Horror directors

Born: October 5, 1952, Liverpool, England.

British writer, producer, director. Annointed “the future name in horror fiction” by Stephen King, Barker is a best seller whose high-flown novels continue to contribute to the genre. HELLRAISER and CANDYMAN excepted, the films he has generated are less inspirational, perhaps bespeaking the limited possibilities of Hollywood horror.

Barker’s goal has been to produce horror films that take themselves seriously, as opposed to the campy, tongue-in-cheek fare that has dominated the genre in recent years. He made his directorial debut with HELLRAISER, adapted by Barker from his novella The Hellbound Heart. Described by the London periodical Time Out as “a serious, intelligent and disturbing horror film,” this exceptional project was produced on a shoestring budget of $1.5 million and grossed more than $30 million. HELLRAISER introduced the sharp-featured “prince of pain” character who has been given the affectionate nickname “Pinhead” by an enthusiastic and bloodthirsty audience.

Pinhead also appeared in HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II and HELLRAISER III: HELL ON EARTH, both of which were executive-produced by Barker but directed by others. He has no control over the extensive marketing of his creation (whom he describes as “the Noel Coward of the lower depths”) because he sold those rights for $1 million in the deal that allowed him to direct the first installment. Barker’s second outing as a writer-director was NIGHTBREED, adapted from his novel Cabal, in which fellow horror auteur David Cronenberg had a role as a sinister psychiatrist.  Continue reading →

Born: Nov 3, 1938, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris

France’s sole horror auteur, Rollin prefers the label ‘fantastique‘ to describe his erotic, rhyming, manifestly personal work. Typified by wistful lesbian vampires and a narcotic narrative drive, his films use gothic paraphernalia to ponder the paired mysteries of death and desire. They are also thoroughly Gallic, blending the melancholy romance of the poetic realists with the generic play of the nouvelle vague. Meagre budgets accentuate a surreal sensibility, with fetishtically attired players sighted amid derelict locations.

His freeform monochrome debut LE VIOL DU VAMPIRE attracted fluke attention by opening in Paris at the height of les evenements. Originally intended as a short, it boasts a second half that oneirically resurrects a cast killed at the end of the first.
- David Prothero from BFI Companion to Horror edt. Kim Newman, 1996.

“the fantastique is the opposite of the supernatural” – Jean Rollin.
What he wants is to introduce the fantastic elements into the everyday world, to push the normal until it becomes the super-normal. The key to this is the creation of an atmosphere in which anything could happen – and frequently does. His films are based around images and sequences of images, not around the logical, point-by-point exposition of a screenplay. The genesis of many of his films is a particular place that catches his attention or a specific image. Other images then follow, and often the screenplay is an exercise in linking the pictures that come almost ready formed to his mind.

“A grandfather clock is of no interest – a vampire woman getting out of this clock at midnight, that’s me!” – Jean Rollin. Which is not to say that the stories in his films are unimportant. They are essential elements in helping to create a mood, giving strength to the introduction of outre elements that move the plot on to its next stage. Without the narrative, the images would lack focus. In LE FRISSON DES VAMPIRES, for example, there is a scene where the vampire, Dominique, emerges at midnight from inside a grandfather clock. The scene has narrative and dramatic sense, and is a startling image in itself; but if the film had consisted of nothing but such moments, the emotional impact of them would be lost. It’s the poetry inherent in these scenes that Rollin wants to cultivate, not the shock value of them. His ideal is to find images that are strong enough in themselves to need no final rational explanation. To him, the need to explain takes away the power of the images. Continue reading →

Born: July 3, 1957, Milan, Italy

Soavi left school at 18 with dreams of entering the Italian Film Industry. The dream became reality when he started acting in various low-grade B-movies including ALIEN TERROR, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, ANTHROPOPHAGOUS, A BLADE IN THE DARK and CALIGULA, THE UNTOLD STORY. During this time he dabbled in screenwriting and worked with both Lucio Fulci and Aristide Massaccesi (aka Joe D’Amato).

He first met Dario Argento after INFERNO, and they became friends. This led to a second assistant position on TENEBRAE, and a first assistant on PHENOMENA, as well as appearing in the film and directing the rock promo for Bill Wyman. Subsequently he assisted Lamberto Bava on DEMONS and directed the documentary DARIO ARGENTO’S WORLD OF HORROR.

