Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: OT: What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood in the scripts of Ernesto Gastaldi?

What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood in the scripts of Ernesto
Gastaldi?
 
Interview by Tim Lucas
 
When the Italian horror cinema is discussed in print, it is sometimes
said that the 1950s belonged to Riccardo Freda, the 1960s to Mario
Bava, the 1970s to Dario Argento, and the 1980s to Lucio Fulci. But
there is another individual—rarely mentioned in such articles—whose
seminal career has spanned all four decades and is still going strong.
 
Ernesto Gastaldi was born on September 10, 1934 in Graglia, Vercelli.
He received his diploma in direction and screenwriting from the Centro
Sperimentale di Cinematografia in 1957. His graduate project, inspired
by his fondness for the Mondadori giallo paperbacks, was La strada che
porta lontano ("The Road to a Distant Door"), a strong candidate for
the very first Italian thriller. (Another is Delitto al Luna Park
["Murder in Luna Park"], made the same year by director Renato
Polselli, which had the distinction of being the first Italian
thriller to achieve theatrical distribution.) Unlike anything else
made in Italy at that time, the film was screened to great
controversy, but it won the important approval of his teacher,
Alessandro Blasetti. After two years of struggle, during which he
served as a ghostwriter to Ugo Guerra and his future partner Luciano
Martino, Gastaldi wrote a thriller for the stage entitled "A... come
Assassino" ("A... for Assassin"), which won First Prize at the
prestigious IDI Awards in 1959 and was produced onstage the following
year.
 
Impressed by this award-winning production, and by the recent grosses
of Dracula il vampiro (the Italian release of Hammer’s HORROR OF
DRACULA, 1958), two producers approached Gastaldi with an interesting
offer: could he use his affinity for thrillers to write something
similar? He accepted, and in that twilight period between the
commercial failure of Freda’s I vampiri (1957) and the worldwide
success of Bava’s La maschera del demonio [BLACK SUNDAY, 1960],
Gastaldi’s pen launched the Italian horror tradition of the 1960s with
L’amante del vampiro, released in the United States as THE VAMPIRE AND
THE BALLERINA. For the first time, Gastaldi was credited with his own
screenplay.
 
It was in Gastaldi’s fertile imagination that many of the archetypal
Italian horror scenaria were first conceived. In the following years,
he wrote such classics of ’60s Gothic horror as WEREWOLF IN A GIRL’S
DORMITORY, THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK, THE WHIP AND THE BODY, THE
MURDER CLINIC and THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH, as well as ’70s Argento-
influenced thrillers like TORSO, NEXT!, THEY’RE COMING TO GET YOU and
the remarkably titled WHAT ARE THOSE STRANGE DROPS OF BLOOD ON
JENNIFER’S BODY? Gastaldi also signed some of the most important
Italian films produced in other popular genres, including pepla (THE
MEDUSA AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES), erotic thrillers (THE SWEET BODY
OF DEBORAH), science fiction (AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK), crime
thrillers (THE SICILIAN CONNECTION) and, of course, Spaghetti Westerns
(MY NAME IS NOBODY). In 1966, he also became a director, making his
debut with an outstanding giallo, LIBIDO (1966), which also marked the
first screen appearance of actor Giancarlo Giannini.
 
With such a track record, Ernesto Gastaldi must be accorded long-
overdue recognition as one of the chief architects of the Italian
popular cinema. — (Tim Lucas)
 
• • •
 
How did you first become interested in screenwriting?
 
I first dreamed of becoming a writer while working as a bank clerk in
my home town of Bielli, in Northern Italy. It was there that I met an
incredible young man named Peppo Sacchi. He and a group of his friends
were filming stories with a little 16mm camera. In 1953, Peppo filmed
the first Italian Western (Cowboy Story) and in 1954, it won the Agis
Cup (Coppa Agis) at Montecatini, where they had, and still have, a
festival for amateur filmmakers.
 
I didn’t know anything about cinema, so one night, Peppo explained
everything to me as we sat in the principal park of my town—there was
two meters of snow on the ground and it was 20° below zero, celsius! I
joined his group, and proposed that we make a scandalous movie to
attract the attention of the most important people of the Italian
cinema. I took notes about action and the words that the actors would
have to say; only afterwards did I discover that this was a script! We
went to the festival and we had a very big success. Alessandro
Blasetti, a famous Italian director, asked to me if I wished to enter
the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Rome’s big movie school.
"Yes, Maestro, of course!"
 
What was it was like to study at CSC? I’ve always heard stories about
classes being allowed to observe filmings at Cinécittà, which is right
next door.
 
As a school, CSC was too theoretical. Only Blasetti was able to teach
on the set. We had studios, cameras, actors and actresses, but very
little time to practice on actual sets. My graduation project was a
film called La strada che porta lontano ("The Road to a Distant
Door"). This was the first real Italian thriller, filmed in 1954!
 
That’s amazing. Does it still exist?
 
Yes, it still exists, but without sound. We filmed it MOS, and scored
it with music from records every time we presented it. We also dubbed
it every time, with the actors speaking from behind the screen! In
1954, we had no money for any kind of synchronized recording...
 
So your dreams of becoming a writer were soon replaced with dreams of
becoming a screenwriter?
 
No! I thought of writing films as a way to earn enough money to
survive while I wrote the Great Italian Novel! I started out as a
screenwriter on many Italian comedies during my "black period."
 
I don’t understand the expression "black period."
 
I’m sorry—"black" is too Italian! You would say "ghost writer." I
worked as a ghost-writer on more than twenty scripts for Ugo Guerra,
the screenwriter who first introduced me to producers.
 
Which films were most important to you as a young man, and which films
are most important to you now?
 
I was born in 1934, and I attended CSC from 1955 to 1957. The most
important movies for me at that time were I vitelloni and La strada by
Fellini. Now I like, very much, Kubrick’s films and Tarantino’s PULP
FICTION.
 
Your autobiography, VOGLIO ENTRARE NEL CINEMA, contains very little
reference to your early horror films. Do you personally dislike them?
 
Not at all. I like every script I ever wrote. I’m very happy that
there is someone in the world who remembers them!
 
The first film to credit you by name was L’amante del vampiro [THE
VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA, 1960]. This film was released shortly
before Mario Bava’s La maschera del demonio, and was made at roughly
the same time. Freda’s I vampiri, made a few years earlier, was not a
commercial success, and he blamed this on the fact that Italian
audiences did not take the idea of an Italian horror film seriously.
So it seems very unusual that Italian horror films were given a second
chance. What happened to encourage you and others to make Italian
horror films again?
 
I think it was the success of Dracula il vampiro, starring Christopher
Lee, that prompted our producers. L’amante del vampiro was my first
official script—I was unbelievably low-paid! I also worked on the film
as the first assistant director.
 
Was the film your own idea, or did one of your fellow screenwriters
come up with it?
 
I met the director Renato Polselli, who happened to be the fiancé of
one of my schoolmates at CSC (schools can be useful!) and he had a
primitive treatment called "L’amante del vampiro," but it was
completely different from the movie. I wrote the script with Polselli
simply to eat! I was really hungry in those days!
 
Aside from I vampiri, which very few people saw, there had been no
Italian horror films, and horror films were banned in Italy for many,
many years. Without an Italian horror film tradition to draw
inspiration from, which films most inspired you—visually,
thematically, et cetera?
 
I don’t know. In those days, whatever producers asked me to write, I
wrote in a few days. I would write an entire script in less than a
week, inventing both story and characters. I used to write after
midnight, when my young sons were sleeping. I remember, some nights, I
was frightened by my own scenes and had to stop. For me, the fun of
being a screenwriter is to live your stories as others live their real
lives. What scared me, I realized, would scare other people too.
 
As the film’s assistant director, you must have been on the set every
day. Do you remember any interesting stories about the production?
 
Many funny things happened on the set of L’amante del vampiro. One
night, the wife of the producer had to pee in the woods and she wiped
herself with nettle leaves! She needed an ambulance... In the middle
of one scene, the assistant producer summoned Walter Brandi by saying,
"The vampire is wanted on the telephone..." There was also a big feud
among the three principal actresses: each of them thought that she was
the star of the film. Tina Gloriani said, "I’m the star, because I’m
the heroine!" Helene Remy said, "No, I’m the star, because the
producer was able to finance the film using my name!" And Maria Luisa
Rolando said, "No, I’m the star, because I’m the lover of the vampire,
and that’s the title of the movie!" Remy told her, "Okay, I’m the star
of the movie and you are the star of the title..."
 
I worked with another, older assistant director named Franco Cirino.
He was well-known to American producers when they came to shoot at
Cinécittà. Our production was very cheap and the director asked for
some skeletons, but there weren’t any to be had. The production
manager proposed that we go to a cemetery and dig up some real ones!
The producer had asked, very upset, "Do you know what skeletons cost?"
Cirino answered, "So we’ll use the skeletons of poor people!"
 
We worked 18 hours a day, even on Christmas Eve. We worked day and
night, because the castle had to be free the day after Christmas. The
electricians used to sing, "Tutti abbiamo una casa, tutti abbiano una
sposa!" ("All of us have a home, all of us have a wife!") Near
midnight, the crew was still shooting and the manager arrived and
showed us a bottle of Chianti. One of the crew men shouted, "Do you
think you can buy us with a bottle of wine?" And then the manager
pulled another bottle of Chianti out of his coat and the man said,
"Okay, maybe with two!" Ah, the good old days...
 
