of Poverty Row, an accomplishment that many other low-buck producers down at Horner's level couldn't manage.
Horner filed for bankruptcy in February 1933, listing six silent western film negatives as his only assets. His liabilities included $29,573 owed in back taxes and a large number of unpaid-labor claims. His personal assets totaled $1,500. He attempted to make a comeback by producing a few western films for Aywon Pictures. His days as a producer ended in 1935, though, when he tried to bring silent-screen cowboy Ted Wells back as a western hero; the result was the stupefying inept The Phantom Cowboy (1935). Horner was planning an eight-film series with Wells beginning with Defying the Law (1935), which he produced for Aywon, but the "series" ended with that picture.
Robert J. Horner passed away on July 29, 1942, at the El Paso (TX) City-County Hospital from cirrhosis of the liver.Producteur et réalisateur d'une quarantaine de westerns de série Z entre 1921 et 1935.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Someday a clever producer will tell the story of Hollywood's "Poverty Row" of the 1920s-'40s (although Hearts of the West (1975) was a valiant effort, it left a lot to be desired), which was centered on Gower Street. So many fly-by-night production companies--which cranked out mostly westerns, because they were so cheap to shoot--were headquartered there that the area became known as "Gower Gulch." Such a story would have to include Victor Adamson, a man whose unique, if inept, cinematic vision rivaled that of schlockmeister icons Dwain Esper, Robert J. Horner and later, the King of the Hollywood hacks himself, Edward D. Wood Jr..
Although he was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1890, Adamson's family moved to New Zealand when he was very young, and he was raised there. He returned to the USA around 1916 or 1917, and attempted to break into the burgeoning film business in Hollywood, California. He had been a champion horse rider and roper while living on a ranch in New Zealand and thought he was ripe for stardom in westerns. He brought with him a small film he had made in New Zealand and, astonishingly enough, actually managed to find a company willing to release it. After landing a few uncredited small parts in a few small silent movies in 1920s, Adamson decided that the best road to stardom was one he would make himself, so he began to produce, direct, and star in his own films, using the name "Art Mix." (and later under the name "Denver Dixon"). Here's where it gets really confusing: for reasons known only to himself he decided to have an actor named George Kesterson also play the Art Mix character and, in an even more confusing turn of events, once hired a rodeo champion named Bob Roberts to also play "Art Mix." Cowboy superstar Tom Mix eventually filed a copyright infringement suit against Adamson because of his use of the Mix name. In a move that could only happen in Hollywood, Adamson got around that by finding a man whose real name actually was Art Mix and hiring him to play the character--so at one point there were four different men playing a cowboy named Art Mix! Kesterson and Adamson eventually parted ways, but Kesterson used the Art Mix name, despite Adamson's efforts to stop him, for the remainder of his career.
It didn't really matter that much who played "Art Mix," though, as Adamson's films, all low-budget in the extreme with a reputation for laugh-inducing incompetence, were released via the states rights system--in which regional distributors bought the prints outright and kept them in circulation for as long as they could remain spliced together--which meant that not a whole lot of people wound up seeing them anyway. Even the most die-hard western fan had trouble sitting through an Art Mix feature on the bottom half of a Saturday-afternoon matinee. Most of his sound movie productions in the 1930s were filmed in only two or three days with low budgets of $2,000 or so, featuring actors who had trouble remembering their lines, misspelled title cards, headache-inducing editing, a near total lack of understanding of sound, and very often the use of an impaired (visually or otherwise) cinematographer (i.e., his $2,500 out-of-focus extravaganza, Range Riders (1934), in which the cameraman's competence apparently wasn't as important as his willingness to work for next to nothing).
Adamson (working under his pseudonym 'Denver Dixon') continued to produce, direct, and star in his own bottom-of-the-barrel westerns and appeared in small roles in oaters made by others until the late 1930s, when he decided to concentrate his career mainly on writing and acting, confining his roles to small parts in the innumerable B westerns being churned out in Hollywood at the time. He continued acting in small roles in various films and television shows until his death in 1972 from a heart attack at age 82.
