Ruggero Deodato

Ruggero Deodato (left) with Eli Roth on a promotional tour for Hostel Part II.

Ruggero Deodato (1939-2022) was an Italian director, screenwriter, and actor best known for the controversial proto-found-footage film Cannibal Holocaust.

## Early Life

Deodato was born in Potenza, Basilicata, and moved to Rome with his family as a child. He went to Denmark and started as a musician playing piano and conducting a small orchestra at 7 years old. Once back to Italy, he quit music after his private teacher sent him away for playing by ear.

Deodato grew up on a farm and at eighteen grew up in the neighborhood where Rome's major film studios are located. Through a friendship with the son of Rossellini, it was there that he learned how to direct under Roberto Rossellini and Sergio Corbucci; he helped to make Corbucci's *The Slave* and *Django* as an assistant director. Later on in the 1960s, he directed some comedy, musical, and thriller films, before leaving cinema to do TV commercials. In 1976 he returned to the big screen with his ultra-violent police flick *Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man*.

In 1977 he directed a jungle adventure called *Last Cannibal World* (also known as *Jungle Holocaust*) starring British actress Me Me Lai with which he 'rebooted' the cannibal film / mondo genre started years earlier by Italian director Umberto Lenzi.

## Career in Horror

### Cannibal Holocaust

Late in 1979 he returned to the cannibal subgenre with the controversial *Cannibal Holocaust*. The film was shot in the Amazon Rainforest for a budget of about $100,000, and starred Robert Kerman, Francesca Ciardi, and Carl Gabriel Yorke. The film is a mockumentary about a group of filmmakers who go into the Amazon Rainforest and subsequently stage scenes of extreme brutality for a Mondo-style documentary. During production, many cast and crew members protested the use of real animal killing in the film, including Kerman, who walked off the set.

Deodato created massive controversy in Italy and all over the world following the release of *Cannibal Holocaust*, which was wrongly claimed by some to be a snuff film due to the overly realistic gore effects. Deodato was arrested on suspicion of murder, and was subsequently forced to reveal the secrets behind the film's special effects and to parade the lead actors before an Italian court in order to prove that they were still alive. Deodato also received condemnation, still ongoing, for the use of real animal torture in his films. Despite the numerous criticisms, *Cannibal Holocaust* is considered a classic of the horror genre and innovative in its found footage plot structure.

### Subsequent Films

Deodato's 1980 film *The House on the Edge of the Park* was the most censored of the 'video nasties' in the United Kingdom for its graphic violence. His *Cut and Run* is a jungle adventure thriller, containing nudity, extreme violence and the appearance of Michael Berryman as a crazed, machete-wielding jungle man.

In the 1980s, he made some other slasher/horror films, including *Body Count*, *Phantom of Death* and *Dial Help*. In the 1990s he turned to TV movies and dramas with some success. In 2007, he made a cameo appearance in *Hostel: Part II* in the role of a cannibal.

### Unmade Projects

Throughout his career, Deodato was attached to a number of projects which either did not come to fruition or, for various reasons, were assigned to other directors. He was initially attached to *The New York Ripper* (Lucio Fulci), *The Last Shark* (Enzo G. Castellari), *Casablanca Express* (Sergio Martino) and *Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story* (Mario Gariazzo).

Unmade projects included a snake thriller, *Rattles*, and a sequel to *Cannibal Holocaust* entitled *Cannibal Fury*, which was to enter production in 1983.

## Personal Life and Death

Deodato was married to actress Silvia Dionisio from 1971 to 1979. He had a son from the marriage. His partner was Micaela Rocco.

In 2019, the filmmaker was honored with a documentary about his life and career called *Deodato Holocaust*. Directed by Brazilian filmmaker Felipe M. Guerra, it was released in May of that year at the Fantaspoa Film Festival, in Brazil, with the presence of Ruggero. The documentary consists of a series of interviews that Guerra made with the Italian director, edited with images from Deodato's movies and personal photos. In 2021, *Deodato Holocaust* was released on Blu-Ray in Sweden and Germany – in limited media book format, containing also a 120-page booklet about Deodato's life and career. The documentary was later released in France and the United States, this time as a bonus feature in collector's editions of other films directed by Ruggero.

Deodato died in Rome on 29 December 2022, at the age of 83, from complications of pneumonia, kidney failure, and liver failure.

## Contributions to Horror

* Jungle Holocaust (1977) (director)
* Cannibal Holocaust (1980) (director)
* The House at the End of the Park (1980) (director)
* Cut and Run (1985) (director)
* Body Count (1987) (director)
* Phantom of Death (1988) (director)
* The Washing Machine (1993) (director)
* Hostel: Part II (2007) (actor- "The Italian Cannibal")
* Chimeres (2013) (actor- "Butcher"
* Ballad in Blood (2016) (director)
* Deathcember (2019) (segment director)