What can you tell me about Walter Brandi? He must have had a big
success in this film, because he went on to play vampires in several
other movies: L’ultima preda del vampiro [THE PLAYGIRLS AND THE
VAMPIRE], La strage dei vampiri [SLAUGHTER OF THE VAMPIRES], and so on
before becoming a producer.
 
Walter died about a year ago, on May 28, 1996. I met him on the set of
L’amante del vampiro and we became fast friends: he had a very sweet
and ironical personality. Walter had success with many different kinds
of film—adventure and horror, too—for 15 years. We remained friends to
the end of his life. I saw him rich with a Ferrari, and so poor that
he couldn’t pay his telephone bill, but he was always the same Walter.
 
I’m sorry to hear about his death. I hope it was in the old days that
he had trouble paying his telephone bill...
 
Unfortunately, Walter died in very bad economic conditions. He had the
help of his friends, but it wasn’t enough. I even directed and co-
produced a movie for him in 1992—L’uovo del cuculo ("The Cuckoo’s
Egg"), which we made in Bucharest—just to help him. He was co-
producer. It made a good profit, but Walter had a very beautiful
daughter addicted to heroin. She was arrested for robbery, and he had
to pay some very expensive lawyers to help her. It was a tragedy.
 
Walter began to feel tired. He went to the hospital for a checkup on
Friday the 24th, he phoned me on Sunday, and he died on Tuesday. The
doctors said his blood had turned to water. I think he had leukemia.
Walter was part of a production cooperative to which I belong, and we
were talking about producing another film together. Walter used to
come to my house almost every day, to drink some fresh juice and to
talk about the movie we were planning, and other future projects...
but he had no future at all.
 
He was a memorable vampire in L’amante del vampiro. His makeup was a
return to the ugly vampire that hadn’t been seen much on the screen
since the silent days. Can you describe how his makeup worked, how it
was applied?
 
Walter’s mask was built on his face with a plaster mold and then
realized in rubber latex. It was light brown in color. Inside the
mask, there were tubes that he could inflate with a little handpump
situated in one of his pockets. The mask was so complete that, for
some scenes, another actor played the vampire—because Walter had
caught the flu! There was a terrible flu going around that
Christmas...
 
The film opens with a scene that was filmed at a waterfall that
figures in a lot of classic Italian films, notably Le fatiche di
Ercole [HERCULES, 1957]. Do you remember the location?
 
Yes, it was Veio’s Falls, close to Rome. Veio is a very ancient
Etruscan town.
 
The "Castle of the Damned" also looks familiar to anyone who has seen
more than a few Italian horror films. The spiral staircase in
particular can be seen in Bava’s Operazione paura [KILL BABY KILL,
1966], for example. Do you remember the name of this castle and its
location?
 
Of course I do! It was the Castello Borghese at Artena. Artena is a
village near Rome, but so badly situated that they have a celebration
on the one day each year when the sun touches the town square! Many
films were shot there. It was very cold in the winter!
 
Was the disintegration scene really filmed on the roof? I would
imagine that the wind up there might have interfered with controlling
the effects.
 
Actually, yes. The disintegration was filmed on the castle roof, by
stopping the camera and making little changes, stage-by-stage. We
actually had to create the illusion of wind by standing around and
waving newspapers!
 
The film contains some scenes that were obviously inspired by HORROR
OF DRACULA, such as the girl waiting for the vampire to come to her
room—and the camera panning toward her hand gripping the sheets. But
it is more openly erotic. Some scenes are suggestive of nudity—but
there isn’t any in the US print. Were any nude scenes filmed for the
continental market?
 
I don’t know what was cut for the United States, but the movie was
absolutely chaste. The most erotic scene showed Helene Remy licking
her lips...
 
I don’t mean for this question to sound critical, but were all of the
actresses in L’amante del vampiro professional? I’m not asking because
of their ability, but because I don’t recall ever seeing their names
in movies again, whereas Walter Brandi’s career flourished.
 
I went to school with Tina Gloriani at CSC, and she was the girlfriend
of the director, Renato Polselli. She later married another man and
disappeared. Helene Remy was a very famous French actress, who had
made a lot of movies with big stars, but during this period, her
career was nearing an end.
 
What can you tell me about Renato Polselli?
 
I lost contact with him, but I know he’s working in the editing field,
supervising the Italian dubbing of American motion pictures. At the
time I knew him, he was a man of greater ambition than talent.
 
I love Aldo Piga’s music for this film, which is such a swooping,
barnstorming piece of work. Can you tell me how Italian directors for
this kind of film selected their composers? Also, did they score the
idea of the film, or the film itself? Piga’s score, for example,
creates a pervasive mood rather than comments on specific scenes.
 
In those days, Italian composers were often called "noisers." They
came in and added music, only because the silence would have been
worse. For more important films, of course, composers had to read the
script and meet the director. Sergio Leone, as you know, wanted to
hear the music before he shot a single foot of film. For my film
Notturno con grida, I met with an important composer and showed him
the first rough cut. Four weeks later, he brought me the music and
said, "I am especially proud of the theme for the love story." But
there wasn’t any love story in it!
 
What about the ballet scene? Was the music for that scene recorded
prior to the filming? Or did the dancers perform to silence?
 
Piga saw the ballet when it was edited together and then scored it.
 
Were you asked to write any of Walter Brandi’s later vampire films,
like L’ultima preda del vampiro [THE PLAYGIRLS AND THE VAMPIRE, 1960]
or La strage dei vampiri [SLAUGHTER OF THE VAMPIRES, 1961]?
 
No.
 
Your next major horror script was one of the cornerstones of Italian
horror: L’orribile segreta dal Dott. Hichcock [THE HORRIBLE DR.
HICHCOCK, 1962], directed by Riccardo Freda. How did you become
involved in this project?
 
I got involved by phone. In those days, many producers called me to
write films for them.
 
The producers were Luigi Carpentieri and Ermanno Donati. Tell me about
them.
 
Carpentieri was—and maybe still is, I don’t know—a nice man, shy and
intelligent. Donati, on the other hand, was a very volatile man,
always upset. I remember an episode: he got into an argument with
someone who double-crossed him and he broke the guy’s left arm! Donati
shouted, "If I ever see you again, I’ll break it again!" Unfortunately
for the trickster, Donati bumped into him a month later at a soccer
stadium. He had his arm in a cast, and Donati broke it again in front
of 80,000 people!
 
Anyway, Carpentieri called and asked me to write an outline around a
giallo story that he liked called Spectral. I wrote a treatment and
called it Raptus. The story was different at first, because there
wasn’t any necrophilia in it. I don’t remember now why I added this
element later; perhaps one of the associates asked for something
harder, more macabre.
 
The film was considered outrageous in the United States because it was
about necrophilia, at a time when even normal, healthy sex was
forbidden in horror films. Did you have a sense of breaking a taboo
with this film?
 
No. When you have to write many horror films or thrillers, it’s
important to keep finding new subject matter. Necrophilia was just one
of them. Here in Italy, nobody was upset by this.
 
Were other directors considered, or perhaps hired, before Freda?
 
I don’t think so.
 
What are your memories of being on the film set? What do you remember
about Freda? The cast members? The location?
 
I went twice to the set. Freda was shooting in an empty old villa in a
very rich area of Rome, on the via Rubens. There was a wild green all
around it, with actual family crypts. That first day, Freda asked my
permission to cut 10 pages from my script. They were important pages,
important to an understanding of the plot. He told me that he had to
finish shooting in a few days—the whole movie was filmed in only three
weeks! He didn’t have the time to film these pages, so I said, "Do
whatever you want." So Freda cut the scenes in which my characters
explained their motivations. The film became incomprehensible, but
people loved it!
 
The American version lost another ten minutes, so all in all, it lost
twenty pages of script!
 
I never knew that the American version was shorter than the English
one, but the scenes that I’m talking about were never filmed at all!
 
And your second visit?
 
The second time I went to the villa, I didn’t speak to Freda, who was
completely absorbed in his work. He was shooting with three cameras
simultaneously—not shooting the same scenes from different angles, but
shooting different scenes! I remember Barbara Steele walking around
and around with candles through long, dark corridors...
 
Aside from the cutting of 10 pages from your script, did Freda change
your story in any way?
 
No, he shot the other scenes exactly as I had written them.
 
The film has an excellent cast: Barbara Steele, Robert Flemyng,
Harriet White Medin...
 
I read your long interview with Harriet White Medin. I didn’t know
much about her. I only knew that she was chosen for Hichcock before
Freda was chosen as director, because she was an "English" actress.
 
Harriet remembered Freda as being a bilious little tyrant who made it
unpleasant to go to work, while Barbara Steele described him as a
pleasant man who served her little cakes and tea on the set. What do
you make of this discrepancy?
 
I think Harriet’s description of Freda is closer to the truth than
Barbara’s. Freda was a very good director, but his career was not so
good—for many reasons. Mostly money, but also the fact that he
believed himself to be a genius such as the world had never seen!
 
If Harriet was hired before Freda, because she was an English type,
was this also true of Barbara Steele and Robert Flemyng?
 
No. Carpentieri cast Barbara Steele because she had acted in another
film of this genre previously, which had been successful. I don’t
remember anything about Flemyng.
 