It was only a matter of time before Soavi made his feature debut as director. That happened with STAGEFRIGHT in 1987, written by actor George Eastman, and budgeted at $500,000 by producer Joe D’Amato. Soavi remarked “The story was simple but I dressed it up with unconventional concepts like the owl mask and the whole idea with the key.” Retitled BLOODY BIRD in France, DELIRIA in Italy, STAGEFRIGHT won the ‘Fear’ Award at the prestigious Avoriaz Film Festival.

After resurfacing as Argento’s first assistant on OPERA, complete with cameo, Soavi shot the second unit footage for Terrry Gilliam’s THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN before embarking on THE CHURCH in 1989 (produced by Dario Argento). Soavi explained “I wanted to forge my own style and identity with THE CHURCH. Every frame was well-thought-out, I didn’t include anything just for the sake of effect. I turned out what was originally conceived as junk cinema into a strong essay on Karma and the ambiguous inner conflicts we all face sometime in our lives.”

After THE CHURCH, Soavi went on to work on a second Argento production, THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER, which was initially intended to be directed by Luca Verdone. The title was changed to THE SECT, but the project never got off the ground. However Argento liked the title, so Argento, Soavi and Gianni Romoli created a new story around it. THE SECT stengthened Soavi’s reputation as Italy’s new maestro of the macabre, yet he felt insecure and wanted to try something different. It took several years, and several false starts before he completed his next film, the ground breaking, DELAMORTE DELLAMORE aka CEMETARY MAN.

The film is an apocalyptic journey into the soul of what might be described as a special representative of Generation X, young cemetary guard Francesco Dellamorte, and his kingdom of life and death, the little graveyard in his hometown of Guardea. There, Dellamorte and his assistant are facing a strange phenomenon: the dead are coming back to life seven days after their deaths, and only the destruction of their brains can send them to rest in peace. The story is based on Tiziano Sclavi’s best selling cult novel Dellamorte Dellamore. This Italian/French/German co-production is one of the most unusual and important Italian genre films ever, offering not only stunning visuals but also a truly European approach to its story. Continue reading →

Born: July 31, 1914, San Remo, Italy

Italian director and cinematographer, he learned his craft by assisting his father Eugenio Bava, a former cameraman who headed the Instituto Luce’s optical effects department. Bava became a director of photography in 1939 and shot films by Roberto Rossellini, G.W. Pabst and Raoul Walsh.

Bava collaborated with Riccardo Freda on I, VAMPIRI (1957), the first Italian horror film of the sound era, initially as cameraman and optical effects designer, then directing half the film in only two days when Freda abandoned the film. In 1959, Freda intentionally tricked Bava into finishing Caltiki, the Immortal Monster. This led to his screen directorial debut, LA MASCHERA DEL DEMONIO (Black Sunday – 1960) based on the Nikolai Gogol story “Vij” (1835) and is a perfect conglomeration of nightmare and fairytale, parlaying the haunted forest ambience of Universal and the graphic violence of Hammer into something uniquely Italian.

The following three films showed Bava at the height of his creative powers. LA FRUSTA E IL CORPO (The Whip and the Body – 1963) cast Dahlia Lavi and Christopher Lee in a vertiginously romantic period film about a masochist haunted by the ghost of her whip-wielding lover. I TRE VOLTI DELLA PAURA (Black Sabbath – 1963), a three-part anthology which gave Karloff his last great horror role was often cited by Bava as his own personal favourite, and SEI DONNE PER L’ASSASSINO (Blood and Black Lace – 1964) is the first great giallo, a deleriously colourful, nakedly sadistic whodunit about fashion models being murdered by a maniac in search of an incriminating diary.

With TERRORE NELLO SPAZIO (Planet of the Vampires – 1965), in which members of an exploratory space mission are physically invaded by the disembodied spirits of an alien race, Bava achieved a successful fusion of SF and Horror and was a major influence on the 1979 film, Alien. After the disastrous LE SPIE VENGONO DAL SEMIFREDDO (Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs – 1966), he rebounded with OPERAZIONE PAURA (Kill Baby Kill – 1966) a low-budget, gothic masterpiece about villagers haunted by the ball bouncing ghost of a little girl, whose apparition compels them to commit suicide. Oedipal and unsettling, with unexpected sequences of Escher-like dislocations of time and space, the film was an influence on later films by Fellini, Scorsese and Lynch.