His son, director/producer Al Adamson, kept his legacy as well as the family name and reputation alive in the low-budget film market by grinding out micro-budgeted westerns, hilariously inept horror films and vapid softcore sex comedies for decades--he even managed to cash in on the blaxploitation craze of the '70s with a couple of clunkers--until his murder, by a building contractor with whom he was having a legal dispute, in 1995.A réalisé quantité de westerns de série Z entre 1922 et 1935. A ensuite travaillé jusqu'à la fin des années '60, d'abord dans des rôles de cow-boy, puis comme figurant.
Père d'Al Adamson- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Although it is very unlikely that his admittedly cheap-'n'-cheesy films will ever be acknowledged as true works of cinematic art, producer/director/screenwriter Al Adamson did, nonetheless, make a slew of entertainingly trashy low-budget exploitation features for the drive-in market throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
He was born on July 25, 1929, in Hollywood, California, the son of actress Dolores Booth and actor/director Victor Adamson who, appropriately enough, specialized in shoddy B-grade - and lower - Westerns in the 1920s and 1930s, both as an actor and especially as a director. Adamson's first foray into filmmaking was helping his father as director and producer on the film Halfway to Hell (1953). In the mid-1960s, he founded the prolific grindhouse outfit Independent-International Pictures with fellow producer/distributor Samuel M. Sherman. Adamson cranked out flicks in every conceivable genre: scuzzy biker items (Satan's Sadists (1969), Hell's Bloody Devils (1970), Angels' Wild Women (1971)), grungy Westerns (Five Bloody Graves (1969), Jessi's Girls (1975)), smarmy softcore porn sex comedies (The Naughty Stewardesses (1973), Blazing Stewardesses (1975)), funky blaxploitation films (Mean Mother (1973), Black Heat (1976)), ridiculous science fiction dross (the gloriously ghastly Horror of the Blood Monsters (1970)), two Jim Kelly martial arts/action outings (Black Samurai (1976) and Death Dimension (1978)), lurid horror fare (Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971), Brain of Blood (1971), Nurse Sherri (1977)) and even a tongue-in-cheek softcore porn science fiction musical (Cinderella 2000 (1977)). Moreover, Adamson served as producer for both the exciting Fred Williamson blaxploitation vehicle Hammer (1972) and the acclaimed made-for-TV drama Cry Rape (1973). The casts of Adamson's films were made up of oddball but enthusiastic amateurs and faded professional thespians whose careers were on the wane, including Kent Taylor, Russ Tamblyn, Lon Chaney Jr. and the ubiquitous John Carradine. Adamson frequently gave his wife, Regina Carrol, sizable parts in his films. Moreover, he was a mentor for future schlock feature directors Greydon Clark and John 'Bud' Cardos. He was also instrumental in launching the career of ace cinematographer Gary Graver. In addition, Adamson kept fellow top cinematographers László Kovács and Vilmos Zsigmond employed in the early days of their careers.
Al Adamson's life came to a brutal and untimely end at 66 when he was murdered by his live-in contractor, Fred Fulford, on August 2, 1995.(1929–1995)
Fils de Victor Adamson
Ai vu de lui "Horror of the Blood Monsters" (début 1970) dans les meilleures conditions vers 2011 dans la salle Ledoux et avais coté 6. Je me demande quatre ans plus tard comment la cinémathèque belge peut posséder une copie 35mm en bon état de cette obscurissime série Z.- Producer
- Director
- Additional Crew
Dwain Esper was probably the most obscure of the 'Hollywood hack' filmmakers of the 1930s alongside Victor Adamson, Robert J. Horner and others whom directed low-budget Westerns feature films and serials. Esper's film career was focused on softcore exploitation features which have a hard, merciless edge and a serial killer pathology. His films are too sick and mean-spirited to be guiltless kitsch and too weird to enjoy just for laughs.
Born in Washington state in October 1893, Esper's pre-cinematic background, unsurprisingly, was in the tawdry underbelly of the early 20th century carnival circuit as a barker. But after receiving a film lab as part of a settlement, he had the same revelation that later would dawn on the owners of burlesque theaters as "nudie cutie" loops: talent could balk, show up late, or ask for more money, but a film runs uncomplainingly every time it's reeled up. With dollar signs dancing in their eyes, Esper and his wife, Hildegarde Stadie, moved to Los Angeles, California and immediately plunged feet first into the underground world of exploitation film making in Hollywood.