The choosing of the name "Hichcock" for the villain was obviously not
accidental. Was it your idea? Why was the "T" omitted from the
spelling?
 
Donati and Carpentieri were afraid that Alfred Hitchcock would be
upset if they used the same spelling, so they decided to change a
letter. Almost nobody in Italy noticed the difference!
 
In addition to using the great director’s name, the film contains some
marvelous references to his works: the skull on the bed recalls the
head on the bed in UNDER CAPRICORN, the poisoned glass of milk reminds
us of SUSPICION, and the portrait of the previous Mrs. Hichcock is
reminiscent of REBECCA (just as Harriet’s character recalls Mrs.
Danvers). I think the movie is a wonderful hommage to Alfred
Hichcock... but was it a conscious one?
 
Not completely. We all were i nfluenced by the films of Hitchcock, who
was a Maestro di Maestri. You are right about Harriet’s character,
though; I was definitely thinking of Mrs. Danvers in REBECCA!
 
In your wildest daydreams, have you wondered if Hitchcock ever saw the
film? It’s certainly possible; he liked to screen other people’s
thrillers on slow work days, and I doubt he could have resisted taking
a peek a something called THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK!
 
No! I never dared to hope for so much!
 
In 1963, Freda directed a film called THE GHOST [Lo spettro], which
some people have described as a "sequel" to THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK.
It wasn’t really, but it featured another "Dr. Hichcock" (Elio Jotta),
and Barbara Steele and Harriet Medin were back as the wife and
housekeeper. Were you asked to write this film, whose script is
credited to "Robert Davidson"? Have you seen it?
 
No, I’ve never seen it. I remember Luciano Martino telling me that
Freda was filming another "Hichcock," but I had no copyright on this
name, or indeed on this type of film. I didn’t give it another
thought.
 
This reminds me of a funny story. In 1966, Vittorio Salerno and I
wrote a Spaghetti Western called Mille dollari sul nero, which
introduced a character named Sartana. We invented the name by changing
a letter in the name of General Santana, who fought in the Mexican
War. Afterwards, the name began to appear on a lot of other Italian
movies inspired by our work. Two years ago, there was a big trial in
Italy: two producers were suing each other over the right to use the
name "Sartana" in their film titles! Vittorio and I went to the judge
and proved that we, in fact, had originated the name! Then we made a
present of it to both producers! They were very pleased, but neither
of them was too happy about having to share it!
 
For the next several years, you collaborated on many important
projects with Luciano Martino. How did the two of you join forces?
 
I first met Luciano in 1957 as a young screenwriter. We worked
together as co-writers for three years, ghost-writing for our master
Ugo Guerra, starting in 1960. He married Wandisa Guida [one of the
stars of I vampiri], one of my schoolmates at the Centro Sperimentale
di Cinematografia. In 1963, Luciano produced his first movie, I
giganti di Roma, with 30 million lire given to him by his father as an
advance on his inheritance. (This was in 1963! Today it would be, more
or less, half a billion lire!) Luciano was afraid he might lose the
money—as his father expected he would—so he asked me to write a solid
story, full of emotion and rhetoric. I did this, somewhat inspired by
a famous 19th century Italian book written by DeAmiciis, entitled
CUORE ("Heart"). CUORE was about our Risorgimento [Italy’s great
national revival in the mid-19th century]. I shifted an episode to
Roman history, and copied some action from THE GUNS OF NAVARONE.
Instead of big guns, I had big catapults!
 
My first teacher, Rodolfo Sonego, used to say two things I never
forgot: "If you can’t tell your story in a few words to a 4 year-old,
your story is wrong," and "If you want to have a big success, you must
copy the plot structures from fables." DeAmiciis did this, and I
copied DeAmiciis. The movie was indeed a big success, Martino made a
lot of money, and thus he embarked on his career as a producer.
 
Martino is listed as co-writer of I giganti di Roma. How did you
collaborate?
 
I was the sole author of the script, but Luciano wanted his name to
appear in the credits, as well. After that, I wrote a lot of films for
Luciano and many times he shared credit as co-writer. Actually, we
would speak about the story for one or two days, after which I wrote
the first draft. Then he would read it and make his observations; if I
agreed with him, I made the changes as indicated.
 
I giganti di Roma was directed by one of Italy’s most successful
directors, Antonio Margheriti. What was your opinion of him?
 
Antonio was, and is, great with special effects, but not so good with
actors.
 
I’ve always wondered what it was like for an Italian screenwriter to
write a peplum film. Were these scripts difficult to write? Did they
involve much research into history or mythology?
 
For us Italians, this kind of thing unfortunately represents about
4/5ths of our whole culture. I say "unfortunately" because, while it’s
good to know one’s cultural roots, it’s stupid to know almost only
that. For the last 40 years, I have read scientific books almost
exclusively, to fill this incredible void in my education.
 
Later in 1963, you worked with Martino again on Lycanthropus [WEREWOLF
IN A GIRL’S DORMITORY, 1963], directed by Paolo Heusch. For this
project, and for most of your subsequent horror endeavors, the two of
you adopted the pseudonyms "Julian Berry" and "Martin Hardy." Is there
a story behind these names?
 
The origin of "Julian Berry" is funny. In 1957, I wrote my first
science fiction novel and my publisher wanted an English name on the
cover page. At the time, I was sharing a little apartment with an
Anglo-Italian named Julian Birri, who worked as an advertising copy
writer. As a joke, I used his name, because the book made sly uses of
some advertising slogans he had conceived. Well, it so happened that
he almost lost his job, because his boss wouldn’t believe that he
wasn’t the real author!
 
"Martin Hardy" was another joke, because Luciano Martino was fat and
robusto, but the name wasn’t my idea. In those days in Italy, it was
mandatory to sign your films with an English name, because that’s the
way the producers wanted it.
 
What do you think of Lycanthropus?
 
It was a good B&W horror film for its time. I like it, perhaps because
it reminds me of my youth.
 
There may have been episodes of sadomasochism in earlier films, but La
frusta e il corpo [WHAT!, 1963], which you wrote for Mario Bava, must
be the first truly romantic S&M love story ever filmed. Your previous
script was about necrophilia. What encouraged you to write horror
films about such daring subjects?
 
Money. After the success of L’amante del vampiro and Lycanthropus,
many producers called me, asking me to write other stories of this
genre. I was young, newly married, and we had a baby crying for milk,
so I wrote everything I was asked to write. Of course, I tried to
write something new each time, and for this reason I wrote about
vampires first, werewolves second, and then sadomasochism,
necrophilia, sorcery, reincarnation, and so on.
 
The screenplay credit for La frusta e il corpo is divided between
several people. How was it written?
 
The company that produced La frusta e il corpo was actually a
consortium of friends. One of them was one of my screenwriting
teachers, Ugo Guerra, who had been Luciano’s teacher as well. So, Ugo,
Luciano and I spoke about this project, and I wrote it entirely by
myself.
 
Mario Bava had no input?
 
Bava was chosen as director after the script was finished. I worked
alone; I signed my contract on December 13, 1962, and delivered the
script on January 31, 1963! Also, I had very few meetings with Bava
because—while Mario was a really good director, his images were
wonderful, his special effects were the best of their time, and he
also had a gift for suspense—but he wasn’t at all interested in
writing. Many Italian directors feel that they can make wonderful
movies even from a bad script. I think they are wrong, but this is how
it is. So I wrote the script for La frusta e il corpo completely on my
own.
 
Did Bava remain faithful to your script, or did he change it in any
way?
 
Bava didn’t make any changes in regard to the dialogue, plot, or
characters. He changed some special effects described in the script,
but he didn’t require my approval for this, nor anyone else’s, because
he was a master of such things.
 
Was there any concern that the S&M angle would make the film difficult
to sell to America, where horror films were considered entertainment
for very young audiences?
 
In those days, the American market wasn’t so important for us. It was
easy to earn back our investment with the Italian market only. Italy
was producing more than 300 films per year! Today, unfortunately, that
figure is closer to 60.
 
Mario Bava had never worked with you before. How did he become
involved in this production?
 
I first met Mario Bava when he was shooting La battaglia di Maratona
[THE GIANT OF MARATHON, 1959]. I was occasionally on the set because
my friend Armando Govoni was working there, and I liked to watch the
filming of special effects. Bava put a glass in front of the camera,
completely covered by 12 black squares of paper. He removed the first
square on the left and 30 soldiers formed a line on the top of the
hill, exactly within this exposed square. Then Bava rewound the film,
covered the first square and removed the second square of black paper;
the same 30 soldiers formed another line on the top of the hill, but
shifted 20 meters to the right. One after another, Bava uncovered and
covered the glass, shifting the same thirty extras from one position
to another, until he had a big army!
 
Bava was invited to direct La frusta e il corpo by Ugo Guerra. They
were good friends. I remember Ugo saying, "Mario can be both
photographer and director; that is convenient for us." I’m sorry, but
these things tend to happen at random, without a divine inspiration.
 
What inspired you to write La frusta e il corpo? (And please don’t say
"the money"!) Some reviewers noticed a strong Bronte influence in the
story, which I can also see.
 
I’m not sure, but the producers (Ugo Guerra and Elio Scardamaglia)
showed me an Italian print of THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM before I
started writing it: "Give us something like this," they said. You
know, in those happy times for Italian cinema, it could happen that a
producer called you and said, "Look, my wife bought a wonderful bag
made of crocodile skin... Why don’t you write a nice script about
crocodiles?"
 