In 1968 Bava was approached by Dino De Laurentiis to film DANGER: DIABOLIK, the biggest assignment of his career. Budgeted at $3,000,000, DIABOLIK was completed for only $400,000. In 1969 Bava directed the darkly comic UN’ACCETTA PER LA LUNA DI MIELE (Hatchet for the Honeymoon) in Barcelona, followed by CINQUE BAMBOLE E LA LUNA D’AGOSTO (Five Dolls for an August Moon – 1970). He then impishly extended, even obliterated, the frontiers of the sub-genre with L’ECOLOGIE DEL DELITTO (Twitch of the Death Nerve – 1971), a diabolical black comedy which boasts 13 characters and 13 outrageously splashy murders. Reviled at the time of its release, it proved prophetic when the imitative Friday the 13th (1980) launched a new generation of “body count’ movies.

GLI ORRORI DEL CASTELLO DI NORIMBERGA (Baron Blood – 1972) was followed by the extraordinary IL DIAVOLO E IL MORTO (Lisa nd the Devil – 1973). Based on memories of growing up among his fathers sculptures, dialogue borrowed from Dostoevsky and an unrealised project about necrophile Viktor Ardisson, IL DIAVOLO E IL MORTO unfolds like a waking dream, following disorinted heroine Elke Sommer through a time-suspended labyrinth of love, sex and violent death. When the film proved unsaleable at the 1973 Cannes Festival, Bava re-made the film as LA CASA DELL’ESORCISMO (The house of Exorcism – 1975), a bewildering Exorcist rip-off. This served its purpose, easing the original out of the red, and has been forgoten, while LISA E IL DIAVOLO has resurfaced on video and DVD to an overdue audience of admirers.

He found it harder and harder to find directorial assignments after turning 60, and several green-lighted projects also turned unlucky. Troubled by his fathers inactivity, son Lamberto Bava (his assistant since 1966) scripted what proved to be his final feature, SHOCK (1977), the harrowing story of a woman’s mental collapse after returning to the house she once lived with her late, drug-addicted husband. Bava died of a heart attack at age 66. Continue reading →

Born: June 17, 1927, Rome, Italy

A journeyman whose pedigree includied comedies, Westerns and musicals, Fulci directed ZOMBIE, an unauthorised sequel to George Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978). With its flamboyant imagery (including a stunningly choreographed eye-gouging) and stirring score, ZOMBIE brought sudden acclaim and new career to Fulci as a major director of horror films. It was not his first in the field: he had made the animal themed gialli A LIZARD IN A WOMAN’S SKIN and DON’T TORTURE THE DUCKLING, the parodic DRACULA IN THE PROVINCES and the Edgar Allan Poe inspired THE PSYCHIC

ZOMBIE was followed by three other zombie films that compose a loose tetralogy: the gaudily violent CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD; THE BEYOND, his finest achievement in horror cinema; and THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETARY, a revision of Kubrick’s THE SHINING (1980). He explored other themes in another Poe project, THE BLACK CAT, and MANHATTAN BABY and pushed his penchant for violence into the sordid sex of THE NEW YORK RIPPER. After the stylish sword-and-sorcery adventure CONQUEST and a generic futuristic actioner, I GUERRIERI DELL’ANNO 2072, Fulci turned away from the zombies and violence that had reitalised his career with the FLASHDANCE inspired GIALLO MURDEROCK UCCIDE A PASSO DI DANZA, the psychological thriller THE DEVIL’S HONEY and AENIGMA.

With his health failing, his planned return to his beloved zombies in ZOMBIE 3 was compromised, as bruno Mattei replaced him during production. In the post-modern self-critique NIGHTMARE CONCERT, Fulci plays himself, wondering whether his obsession with horror is a mental illness that has led him to murder. His final films, sparsely budgeted and distributed, are a testament to his continued devotion to the cinema of fear. In 1995 Fulci began work on WAX MASK, a substantially budgeted movie produced by Dario Argento; he died just days before principal photography was to begin on March 13, 1996; the project was continued by Sergio Stivaletti. Continue reading →

Born: September 7, 1940, Rome, Italy

Purveyor of stylish horror films who began writing and directing at the age of 24. His distinctive directorial flair and fascination with voyeurism certainly owe a nod to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, but story development often takes second place to his cinematic flamboyance. After writing screenplays for other Italian directors, including a collaboration with Bernardo Bertolucci for Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, Argento made an impressive directorial debut with THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, for which he also wrote the screenplay. About an American writer who witnesses a murder and becomes caught up in the investigation, the film is now considered a precursor to the slasher genre of the 1980s. In CAT O’NINE TAILS, FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET and DEEP RED, Argento once again used a murder mystery format to experiment with the limits of the horror genre, employing special effects and music to heighten tension.