Operating in a gray netherworld as divorced from the mainstream studio system as the underground film scene of the 1960s would later be, exploitation films back in the 1930s were pure sleaze masquerading as "education films" for an imperiled great unwashed that had a right to know about the sex menace, or the drug menace, or the white slave trade, or whatever invisible horror lurked at the perimeter of their domestic tranquility. Films like Reefer Madness (1936) (which Esper produced) played in grind-house theaters or at fly-by-night tent screenings, operating just outside the all-grasping influence of the Hays Code. It was this governing body of Hollywood censorship that prohibited film depiction of narcotic abuse, scantily dressed women, and explicit mention of sex-related indelicacies like syphilis or childbirth that were the exploitation film's stock in trade. Esper, like other exploitation directors, didn't care whether audiences left his films more enlightened about polarizing issues of the day.
Esper's first feature film which he personally produced and directed was Narcotic (1933) which is a loosely fictionalized recount of Hildegarde Esper's uncle's descent into drug addiction is a sterling example of the incomprehensible hallmarks of Esper's style: stertorous dialogue, soundtrack music that stops and starts in sudden jumps, abrupt cutaways to barely relevant stock footage (usually of some atrocity) and a narrative so spotty you're convinced several reels went missing on the way to the projection booth.
His next feature film, Maniac (1934) is a criminally perverse, very loose adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's short story "The Black Cat" involving grave robbing, murder, impersonation, human psychosis, animal mutilation, along with brief snipes of topless female nudity.
Esper continued directing and exhibiting films until the late 1940s, even picking up films like Tod Browning's cult classic Freaks (1932) for reissue on the exploitation circuit after it bombed at the box office. One of his last films was a sleazy 1948 documentary titled 'Hitler's Strange Love Life' which was re-titled 'Conform or Die'. Esper also personally traveled across the country to finance and promote his own films. People who worked with Esper used to describe him as "one of the greatest con men" they ever encountered. He would routinely swindle friends and enemies alike for a quick and easy dollar and then invite them over to his house for dinner to charm them into not suing him. His films often played in out-of-the way movie houses either from Catholic conservative New England states to Mob-controlled Chicago where no other exploitation films had ever been shown to the public. He ran afoul of the law numerous times for obscenity charges, but was never tried or convicted because of either using his charisma charm or just plain sheer luck.
While his drug hysteria films like Marihuana became popular stoner midnight movie fare in the 1960s, little is known about his later years. He sold his studio and production company to the Sonney family in 1948 and then retired from film making for good having already become quite wealthy from the profits earned from his films and lived the rest of his life out of the spotlight. He died on October 18, 1982 at a hospital in San Diego following complications after surgery at age 89. But opuses like 'Maniac' and 'Narcotic' are, with a little sleuthing, still easy to obtain, thanks to an ironic twist of copyright law: every film created by Dwain Esper, the guy who went into movie making just to make a buck, is now in the royalty-free public domain.Réalisateur pendant les années '30 de pseudo-documentaires d'exploitation sur des sujets sulfureux ("Narcotic" en 1933, "Sex Maniac" en 1934, "Marihuana" en 1936, "Sex Madness" en 1938.)- Director
- Editor
- Producer
Edward L. Cahn was an American second-feature director of Polish ancestry. His brother Philip Cahn worked in the industry as editor. Edward worked in films from 1917 as a production assistant. He later joined his brother in the cutting room of Universal, eventually becoming one of the studio's top editors (he did the last-minute re-cuts of the prestigious war drama All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)). From 1931, Cahn assumed the director's chair, turning out cheap and cheerful crime melodramas and comedies. He became a mainstay of the MGM shorts department from 1935-49. Having gone pretty much unnoticed, his directing career began to pick up in the 1950s. Ever conscious of public demand, the imperturbable pipe-smoking Mr. Cahn turned his attention to trendy teenage rebellion films and schlock science-fiction (with a special penchant for zombies).