The film’s setting is so strange and the names are so unusual
—"Nevenka" is a wonderful name.
 
Four months before I wrote this film, I wrote a very good treatment
with Ugo Guerra titled "La Spia" ("The Spies"). It was probably the
best thriller machine I ever invented, but it was never filmed! It was
set in Eastern Europe and the lead character was named Nevenka; I
liked this name. On other occasions, I have used the names "Sheena" or
"Eileen" for evil women, for no particular reason.
 
The movie never tells us what the year is, or where the story is
taking place. Did you have an intended time and place in mind, as you
wrote the script?
 
La frusta e il corpo was set in the 19th century, but Bava (or maybe
it was the producers, I don’t remember) preferred to be unspecific.
Someone said, "No time, no place, no problem about the kind of
castles, dresses, etc."
 
I have seen a copy of your contract for this film. It contained a
different title and listed different actors in the major roles. Did
Bava re-cast the film after joining the production as director? (Bava
had worked with Christopher Lee once before.)
 
No. Christopher Lee wasn’t free when the project started. Afterwards,
he became free and his name helped the producers to secure a good
"Minimo Garantito" [ie., minimum guarantee] from the distributors.
Maybe Bava helped them to contact him.
 
Can you remember any interesting stories about the production? The
actors?
 
No. I never visited the set of La frusta e il corpo. I was busing
writing the next ones.
 
"The next ones?"
 
Yes, at the time, I used to write many scripts contemporaneously.
 
Do you remember the film’s budget, or the length of its production
schedule?
 
I think it was less than 150 million lire—in today’s terms, about two
billion lire. The length of the production schedule was six weeks,
plus one for special effects.
 
As I understand it, this film had two earlier titles. The first, which
appears on your contract, was Spectral—recycling the original unused
title for Hichcock. Harriet Medin remembered making it under the title
La lama nel corpo—a title that was later used on another of your
films, which was directed by Elio Scardamaglia and released in the US
as THE MURDER CLINIC.
 
I don’t remember that title being proposed for this movie. The only
connection with La frusta e il corpo was Scardamaglia, who was
affiliated with Vox Film and Leone Film (no relation to Sergio
Leone...), which produced La frustra. He was the producer, not the
director, of La lama nel corpo, which was in fact directed by Lionello
DeFelice. I don’t remember why DeFelice’s name didn’t appear in the
credits.
 
Where was La frusta e il corpo filmed? I’ve seen the same villa used
in oth  er horror films of this period, including some of yours.
 
Some scenes were filmed in studios, other near Anzio and the villa was
near Rome. Some villas were practically studios at the time.
 
You had worked with many other directors at this point in your career.
How do you feel Bava compared with other directors?
 
In the horror genre, Bava was best. The second best was Freda, the
third was Margheriti. All three of them were more concerned with
images than with characters and stories!
 
Bava had established a recognizable name at this time, with La
maschera del demonio and other films. Why was he asked to use the
pseudonym "John M. Old"? (He once said that the producers asked him to
pick "an old American name.") Was it because American films were more
commercially successful in Italy, or because of the scandalous nature
of the subject matter?
 
Everyone at that time was obliged to have an English pseudonym.
Italian producers were absolutely sure that English names were the
best way to ensure the success of this kind of movie. I once wrote a
very good thriller script located in Rome and all the producers said
to me, "In Rome, it’s so unbelievable... We’ll set it in London." Bava
had to play along like the rest of us. His real name wasn’t acceptable
to Italian distributors.
 
La frusta e il corpo was charged with obscenity upon its release.
(Apparently a man saw the film in a cinema, was offended, and sued the
production company.) I know that the charges were dropped, but what do
you remember of this episode? Do you remember Bava’s reaction?
 
Yes! He laughed—we all laughed! Two years later, I directed my first
film—Libido—and the censor declared it "Forbidden to Teenagers"
because in one scene, my wife Mara Maryl stood in front of a Rubens
painting and said, "Però che culoni dipingevano una volta!" ["What big
asses people used to paint!"] That’s what the times were like!
 
I have heard many stories about La frusta e il corpo being censored in
Italy, perhaps as a result of the obscenity charge. But was this true?
With the exception of an American TV print that removed all of the
flogging scenes, and the British version NIGHT IS THE PHANTOM (also
heavily cut), every copy of the film I’ve seen has been complete.
 
There were some problems with the censors, but no cuts were made, with
the exception of maybe 8-12 frames in one of the whipping scenes. In
Italy, the movie was prohibited to teenagers.
 
La frusta e il corpo was surely one of Bava’s most beautiful films.
Why did you never work together again?
 
It just worked out that way. As I said, Bava wasn’t very interested in
the script or the screenwriter.
 
In 1963, you also wrote one of my favorite peplum films, Alberto De
Martino’s Perseo l’Invincible [THE MEDUSA AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES,
1963].
 
I had previously written another movie for Alberto De Martino—Akiko—
but it was during my "black" period and I couldn’t sign; Ugo Guerra
did. Perseo l’Invincible was a story of mine. I wrote only the
treatment, but the producer, Emo Bistolfi, listed me as one of the
screenwriters. And then he died. When Bistolfi died, our Tax Service
began to persecute me, demanding that I prove to them somehow that I
didn’t write the script. I told them, "I couldn’t have written the
script, because I have no contract," etc. This persecution has lasted
to this very day, because my name is there on the screen, among the
other suspects who didn’t pay their taxes!
 
The special effects for that film were done by Carlo Rambaldi, who
created the robotic Medusa, and Eugenio Bava, who did the matte
paintings. Did you ever meet them?
 
I remember being in the production office and meeting a young man who
created special effects, but at the time, Rambaldi’s name was unknown
to me. I don’t remember meeting Eugenio Bava.
 
Let’s move on to La cripta e l’incubo [TERROR IN THE CRYPT, 1963],
based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s "Carmilla." Did you know the story, or was
it proposed to you?
 
Tonino Valerii, a former classmate of mine at CSC, had the idea
initially, and together we wrote the first treatment on a summer
night, sitting on the terrace of my little penthouse.
 
"Carmilla" was later filmed by Roger Vadim, and as a series of three
"Karnstein" movies by England’s Hammer Films (THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, LUST
FOR A VAMPIRE, TWINS OF EVIL). Have you seen these other versions? How
do you rate your film compared to the others?
 
I’ve seen only the Vadim version, which was very different from La
cripta e l’incubo. Almost no relation. I don’t remember the two films
well enough to compare them.
 
What do you remember of director Camillo Mastrocinque? How was his
work distinct from that of Bava, Freda or Margheriti?
 
Mastrocinque was a director of meager talent. He directed a lot of
comic films in which the leading actor was also the leading man on the
set. When he directed La cripta e l’incubo, he was embarrassed. The
producers asked Margheriti to help him, but I don’t know that he did.
 
When I last watched the film, I couldn’t help noticing that many of
the props at Castle Karnstein (like the shield with the "K") were left
over from Walter Brandi’s "Count Karnassy" of L’ultima preda del
vampiro! Perhaps it was filmed at the same castle?
 
I don’t know. I visited the set only once; it wasn’t Castello
Borghese, but another castle whose name I can’t remember. [The
location was a castello in the town of Balsorano. —Ed.]
 
Another of your early horror films was Il mostro dell’opera (1964),
about a vampire haunting an Italian opera company. It’s okay, but not
as good as it might have been with Walter Brandi in the vampire role.
 
I worked very little on Il mostro dell’opera. I’m not sure, but I
think I wrote only the treatment. I think I also read the script and
made some corrections. I was frankly surprised to find my name on
credits.
 
The film looks like it belongs to an earlier period than the
production date suggests.
 
That is correct. The filming began in 1961, but the producers ran out
of money. They weren’t able to continue until 1964!
 
And then you reunited with Margheriti and Barbara Steele on I lunghi
capelli della morte [THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH, 1965].
 
Tonino Valerii tried to direct that film, but the producer didn’t want
him because, at that time, he hadn’t directed any movies. Antonio was
called when the script was finished, and we met only once, so that I
could explain some details to him. He didn’t change the script and I
never went to the set.
 
The thing that people always remember when they see this film today,
is the finale in which the hero is placed inside a large wicker figure
that is set ablaze. A similar contraption appeared in the end of a
British film called THE WICKER MAN, written by Anthony Shaffer. The
film’s director once told me that Shaffer (who also wrote SLEUTH) was
a great fan of horror movies and probably saw your film. What do you
think of the similarity?
 
I can’t really say. I didn’t know Anthony Shaffer and I never saw this
film you are describing.
 
So your ending... Was it inspired by the shock ending of THE PIT AND
THE PENDULUM, when we see that Barbara Steele’s character has been
trapped in the Iron Maiden?
 
Yes, of course! THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM had a big influence on
Italian horror films. Everybody borrowed from it.
 
Aside from the ghost-writing that you did for Ugo Guerra, did you ever
write a screenplay and not receive credit?
 
Yes, many times.
 
For instance?
 
Well, La decima vittima [THE 10TH VICTIM, 1965] for Carlo Ponti.
 
Really! [The script is credited to Tonino Guerra, Giorgio Salvioni,
Ennio Flaiano and director Elio Petri.] What was the story behind
that?
 