While the first two installments of a proposed trilogy, SUSPIRIA and INFERNO, had confusing plot devices, Argento’s visual sense nonetheless managed to make the films compelling, even as the story lines became increasingly inconsequential. Once again employing a routine murder mystery plotting device in TENEBRAE, he used the narrative structure as a departure point for a series of visually arresting murder sequences.

Argento’s first English-language feature was a European box office success under the title PHENOMENA, which New Line Cinema retitled CREEPERS and edited for US release. The story of a teenager with telepathic abilities who becomes involved in the hunt for a psychotic killer, its sometimes confusing plot was supplanted by an engaging visual style which included eccentric camera angles, slow motion sequences, arresting lighting and energetic editing.

Argento joined forces with cult director George Romero on DAWN OF THE DEAD in several technical capacities, and then directed “The Black Cat” segment in the episodic TWO EVIL EYES. One of Argento’s most baroque films came from this period as well, the Italian-made TERROR AT THE OPERA/OPERA. Here he explicitly drew upon Alfred Hitchcock in a technical tour de force which revamped THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925). Argento made a rare acting appearance in John Landis’ INNOCENT BLOOD before directing his first American feature, TRAUMA, a campy orgy of bloodletting which featured a hooded killer who sawed off the heads of his victims. His daughter Asia played the female lead.

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Born: 1972, Santiago de Chile, Chile

Born in Santiago de Chile in 1972, Amenabar was barely a year old when Pinochet’s military takeover forced his Chilean father and Spanish mother to flee to Madrid, where his family has lived ever since. “We got out just 2 weeks before the coup,” Amenabar recalls.

Like most of today’s movie directors, Amenabar started his career when he got hold of a video camera. His first video short was THE HEAD (1992) – a thriller with an over the top, gory ending where the protagionist rips a guys head off and the head bounces around the floor.

A couple of years later, while he was studying information sciences at Madrid University, one of his short movies came to the attention of Spanish film director/producer Jose Luis Cuerda, who asked Amenabar to write a feature film script for him. The result was the first draft of THESIS, which Cuerda read and immediately decided to put into production. Amenabar suddenly found himself, at only 23, with $1 million and five and a half weeks with which to make a succesful commercial movie. The end result is a genuinely scary and suspenseful thriller in the Hitchcock tradition, one that also addresses censorship and how modern media uses images of extreme violence as just another weapon in the ratings war.

THESIS tells the story of university student Angela, who is researching her thesis on violence in the media. One of her tutors, who has promised to find suitable audiovisual material from the campus archive, accidently discovers a network of disused storerooms in the basement. He finds an unmarked videocassette and puts it into a VCR, but is murdered before he gets a chance to divulge the tape’s content. Angela finds the cassette and decides to watch it, seeking a clue to the murderers identity, and in doing so discovers that snuff movies are being made in the universit’s basements. Inevitably, she’s soon cast as the next victim, and so begins a nail-biting game of cat and mouse between Angela and the chief suspect.

THESIS was a huge box-office success in Spain, and won seven Goya awards (the Spanish Oscar equivalent) as well as picking up prizes at a number of international festivals. Shooting a successful follow-up to such an impressive debut was a tall order, but Amenabar pulled it off in style with the nightmarish OPEN YOUR EYES, which debuted to even greater critical acclaim and surpassed the grosses of Thesis.

The film opens in a state prison psychiatric cell, where a hunched figure wearing a grotesque flesh textured mask is being interviewed by a psychoanalyst. This is the starting point of the labyrinthe plot, involving a twentysomething playboy, his bestfriends girl and a mysterious, disturbed woman infatuated with him. A car crash leaves him disfigured, and unable to restore his good looks he slowly descends into madness.

Although OPEN YOUR EYES sounds like an old fashioned psycho-thriller, the power of Amenabars vision lies in the story’s complexity and deftness with which he weaves apparently disparate, incomprehensible threads into a compelling and surprising tapestry of suspense, weird passions, horror and . . . more. Amenabar uses his camera to evoke dreams that are reality and realities that turn out to be hallucinations, to conjur upsensations of deja vu, to visualise dreams within flashbacks and flashbacks within dreams.” Continue reading →