His films during this period range from the sublime to the absurd, from the inspired to the ridiculous. Some are bad enough to be (almost) enjoyable (particularly after a glass of wine or two). Point in case: Creature with the Atom Brain (1955), which somehow manages to combine mobsters, Nazis, zombies and atomic power, all in one package. Just as awful was The She-Creature (1956), featuring the lovely Marla English reverting into an extremely silly looking anthropomorphic sea monster (Cahn was able to re-use the same papier-mâché-and-plastic creation for the equally inept Voodoo Woman (1957)).
Rather more fun (though little more than a pastiche of The Mummy (1932)) was Curse of the Faceless Man (1958), in which a 2000-year-old calcified creature found near Pompeii returns to life to claim a lost love. Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) was unintentionally funny, but at least featured decent creature effects. Sadly, dialogue and script were corn straight off the cob. It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) was arguably the best of Cahn's offerings (it was said to be the inspiration for Alien (1979)). It was tautly directed and (as so often happens) only let down at the end by the monster being revealed as just another guy in an unshapely rubber suit. The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959) resumed Cahn's preoccupation with zombies and voodoo. At the center of the plot is an evil head-shrinking Swiss anthropologist (a suitably sinister performance by the brilliant Henry Daniell) who just happens to be a reincarnated Ecuadorian witch doctor. Unfortunately, though there is some visual style to the enterprise, the film as a whole can only be described as tame.
Cahn maintained an extremely prolific output through the early 1960s, working for AIP and United Artists on westerns and teen exploitation dramas right up until a year before his death at the age of 64.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Doris Wishman was born on 1 June 1912 in New York City, New York, USA. She was a director and producer, known for Satan Was a Lady (2001), Nude on the Moon (1961) and Keyholes Are for Peeping (1972). She was married to Louis Silverman and Jack Abrahms. She died on 10 August 2002 in Miami, Florida, USA.Une cinéaste qui a grandement influencé David Lynch.
Malheureusement, ses films ne sont jamais arrivés en Belgique.- Writer
- Director
- Production Designer
Demofilo Fidani was born on 8 February 1914 in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Karzan, il favoloso uomo della jungla (1972), A.A.A. Massaggiatrice bella presenza offresi... (1972) and Make the Sign of the Cross, Stranger! (1968). He died in March 1994 in Italy.L' « Ed Wood du western spaghetti » a aussi réalisé un des pires gialli : "Caresses à domicile" (1972).- Sound Department
- Editor
- Producer
Ronald V. Ashcroft was born on 16 February 1923 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, USA. He was an editor and producer, known for Like Wow! (1961), The Astounding She-Monster (1957) and Girl with an Itch (1958). He was married to Lorraine Ashcroft. He died on 14 December 1988 in Sylmar, California, USA.Ed Wood a été consultant pour son expertise dans l'utilisation de stock-shots sur "The Astounding She-Monster" (1957).- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Joseph Green was born on 28 January 1928 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He was a writer and director, known for The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962), The Perils of P.K. (1986) and Day-Dream (1964). He died on 1 September 1999 in New York City, New York, USA.- Director
- Cinematographer
- Writer
Andy Milligan was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1929. He was a self-taught film maker, playwright, script writer and costume designer. He grew up mostly in Minnesota, but he and his family moved around the country a lot. His father, Andrew Milligan Sr. (1894-1985) was a captain in the U.S. Army who served in the military for over 50 years (retiring in the mid 1960s holding the rank of colonel). His mother, Marie Gladys Hull (1900-1953), was an overweight, neurotic-bipolar alcoholic who physically and verbally abused her husband and children. She served as the basis for scores of her son's characters when he began making films. Milligan had an older half-brother named Harley Hull (1924-1998) and a younger sister named Louise Milligan Howe (1931-2021). After finishing grade school, Milligan joined the U.S. Navy where he served four years. After his honorable discharge, he settled in New York City in 1951 where he dabbled in acting on stage and opened a dress shop.
During the 1950s Milligan became involved in the nascent off-off-Broadway theater movement where he mounted productions of plays by Lord Dunsany and Jean Genet at the Caffe Cino, a small Greenwich Village coffeehouse that served as a hothouse for rising theater talent like Lanford Wilson, Tom Eyen and John Guare. Milligan also became involved with directing low-key theater productions at Cafe La Ma Ma Experimental Theater Club. During this period he operated and designed for a clothing boutique named Ad Lib and used his crude dressmaking skills to costume many theatrical productions.