I had long been trying to persuade Italian producers to make a science
fiction film. Mrs. Jone Tuzi, Carlo Ponti’s manager, knew of my ideas
and called me when Ponti was disappointed by a SF script written by
Ettore Scola, Elio Petri and some other very important Italian
screenwriters. By chance, two years earlier, Ugo Guerra and I worked
on a script of the Robert Sheckley tale "The Seventh Victim." We asked
Sheckley for the rights, and he told us we could have them for free if
we filmed his story exactly as it was written. Jone Tuzi introduced me
to Ponti, who told me that I must type all my script changes on blue
paper. I came back a week later with a script that was completely blue
except the front page! Ponti laughed. He liked my script, but asked me
not to tell anyone that I was the author, because he planned to avoid
arguing with the director by telling him that the rewrite had been
done by a famous American screenwriter. I agreed and started to work
for Ponti. My draft was satirical, because at that time, there was no
science fiction genre in Italy. Ponti sold the movie to the United
States [Joseph E. Levine] using my script only, but he lost interest
in the project after the sale. Petri filmed a mixture of my script,
which was satirical, and the one he worked on, which wasn’t—what a
pity!
 
In the mid-1960s, you began to focus more intently on your original
interest: thrillers. Is there a biographical explanation for your
interest in thrillers? Something about your own life, or your own
philosophy of life, that explains your attraction to them?
 
No, I just like them, especially the thrillers made by Hitchcock. I
like Agatha Christie too, and of course Edgar Allan Poe. I like
thrillers when the plots are perfect, air-tight, without any
writers’ (or directors’) tricks. When I started to write scripts as a
"ghost," I wrote many Italian comedies, signed by famous
screenwriters, but when I wrote my first thrillers, everybody said
they were wonderful, perfect! So many producers asked for thrillers,
and I wrote, I wrote. Five minutes ago, a producer from Genoa rang me
up and asked me to write another thriller, based on an Italian novel
that came out three months ago!
 
In 1959, you wrote an award-winning thriller for the stage called A...
come assassino ("A... for "Assassin"). It was filmed in 1966, but you
didn’t write the screenplay. Why not? It would seem to me that most of
the work was already done.
 
My play A... come assassino won the IDI Award in 1959. It was staged
for the first time by a good theatre company lead by Silvio Spaccesi
in 1960. I sold the drama to the director Angelo Dorigo, through
Walter Brandi (who produced), and he assigned someone else to write
the script... which was almost identical to my play!
 
That must have been Roberto Natale—who also wrote TERROR CREATURES
FROM THE GRAVE and KILL BABY KILL.
 
Maybe this man was called Natale, I don’t know. I like A... come
assassino, I think it’s a good example of a thriller for theater.
 
There is something here I would like to understand better. Mario Bava
is often said to have invented the "giallo" film with La ragazza che
sappeva troppo [EVIL EYE, 1962] and Sei donne per l’assassino [BLOOD
AND BLACK LACE, 1964]. Would you agree? I ask because your play "A...
come Assassino" was written much earlier, and the film version
certainly belongs to the giallo form. Also, La lama nel corpo and your
films with Sergio Martino are in the best gialli tradition. I would
like to better understand the origins of the giallo as a film genre,
where it came from.
 
I wrote "A... come Assassino" in the fall of 1958, but it was a play.
Maybe Bava was the first director to make Italian thrillers for the
movies. "Giallo" (Italian for "yellow") refers to the yellow covers of
the famous thriller books published by Mondadori, which first appeared
in the 1930s. There were many giallo authors in Italy. I wrote four or
five gialli while I was attending CSC—all under English pseudonyms, of
course. I used to locate my stories in New York, and I had a map with
the names of streets, coffee shops, restaurants, theaters, and so on,
to put my characters into the truest world possible. The first time I
went to NYC with my wife, she didn’t believe it was my first trip,
because I would say, "Look, behind this corner there is..." and there
it was!
 
Which reminds me: Sometimes an Italian thriller will claim to be based
on a work of fiction by an American writer no one has ever heard of.
For example, the credits of La lama nel corpo claim that the script
was based on a novel called "The Knife in the Body" by Robert
Williams. Does such a novel exist, or was it possibly a short story
published in one of the giallo magazines? Or was it just a false
attempt on someone’s part to make the film appear more literary?
 
There actually was a short novel with this title, written by an
Italian writer—Lionello DeFelice, I suppose. But I changed almost
everything, as often happens when you have to adapt a novel for the
screen.
 
How do you construct your thrillers? Do you begin with a crime, or do
you start at the end and work towards the beginning? What do you think
is the formula of a successful thriller?
 
I don’t think there is a "formula," otherwise I would have copyrighted
it! When I write something—scripts, novels, tales of any genre—I
usually start with a very little idea, a few characters, and a
situation that gets the ball rolling. Then it’s very easy, because my
characters tell me what they are doing. If I try to force them, they
stop and shout back at me, "I would never do that!" Very easy.
Thrillers are special because I never know who the murderer is until
he reveals himself near the end. My work is to fine-tune the story as
I reread it, deciding what is possible, what is true. (I don’t place
too much trust in my characters...)
 
The first film to emerge in this cycle of thrillers was Libido (1966),
which was also your directorial debut.
 
It was a very little film, made because of a bet between Luciano
Martino and his partner, Mino Loy. Martino believed that, to be a good
director, one must be above all a good storyteller. Loy, on the other
hand, maintained that it was more important for a film director to
have a perfect knowledge of technique. I was there, by chance... I’d
never directed a movie in my life and I had a beautiful wife at home
who aspired to be an actress... so I proposed myself, to prove who was
right. I filmed Libido in 18 days: I also wrote the script, did the
art direction, designed the wardrobe, worked as my own production
manager and editor. The film was a commercial success; it’s cost was
incredibly low—only 26,000,000 lire—and it was sold for $25,000 in
America alone! [The film was sold to the United States, but never
released.] So Luciano won the bet.
 
My company, Nucleo Film, made a lot of money because I was in this
business at 50%. Libido was filmed in the Villa Manzolin, along the
Cassia Road. The city has now completely consumed this area, where my
daughter lives today with her three children.
 
Did you notice that the principal male character in Libido is played
by Giancarlo Giannini? It was his first film. The distributor, in
1965, said to me, "You chose this boy with a face like an idiot, so
you’ll have to change his stupid Italian name to John Charlie Johns!"
 
The direction of Libido is shared by you and Vittorio Salerno. Who was
he?
 
Vittorio Salerno was the brother of Enrico Maria Salerno, a famous
Italian actor who died a few months ago. He was really important at
the time. I met Vittorio in 1963, when I was not yet a well-known
screenwriter, and he was still hoping to become a director. We became
friends and worked together on a project of mine called "The End of
Eternity" (the same title as a book by Isaac Asimov, but there was no
other relation). It was an anthology of four science-fiction stories;
one of them was very similar to BACK TO THE FUTURE.
 
Vittorio told me that he could get his famous brother to act in the
movie if we directed it together. I accepted. Enrico Maria was most
enthusiastic about one of the tales, "Hitler’s Son." Ultimately, this
project fell victim to the ignorance of Italian producers who, at this
time, still didn’t know what science fiction was. Giuliano Gemma (the
highest-paid Italian actor at that time) even proposed to play the
starring role for free! But the producers said, "No."
 
Then the producers offered to let me direct this thriller. Vittorio
and I wrote the script (which was based on an idea by Mara Maryl, my
wife), and we offered the character eventually played by Luciano
Pigozzi to Enrico Maria Salerno. Enrico knew that this film was really
going to be made, and that it would make his brother a director before
him, so he proposed to play the character as a monster—blind in one
eye, with a hook on his right hand! I accepted, just to pull his leg,
but I called Luciano Pigozzi. In this new situation, Vittorio was
useless, but I shared the director’s credit with him all the same.
 
Luciano Pigozzi is one of the great faces in the popular Italian
cinema, and he’s very good in everything he does. He’s appeared in a
lot of your films, as early as Lycanthopus, usually under his screen
name "Alan Collins."
 
I’m a good friend of Pigozzi. He lived in Manila for 10 years, but he
came back last year. I chose Pigozzi for Libido for two reasons. First
of all, he had the right face. Secondly, he was well-known to Luciano
Martino, who was co-producing with Mino Loy and me.
 
Sometimes Pigozzi appears only in very small roles for you. Do you
regard his presence as a "good luck charm"?
 
Maybe Luciano Martino does, unless they argue about a contract or
something like that. When I wrote those old films, I was usually paid
to write before the actors, or even the director, were chosen. So it
happened that Pigozzi acted many scripts of mine without my
suggestion.
 
Your next thriller was Il dolce corpo di Deborah (1968), also for
Martino and Loy. You share script credit with Lucio Fulci.
 
I don’t remember why Fulci’s name is on the credits. I asked Luciano
Martino about it, and he doesn’t remember either!
 
What’s interesting to me is that Fulci contributed to another script,
written at roughly the same time, that was made into a Riccardo Freda
film called A doppia faccia [DOUBLE FACE, 1969]. Both movies were
about people who were haunted by songs associated with dead lovers.
Can you explain how these two films came to share these plot elements?
 
It’s possible that Deborah originated with an outline or treatment by
Fulci. Fulci was a very good director, but he was also a bungler. He
earned a lot of money in his life, but he was always scrambling for
more. He used to sell the same idea, two or three times, to different
producers. A doppia faccia was filmed a year later than Deborah.
 