In the early 1960s Milligan turned to film making. He met some of the actors for his early films at Caffe Cino. His first released film was a 30-minute black-and-white 16 mm short drama entitled Vapors (1965). Set in the notorious gay bathhouse St. Mark's Baths, it was written by Hope Stansbury, the raven-haired beauty who would star in a few of his later films. The film, set on one Friday evening in the St. Mark's Baths, portrays an emotionally awkward and unconsummated meeting between two strangers. Milligan was later employed by producers of exploitation films, particularly William Mishkin, to direct softcore sexploitation and horror features, many featuring actors known from the off-off Broadway theater community.
Milligan then hooked up with famed sexploitation producer William Mishkin and made 11 features, all shot with a single hand-held 16mm Auricon camera on short ends (snippets of film left over from other productions). Some of those include Depraved! (1967), Seeds of Sin (1968) ("Sown in Incest! Harvested in Hate!") and Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1972). Many of these early works play like bizarre morality tales where sleazy characters get violently paid back for their excesses.
In 1966, Milligan set up shop in a Victorian mansion located on northern Staten Island, within walking distance of the ferry and his own house. The house soon became "Hollywood central," where he filmed most of his movies on budgets ranging from $5,000 to $20,000. Milligan was a one-man army--he wrote, directed, built sets and sewed costumes for his splatter epics like The Ghastly Ones (1968). His usual "stock company" (Stansbury, Neil Flanagan, Hal Borske) was often supplemented by Staten Island locals who were dragged into performing.
Milligan even married one of his actresses, Candy Hammond, who starred in a number of his films, most notably as Pussy Johnson in Gutter Trash (1969). No one took the wedding seriously, because Milligan was unabashedly homosexual and an avowed misogynist. The service took place at the Staten Island house, which was still decorated for the movie shoot Seeds. That night, Milligan cruised gay bars to celebrate.
In 1968, Milligan began to make horror movies featuring gore effects with The Ghastly Ones (1968), a 19th century period piece and his first color film which was produced by JER and titled by Sam Sherman. In 1969, he made his next horror movie, Torture Dungeon (1969), a medieval period piece after which he moved to London, England to make movies there after having made a deal with producer Leslie Elliot. After directing Nightbirds (1970) in London, his partnership with Elliot collapsed as he was working on The Body Beneath (1970). Milligan then teamed up again with William Mishkin again where Mishkin produced and Milligan directed three more period piece British horror films which were Bloodthirsty Butchers (1970), The Man with Two Heads (1972), and The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972) (all shot in 1969) before Milligan's return to Staten Island in 1970.
On his return to New York, Milligan wrote and directed another medieval period piece titled Guru, the Mad Monk (1970), which was shot for the first time with a 35mm Arriflex camera and filmed entirely inside a Chelsea, Manhattan church. This movie was released on a double feature with The Body Beneath. Through the next years, Mishkin released Milligan's British-made pictures, some with additional scenes shot in New York. The Rats are Coming! The Werewolves are Here! was one of Mishkin's films in which he had Milligan insert new killer rat scenes shot in New York, mostly at his new Staten Island house on Corson Street where Milligan lived during that time and filmed another horror period piece there in 1973 which was titled Blood (1973).
After directing the 1972 sexploitation drama Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1972), Milligan's output was restricted mostly to gory horror movies as he moved to the southern tip of Staten Island in the Tottenville neighborhood where he lived in and owned and operated a dilapidated hotel located at the end of Main Street right next to the southern end of Staten Island Railway.
In October 1977, Milligan moved into 335 West 39th Street in Manhattan (a four-story building purchased for $50,000 by Milligan and stockholders), where he founded and ran the Troupe Theater, a seedy but fun off-off Broadway venue above which he lived in a third-floor loft until he left New York City for good in March 1985. He moved to Los Angeles, California, where he shot three more contemporary horror movies between 1987 and 1988 as well as operated another theater company, called the Troupe West, which ran until 1990.
Andy Milligan was heavily into S&M and had very few serious relationships (all with men). The few friends he did have were just as emotionally troubled and dangerously disturbed as he was. A Vietnam veteran and ex-convict named Dennis Malvasi, who once drifted into and worked at Andy's Troupe Theater in the late 1970s and early 1980s, later made news headlines in March 2001 when he and his wife were arrested for aiding the flight of fugitive James Kopp, the suspected murderer of a New York abortion doctor. One boyfriend, "human toothpick" B. Wayne Keeton (so-named for his gaunt physical build), was a good natured Louisiana hustler who appeared in a small role in Monstrosity (1987), one of Milligan's last films. Keeton's death from AIDS in June 1989 hit Milligan hard, and he soon began having his own health problems. He learned shortly afterwards that he, too, had contracted AIDS, apparently from Keeton. With no insurance, little money, and the era of exploitation films over, Andy Milligan went into a reclusive decline until his death on June 3, 1991 at age 62.- Director
- Editor
- Actor
Tom Graeff was born on 12 September 1929 in Ray, Arizona, USA. He was a director and editor, known for Teenagers from Outer Space (1959), The Noble Experiment (1955) and Toast to Our Brother (1951). He died on 19 December 1970 in San Diego, California, USA.- Editor
- Director
- Writer
Born in 1931, Bruno Mattei grew up in Rome, Italy, where his father owned a small film editing studio. At age 20 Bruno started working odd jobs at his father's company as his assistant, then went on to other small spots. He wanted to follow in his father's footsteps as a film editor, and soon found himself working as an editor for a number of directors, including Roberto Bianchi Montero and Nick Nostro. Mattei claimed to have edited over 100 films in the 1960s and early 1970s. After working with famed Spanish director Jess Franco, Mattei made his debut as a director with the drama Armida, il dramma di una sposa (1970) under the alias "Jordon B. Matthews". He eventually had more pseudonyms than any working director in the world. He returned to editing before making another comeback in 1976 with two low-budget Nazi exploitation films, Women's Camp 119 (1977) (aka "Women's Camp 119") and Casa privata per le SS (1977) (aka "SS Girls"). Mattei followed these taboo-breaking films with excursions into porno films and mondo "shockumentaries", all directed under his many pseudonyms, concentrating on "shock value" with films such as Mondo erotico (1973), "Libiodomania" and "Libidomania 2". Always on the lookout for new exploitation avenues, Mattei followed with "nunsploitation", with the softcore sex film The True Story of the Nun of Monza (1980) and the violent sex thriller The Other Hell (1981). Both films involved a partnership with writer/director Claudio Fragasso, who helped him write and direct the back-to-back productions. Using yet another alias, "Vincent Dawn", Mattei directed Hell of the Living Dead (1980) (aka "Night of the Zombies"), a low-budged zombie picture inspired by other zombie cannibal movies such as Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979). "Virus" was filmed in Spain and used jungle footage from New Guinea and a patch soundtrack from Goblins "Dawn of the Dead" soundtrack, which was a minor hit in Italy and abroad. After directing two women's prison films starring Laura Gemser, Mattei moved to directing sword-and-sorcery flicks, starting with The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (1983). Both Mattei and Fragasso collaborated on the sci-fi/horror flick Rats: Night of Terror (1984), inspired by the futuristic movies of the early 1980s. Mattei considers this his best work, despite his still having to work with a very low budget. He worked relentlessly through the 1980s, directing a pair of "spaghetti westerns", some action flicks and about half of Zombie 3 (1988) after Lucio Fulci was taken off the production, though Mattei was not credited with it. In the early 1990s Mattei directed a series of erotic thrillers and a made-for-TV movie, Cruel Jaws (1995), which was inspired by Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975). Mattei continued making films, with more than 50 to his credit by the 200s. In early 2007 his health began to decline rapidly after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Despite his doctor's warnings, he went through with a surgical operation to have the tumor removed in May of that year. After the surgery he fell into a coma from complications, and died a few days later on May 21, 2007 at age 75. Though some people consider his films to be cheap, insipid and technically inept due in large part to their low budgets and poor production values, Bruno Mattei remains an influential cult film director around the world for his radical film making and willingness to direct pretty much anything with a taboo-breaking topic.