Did you ever work with Fulci again?
 
We worked together many times on thriller stories, but none were ever
filmed, for various reasons. One of his films, Sette note in nero [THE
PSYCHIC, 1980] was based on an idea of mine, but I did not write the
script.
 
We spoke for the last time a couple of years ago, and during the
course of our chat, I came up with a pretty good thriller idea.
"Personal Hell" was the title. We published the story in a Florentine
newspaper to protect it against thieves, but it was never made. Fulci
was not in good health, and he was in terrible financial straits.
Three months after my story was published, Walter Brandi and I found
ourselves in his neighborhood and we decided to visit him. We went in,
and the doorman told us that Lucio had sold his apartment furniture
and disappeared... but the furniture had not been his to sell—it was
owned by the man whose flat Lucio was renting! A short time later, I
read in the newspaper that he died. After Fulci’s death, I met another
screenwriter who told me that Fulci had tried to involve him in a
project called "Personal Inferno"... yes, it was my story!
 
Your most successful thrillers of the 1970s were directed by Sergio
Martino, the brother of Luciano Martino. You were there first, but I
suppose the success of Dario Argento’s L’uccello dalle piume del
cristallo [US: THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, 1970] helped to make
the Martino thrillers possible.
 
Of course.
 
Argento’s thrillers are very different from yours, because your
scripts are always so ironical and well-planned. You never include
lapses of logic or false information. It’s a pity that you never wrote
for Argento—what a great thriller that would have been!
 
I’ve never met Dario Argento. When Goffredo Lombardo of Titanus
produced Argento’s first film, he told me: "Look, this movie opens
with a great idea of mine!," and he proceeded to act out two hands
writing a note on an old typewriter: "I must remember to kill
someone... at  9:00 pm." I laughed—but Lombardo was dead serious!
 
When I saw the film, I thought it was well-made, but I dislike
thrillers when they are based on tricks. In THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL
PLUMAGE, there is a witness who says for a hour, "It seems to me that
I forgot an important detail..." At the end, he remembers what he has
forgotten: he saw a woman trying to kill a man, not a man trying to
kill a woman, as he’s been testifying through the whole film! So I
never really cared too much for Argento’s movies.
 
One of the most striking things about the Martino thrillers was their
titles: Tutti i colori del buio ["All the Colors of Darkness," THEY’RE
COMING TO GET YOU!], I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale
["The Corpses Bear Traces of Carnal Violence," TORSO], etc. I once
read somewhere that you took the title of Tutti i colori nel buio from
a story in the Italian science fiction magazine URANIA, written by
"Lloyd Biggle." You aren’t "Lloyd Biggle," are you?
 
No, I didn’t write that story; I just took the title. However, I did
once write a story for URANIA called "Iperbole infinità" ["Infinite
Hyperbole"], which I signed as "Julian Berry."
 
Are there any interesting stories behind any of the other Martino
titles?
 
I don’t know; the other titles were all chosen by Luciano Martino or
Carlo Ponti. It was the style of the time to use long titles
exploiting beautiful women, because sex and violence were the key
ingredients: Libido, Il dolce corpo di Deborah, Cosi’ dolce... cosi’
perversa [SO SWEET, SO PERVERSE], etc. This sort of title attracted
people, and still does.
 
There aren’t any screenwriting credits at all in DAY OF THE MANIAC,
the English-language version of Tutti i colore nel buio. As prolific
as you are, the mind boggles at what screen credits we don’t know
about!
 
I wrote another thriller for Sergio Martino you didn’t mention: Il tuo
vizio e’ una stanza chiusa ed io solo ne ho la chiave ("Your Vice is a
Locked Room and Only I Have the Key")...
 
GENTLY BEFORE SHE DIES?
 
Yes. I wrote that script alone and I have a contract to prove it!
 
On Italian prints of Tutti i colore nel buio, you share screenplay
credit with Santiago Moncada. Moncada wrote some wonderful thrillers,
including Bava’s Il rosso segno della follia [HATCHET FOR THE
HONEYMOON, 1969] and Juan Antonio Bardem’s THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS
MILLER (1971). Did you really write with Moncada, or is this another
instance of co-production quota appeasement?
 
All of the thrillers I wrote, I wrote alone. The other names you find
among the credits were put there only for co-production reasons.
Sometimes, producers had a few pages of a story, written by people
whom they had asked for ideas. It was always a weak idea, so I usually
changed it completely while writing the treatment and script. The
producers often asked me if I had a problem with these first
collaborators also being credited, and I always answered "No." In
those days, contracts were by "forfeit" without any percentage, so I
accepted. Now I know I was wrong, because many television stations are
starting to pay for the use of films.
 
Almost all of the Martino thrillers starred Edwige Fenech, who was,
and still is, a very beautiful woman. She made quite an impression in
these movies. It was rumored that she had a romantic relationship with
Luciano Martino.
 
There was a deep and long relationship between them. Luciano was
married at the time, but his marriage was unhappy. He had an affair
with Edwige for ten years. Edwige wanted to marry Luciano, but he
didn’t want to marry her. Luciano was, and is, a Southerner (from
Naples) and he liked being Edwige’s lover—most Italian people envied
him!—but he didn’t want to be her husband, because then most Italian
people would have regarded him as a cuckold. When their relationship
ended, Luciano suffered a lot. Edwige fell in love almost immediately
with a young doctor, and some months later with the Duke Luca di
Montezemolo, who was related to the Agnelli family. Of course, Italian
people gossiped that Edwige had become the lover of Gianni Agnelli—the
owner of Fiat!
 
I don’t know Edwige very well. She’s great, but somehow unattractive
to me; I never understood why. She’s played roles in a lot of my
scripts, but I’ve spoken with her maybe three times. On these
thrillers, my work was only with Luciano, and sometimes with Sergio,
when he asked for little changes. But when the script was good for
Luciano and me, it was good for everybody.
 
George Hilton was usually the male lead in these films, but he’s not a
very interesting leading man. Why did he appear in them so often? Was
there an attempt to use the same actors again and again, to identify
the films as a series?
 
George Hilton is a cousin of Luciano Martino. At that time, if a film
made money, Roman producers liked to make the same type of picture
again with the same cast. There is a saying: "Squadra che vince non si
tocca!"—in other words, "If the team wins, don’t change it!" This is
the principal reason; nobody was regarding the films as a series.
 
Is George Hilton his real name, or is it Giorgio Martino or something
like that?
 
I think George Hilton is his real name, because he always introduces
himself that way.
 
One of the Martino thrillers that you wrote—La coda dello scorpione
[THE CASE OF THE SCORPION’S TAIL]—stars George Hilton, but not Fenech.
Why wasn’t she cast in the film?
 
I think Edwige was acting in a sex-comedy at the time it was being
made.
 
How would you rate the Martino thrillers?
 
I haven’t seen them in twenty years, but I remember that I was never
quite satisfied by them, because I didn’t like the actors very much
and the production level was often inadequate. But I knew that Martino
had to obey the market laws and couldn’t spend too much money. More to
my liking was Il dolce corpo di Deborah with Jean-Louis Trintignant
and Carroll Baker, maybe because it was my first thriller after the
very small Libido; I also liked the two actors. At the time that film
was made, I was teaching the art of screenwriting to Sergio Martino,
but he eventually became a production manager, and finally a director.
 
When I was watching Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh [NEXT! aka
BLADE OF THE RIPPER] the other night, I couldn’t help wondering if the
part of Edwige’s girlfriend was written with your wife Mara in mind,
because the actress played the role like a dizzy blonde, much like the
character Mara created in Libido. Was this your intention?
 
I don’t really remember. Mara and I made a deal when we married: she
would act only if I was the director, and I would direct only if she
was the female lead. I have turned down a lot of offers because of
that pact, and Mara once refused an offer from Roger Vadim to star in
one of his films, after Brigitte Bardot left him. DeLaurentiis even
offered Mara a signed contract that left her free to write-in the
amount of the money she wished. But Mara said "No." A month later,
Vadim cast Catherine Deneuve!
 
Tell me about another thriller you wrote for Sergio Martino called
Morte sospetta di una minorene (1975)? It was never released in
America, and took a different direction than your earlier Martino
thrillers—more plot and dialogue, less violence and nudity. Was this a
deliberate attempt on your part to "tame" the more extreme elements of
the earlier thrillers?
 
No. Carlo Ponti, the producer, trusted me and accepted the script as I
wished to write it. I’m more interested in plot than in the extreme
elements. Usually, producers asked for extreme elements, hoping they
would make a film more profitable, and as a screenwriter, I did as I
was asked.
 
Do you have any anecdotes about the Martino thrillers?
 
I once saw one of these movies as it was being edited. I saw a villain
jump into a car, point his gun against the belly of the driver, and
say, "Drive, or I’ll blow your brains out!" I laughed, and Luciano
told me that was the correct line. Of course it was—but the gun should
have been pointed a little higher..!
 
Another time, a script had an overcomplicated plot and Luciano asked
to me to write a scene to clarify matters. I invented a character
named "Martinez" and wrote a scene in which this Martinez was always
asking for explanations. The other characters answered him by saying,
"Martinez ma non capisci mai un cazzo, è così..." ("Martinez, you
don’t understand anything, now read my lips....")!
 
You wrote another thriller starring Fenech and Hilton—Perche quella
strano gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer [WHAT ARE THOSE STRANGE
DROPS OF BLOOD ON JENNIFER’S BODY?]—but it was unique in being
directed by Anthony Ascott (Giuliano Carmineo) rather than Sergio
Martino. Was Martino supposed to direct it?
 
No. After I had written La decima vittima for Ponti, he asked me to
write this thriller.
 
You had worked earlier with Carnimeo on the Sartana films. Did you
have anything to do with choosing him as the film's director?
 
No. Carmineo was also an old classmate from movie school. After I had
written the script, Ponti called him in to direct it.
 
What was your opinion of Carmineo as a director? Perche quella strano
gocce... was the only thriller he ever directed, and I think he did a
fine job.
 
Giuliano Carmineo is a very good director, but he never had any luck.
It wasn’t that he deliberately avoided anything, it’s just that no one
ever asked him to direct another thriller.
 
He managed to make some good, amusing Westerns, because after Sergio
Leone’s Westerns, all the producers in Rome wanted Westerns. I
remember trying to convince Ponti, Rizzoli, Lombardo and lots of other
producers to finance my own version of BACK TO THE FUTURE. They
listened to me carefully, and at the end, they always said: "Good
idea, but now, why don’t you write another wonderful Western like
Arizona Colt? I’ll pay you twice as much—anything you want!"
 
You wrote a number of "Spaghetti Westerns" in the ’60s and ’70s. With
your background, how did you get involved in these?
 
As I mentioned earlier, Peppo Sacchi and I made the first real Italian
Western, Cowboy Story, back in 1954. When I started writing
professionally, I used to say to Ugo Guerra, Rodolfo Sonego, and other
screenwriters, and also to producers: "Why we don’t make a Western?"
Everybody laughed, because Italians could copy everything except
Westerns! Suddenly, just before Sergio Leone made his first Western,
an Italian Western (with an American title) was shown in our theaters.
People liked it, probably because no one realized that it wasn’t
American! And then, after Per un pugno di dollari [A FISTFUL OF
DOLLARS, 1964], all Italian producers began to make Westerns. I think
my first Western script was Arizona Colt, starring Giuliano Gemma
under the pseudonym "Montgomery Wood."
 
Did these films require much historical research?
 
No research was necessary! Like everyone else in the world, I had seen
thousands of American Westerns. I simply had to copy the atmosphere:
if American Westerns had been fake, I would have been fake too! Only
when I started to work with Sergio Leone did I begin to read history
books about the Old West, to see original photographs from the Civil
War, and so on; only then did I discover that the real West was
completely different to the way it was portrayed in American movies!
After that, I began to inject more reality and fewer stereotypes into
my Western scripts.
 
I’ve never asked this question of anyone who was active in making such
films, but what do you think of the phrase itself?
 
"Spaghetti Western?" I think it’s the correct name for the Italian
Westerns that copied the ones from America, trying to be similar; but
I think it’s wrong to apply this name to the Italian Westerns that
changed the way movies were made about the Old West. After Leone’s
movies, American Westerns changed a lot, became more realistic.
 
You scripted a couple of Westerns that Sergio Leone produced: Un
genio, due compari, un pollo (1975), directed by Damiano Damiani, and
Mio nome e Nessuro [MY NAME IS NOBODY, also 1975], directed by your
old friend Tonino Valerii. Only the latter film was released in
America.
 
It may have been the first movie that was filmed precisely as I had
written it. Tonino Valerii was afraid of being criticized by Sergio,
so he filmed my pages—shot-by-shot—exactly as they were written!
 
Considering his past legacy of work, was it a great thrill for you to
see your character of Jack Beauregard played by Henry Fonda?
 
Of course, I had a great emotion to see Henry Fonda saying my lines!
For my generation, he was the best! Unfortunately, though, I never met
him. Terence Hill (Mario Girotti) told me that Fonda was a quiet man,
very nice and helpful, who told Tonino Valerii to direct him as though
he was an unknown actor. I like MY NAME IS NOBODY very much, except
for one sequence added by Leone, which I thought was unnecessary.
 
Which scene displeased you?
 
There is a vulgar, useless scene in which Terence Hill sings a stupid
popular song in a street of the village. Leone added the scene only to
make clear that this film wasn’t one of the important serious films he
had directed, because it was beginning to look every day, more and
more, like it was going to be a very good Western indeed—maybe even
better that his Westerns! And he couldn’t bear it! After awhile, he
began to change his strategy, telling people that he had been the real
director!
 
I realize this is an enormous question, but could you talk a bit about
your personal and professional relationship with Leone?
 
When I met Sergio for the first time, I was a conceited ass and I
butted horns with him almost immediately. He used to humiliate people.
Arguing about a scene of mine, he said to me, "Questa è una scena da
serie C!" ("This is a scene from a low-budget movie!") I had a
formidable strong voice, and I shouted, "Tu chi credi di essere? In
serie A c’è Fellini, tu sei in serie B e ancora non hai vinto il
campionato!" ("Who do you think you are? Fellini is in the front rank,
while you are playing in the minor leagues and have yet to win your
first championship!") I stormed out, slamming the door. Twenty days
later, Sergio phoned me, as though we had left each other only the day
before, saying that maybe I wasn’t completely wrong about that scene.
 
I loved Sergio and I miss him enormously. He was an uncultured genius,
a son-of-a-bitch, but I loved him. I worked with him very well,
feeling that we were building something good together. It was a very
exciting feeling. I refused to continue writing C’era una volta
l'America [ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA], because he wanted our
collaboration to be like a marriage, without any free time for a
personal life, but we remained friends. Sergio was a big son-of-a-
bitch, but he was also a genius, and I’ll always prefer a son-of-a-
bitch genius to a nice mediocrity.
 
Wait a minute: You’re telling me that you also worked on ONCE UPON A
TIME IN AMERICA? [The screenplay is credited to Leone, Leonardo
Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Enrico Medioli, Franco Arcalli and
Franco Ferrini.]
 
I wrote the original treatment. Things went this way: while I was
writing Un genio, due compari, un pollo with Sergio, he gave me a
little book to read, a thriller. This became the core of the movie. I
liked this book very, very much; it was the autobiography of a very
old mob killer, who retired in the early 1930s. Two weeks later,
Sergio introduced me to a quiet old man with blue eyes, who looked
rather like Frank Sinatra looks today. He was the author of the book,
which was co-written by his wife. He told us that he killed 29 people
in the late 1920s in New York, always using a razor. He asked if we
thought he was a bad person; we didn’t answer. He explained that he
killed only other gangsters, who understood the ground rules; he had
contempt for murderers who would kill women and children, or anybody,
for as little as 100 dollars. He received $25,000 for every murder—and
I’m talking about 1920’s dollars!
 
His book told the story of how, in those days, he had called the
police to rescue one of his dearest friends, who was being driven mad
by syphilis, in an effort to prevent him from committing suicide
during a planned robbery. But the Police killed his friend and his
comrades. The killer fled New York and went to Florida, where he
married a young teacher and had many sons. He lived his whole life
without troubles, until one morning when the phone rang: it was the
Mafia. Someone told him that he had to come back to New York to repay
his old debt. The old killer had to obey. He returned to NY and the
Mafia ordered to him to kill a United States Senator. They needed to
avoid political suspects about this murder, so the old mob killer
would be a good "alibi." The old killer killed the senator, but
afterwards he escaped and pretended to kill himself by driving his car
into Hudson River.
 
My treatment began this way: An old killer is escaping, followed by
police cars, and falls into the river. The camera follows him as he
plummets underwater, leaving him as he drowns to dwell on the wrecks
lining the river bottom: modern sportscars slowly dissolve into
antiquities. When the camera emerges from the river, we are back in
the New York of the 1930s. My story was very similar to what you see
onscreen, but with an important difference: the killer’s friend really
did die in 1930, and the Senator was a stranger to our killer. If you
watch the film closely, you can catch many scenes that are correct in
the context of my original plot, but which are wrong in the context of
the movie’s plot: the film begins with many people killed by the
Mafia, who were trying to kill DeNiro, but in the movie plot that is
completely absurd. The killer’s friend, a little Mafia boss, saved
DeNiro while he was pretending to be dead! Why then, do they try to
kill him immediately afterwards? Also, is it plausible that a U.S.
Senator is a gangster who everyone thinks died 50 years ago?
 
Leone didn’t know how to finish the film. He ended up using a close-up
of DeNiro, smoking opium—a shot that was filmed to be used in the
middle of the movie!
 
At the time of Sergio’s death, I was writing another film with him
called Un Posto che solo Mary conosce ("A Place That Only Mary
Knows").
 
ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA reminds me that the biggest cinematic
trend to emerge in Italy after the Westerns were the crime pictures of
the ’70s and ’80s. You also wrote a number of these. Can you tell me a
bit about the characteristics of Italian crime/action pictures, as
opposed to American crime/action pictures? Also, which of your own
crime pictures were most successful in your opinion, and why?
 
I liked very much Milano trema: la Polizia vuole giustizia [VIOLENT
PROFESSIONALS, 1973], directed by Sergio Martino. We were living in
bad times in the 1970s, because of terrorism. I wrote that script for
free. My idea. The first draft was somewhat more political, but
Goffredo Lombardo of Titanus refused to distribute it. Luciano Martino
was also afraid of it and proposed to me that I share his risk,
accepting to be paid only with a percentage. I accepted. I’ve never
made more money than with Milano trema! In that film, and afterwards
in many others, we put violence and irony together. Real fear trying
to smile.
 
I saw something like that in PULP FICTION—Tarantino is a master! I
think irony is a very Italian way of coping with a rough reality.
 
In 1981, you returned to directing with a very unusual project. A
sequel-of-sorts to Libido...
 
Yes.  "Notturno con grida" (Nocturne of Screams), again with Mara
Maryl and Luciano Pigozzi!
 
This film was never released in America. How did you continue the
story? How did Pigozzi’s character survive being pushed into the sea?
 
Oh, it wasn’t an exact continuation of Libido! It was just a joke to
use some of the same actors and the same characters. We used some
scenes from Libido as flashbacks, but we used them as flashbacks to a
different story. The story was similar, yet at the same time,
completely new. If you remember Libido, all the characters died!
Christian (Giannini) fell off the cliff, as did Pigozzi; Eileen
(Dominique Boschero) was shot by Brigitte (Mara), and Brigitte, we can
presume, died while tied on the bed in the mirrored room!
 
I’ve heard that the filming of Notturno con grida was made possible by
an Italian law called "Articolo 28." Could you explain this?
 
"Articolo 28" was a part of an old Cinema Law that allowed
cooperatives of authors to produce small films with public money.
There was a committee that read scripts and decided "Yes" or "No." If
they said "Yes," you had to go to a bank and explain your budget.
Another committee decided how much money you would be given. If the
films turned out to be flops, they were given to the CSC and the
filmmakers were no longer indebted. Ninety to one hundred per cent of
these films made no money, but Notturno con grida was sold to all
world markets and repaid its debt.
 
Also, I noticed that many of your family members worked on this film,
behind the scenes.
 
To lower the budget, it helps to have workers that don’t need to be
paid: wives, sons, brothers, sisters, parents, friends...
 
Were all of your children educated in cinema?
 
None of my sons were educated in cinema. Unfortunately, one of them
died in 1989 when he was 23 years old. Amarilli, my daughter, has
three children, but she is interested in fashion and furniture and
helps me sometimes. Sciltian, my youngest son, is now 22 and studying
political science. (When he was 11, he played a character in THE END
OF ETERNITY.)
 
According to your filmography, it seems that you wrote no screenplays
between 1990 and 1993. Were you concentrating on writing books during
this period?
 
Yes, but not by choice. There was, and still is, a deep crisis in our
"non-artistic" Italian cinema. During that period, I spent my summers
in the United States, learning English and travelling. I wrote a book
about my travels, but my publisher [Mondadori] said that there were
too many books about the United States being published during in that
period, so it never came out. In 1990 and 1991, I worked on L’uovo del
cuculo, not only as screenwriter, but also as director and producer. I
filmed it in Bucarest in November 1992.
 
The Italian cinema is suffering at the moment, but why is it
suffering?
 
In 1978, when my dear friend Peppo Sacchi won his trial in Brussels
against the public television monopoly, I said that our cinema was
coming to an end. We never had a very strong industry; our producers
were better gamblers than businessmen. At this time, an incredible
number of TV stations started showing films without paying for them.
We were flooded with free movies, and of course, no one will spend
money on what they can have for free.
 
After a few years, after all the Italian movies had been shown on
television, many of the stations failed and a private monopoly was
formed by Berlusconi. Then there began a race between the public and
private monopolies to buy up all the American films, soap operas and
sitcoms. This left our production rate near zero. Our films were no
longer being dubbed in the US; instead, we dubbed all of your
productions. There used to be a tax on dubbing, so that the money
earned in Italy by American distributors also had to be spent here.
Our government was corrupted—I don’t know by whom (your guess is as
good as mine)—and this dubbing tax eventually disappeared, along with
the rules. We used to make 300 films per year, but this diminished to
only 60 or 70 per year, most of them Articolo 28s... usually shit. The
great old producers died or retired, and the new ones didn’t like to
take risks, going to public or private television with their projects
and asking for money. If someone gave them, for instance, 3 million
lire, they made a film for 2.5 million. They didn’t care about the
quality.
 
In the late 1980s, there was an attempt by Berlusconi’s TV to destroy
independent producers. Berlusconi started to pay people three times,
four times, even ten times more than the usual rate. No one else could
compete. (Salerno and I were paid a billion lire for a script about
Stradivarius!) Then he left Rome and the Italian cinema; I don’t know
why. Maybe we’ll find out in the near future, because there is a big
trial coming up against him, involving dirty money and other such
things.
 
What is it like today for professionals like yourself, trying to make
movies in Italy?
 
Today, it’s very difficult to sell scripts in Italy, and when you do
sell them, the money is ridiculous. Because of this, I am trying to
enter the American market. You don’t have anything like Articolo 28 in
America yet, but there is a new law that grants money to filmmakers,
partially free. Whereas my colleagues and I were once paid as much as
two billion lire for our projects, it’s now difficult to find even
600-700,000 lire to film anything.
 
Ernesto, you have written in almost every possible kind of film genre—
horror, historical costume drama, thriller, Western, crime/action,
etc. Which genre is the most difficult to write, and why?
 
None is more difficult than another. All stories are about men and
women: all the rest is scenography. If you dress your characters in
Stetsons and guns, you have a Western; if you put them in peplums, you
have an historical drama; if you tell a story about secrets, you have
a thriller; if you show the nightmares of your characters, you have a
horror film, and so on. The differences are made by the people you
work with. Some directors, producers and actors are exciting, others
are boring.
 
As one of Italy’s outstanding screenwriters of horror films, what are
your opinions of the genre’s current condition?
 
I don’t like modern horror films. Too much blood, too many special
effects, bad taste and an almost complete lack of plot. I think they
are very similar to pornos.
 
You’ve been active in writing all kinds of movies from the 1950s to
the 1990s. As the millennium looms closer, what kind of things are you
most interested in writing now, in 1997?
 
I’m writing a very serious, boring book about young people: as I see
them. In terms of scripts, I have written a comedy—a kind of fairy tale
—but nobody wants to produce it. My most recent work, which will begin
shooting in May, is called CRIME VS. CRIME. The director will be Aldo
Florio, an old friend of mine who helped me 40 years ago, when I first
came to Rome. The best-known movie he directed was Una vita venduta
(1976).
 
Thinking about your question, it’s funny... I have always told
producers what I would like to write, and they have always paid me to
write something—anything—else. I fought during the ’60s and ’70s to
convince them to make science fiction films, and they paid me to write
about vampires, werewolves and serial killers. Looking back, I see
that I’ve written only a small number of movies according to my own
ideas: I giganti di Roma, Libido, Il dolce corpo di Deborah, Milano
trema, Cin... Cin... Cianuro!, La pupa del gangster, Il Mio nome e
Nessuno, Stradivari and a few others. In my opinion, the best scripts
I wrote were never filmed.


Il mio nome è nessuno è uno dei miei film preferiti... 
 
però Ernesto te lo dico con affetto... hai un po' rotto le palle con questo post scritto e risctritto 200 volte...

 
 Con PRODI il PIL si alzò del 2%, l'export del 13%. Fu varato il CUNEO 
FISCALE per le imprese.
PRODI riuscì a far chiudere la procedura di infrazione per DEFICIT 
ECCESSIVIO che la UE aveva aperto contro lo sgoverno del ladrone 
piduista che lo aveva preceduto.
 
Ovviamente MONTI agisce in situazione differente, assolutamente 
disperata, perchè orde di suoperkretini hanno ridato al ladrone 
piduista il modo di SPOLPARE l'Italia, come ieri ha detto anche il 
super moderato MONTEZEMOLO.
 
Un popolo così collione che ha alcuni milioni di superimbecilli che 
mettono il Paese in mano a una gang per delinquere, capeggiata da un 
famosissimo ladro, corruttore colluso con la mafia tramite Dell'Utri, 
spergiuro sulla testa dei suoi figli, truffatore di soldi pubblici, 
maiale che riempie le istituzioni con le use troie, CHE MERITA?
 
 


Che Prodi se ne resti nella savana, quello è il suo mondo.

The Cayman ci ha detto :

La savana spazia tra la tua amigdala e il tuo nucleo accumbens.
 
Il Mali ha una storia ricca e  sconosciuta ai più. In Mali ci furono 
tre grandi imperi: l'Impero del Ghana, l'Impero del Mali e l'Impero 
Songhai.
 
Oggi è uno dei punti caldi dell'Africa. E' un onore per l'Italia, 
sputtanata e immerdata per 20 anni da un piduista colluso con la mnafia 
e porco rattuso che ha riempito le istituzioni di troie e papponi, che 
l'ONU abbia affidato quella missione a PRODI.
 
 

 
 
"ernesto"  ha scritto nel messaggio news:k6sfeo$inq$1...@speranza.aioe.org...

---------
 
Come dice Crethein de Troyes (il nome non alcun riferimenti con registi e
attricette di filmetti ì) "Qui trop parole,il se misfait"
Non è usando parole di cose che non si consce e di cui si ignorano
totalmente
aspetti pratici che si risolvono i problemi. Come direbbe Briatore: Prodi
sei fuori. Prodi è fuori dai giochi perchè è stato sfiduciato. Infatti pur
non avendo i numeri al Senato, Prodi ha voluto sino all'ultimo rimanere
attaccato alla poltrona. Buon Mali, ex presidente! 
 

 totalmente
 
meglio "che non si conoscono"