The Filth and the Fury: The Salacious Celluloid of Aristide Massaccesi

Simply put, there was no Italian exploitation director as prolific as Aristide Massaccesi. His filmography of some one hundred and fifty films chronicled nearly every bankable genre (horror, hardcore and soft-core pornography, action/adventure, western, sexy comedy, and sci-fi) and spanned an impressive timetable (from his first-although largely uncredited-co-directorial effort in 1972’s Scansati…A Trinita Arriva Eldorado [AKA Trinity in Eldorado [[1]]] to his final adult films of 1999). Regardless of one’s personal reservations about the merit and morality of the man’s films, Aristide Massaccesi’s filmography is one of the strangest, most exhilarating and revolting cinematic protoplasms filmdom has.

The man who came to be known to cult audiences the world over as Joe D’Amato was born Aristide Massaccesi in Rome on the fifteenth of December, 1936 (Palmerini, Mistretta 80). Like fellow Italian horror directors Mario Bava and Dario Argento, Massaccesi was born into a family of cinema. His father had been in the Italian film business since the early 30’s (often working as a gaffer) and soon, in 1951 (at the age of fifteen) Aristide was formerly initiated into the Italian film industry. He began as an assistant scenes photographer, assistant cameraman, cable transporter and electrician. He also worked for Italian horror maestro Mario Bava’s father Eugenio at Italy’s "Instituta Luce", where he prepared on-screen titles and credits ("In those days the letters had to be cut by hand and that was my job" [Massaccesi 7]). Following this he worked as a photographer for Franceso Alessi;a friend of his father’s. He then learned the craft of hand-held camerawork (which was to be one of his trademarks) from director Michele Lupo.

One of Massaccesi’s more noteworthy early stints was as an assistant camera operator in Mario Bava’s second film Ercole al Centro della Terra (AKA Hercules in the Haunted World-1961), sharing a set again with Eugenio Bava, who was working on the film’s special effects. Despite his reputation as a director of cheapjack horror and sex films, D’Amato has brushed shoulders with more than a few "respected" filmmakers such as Franco Zeffirelli (assistant cameraman in 1961’s La Bisbetica Domata), Jean-Luc Godard (assistant cameraman in 1963’s Le Depris) and Jean Renoir (still photographer in 1952’s The Golden Coach). And one of Massaccesi’s titles (1973’s The Arena-a female gladiator film he co-directed with Steve Carver and also photographed) was even edited by a young Joe Dante (Gremlins, Piranha), according to Dennis Fischer’s Horror Film Directors: 1931-1990 (294). This may indeed be true, as Dante was cutting his cinematic teeth during the seventies editing trailers for his boss’ (Roger Corman) production company "New World Pictures." Interestingly, the film is currently available on Corman’s home video label "New Concorde", suggesting the film may have been produced by Corman’s "New World Pictures [2]."

One of Massaccesi’s most fascinating non-directorial credits is his re-editing of notorious Spanish director’s Jess Franco's 1975 film De Sade's Juliette for Italian consumption. Basically, Massaccesi edited in footage from three different sources/films: De Sade’s Juliette itself (the original version of this film now considered lost[3]), Midnight Party and Shining Sex (all films from 1975 and all from Franco). He then re-dubbed the original film with a new narration which altered the original story and rescored it with a new Nico Fidenco score (Fidenco would score Massaccesi’s later 1977 film Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals among others for Massaccesi). Massaccesi shot no exclusive footage for this new version [4] (Monell "D’Amato and Justine").

Beginning in 1967 Massaccesi dove further into the cinematic abyss by photographing dozens of films. Most noteworthy for genre fans was his work in Alberto De Martino’s 1974 Exorcist clone L’Anticristo (AKA The Antichrist) and 1972’s Cosa Avete Fatto a Solange? (AKA What have you Done to Solange?). Especially striking was his work on the former title, which was unfortunately compromised by a severely cropped, full-screen VHS release from Embassy Video (also heavily cut by over twenty minutes!). His sometimes striking compositions in that film should come as no surprise, as Massaccesi himself has always enjoyed the technical side of filmmaking the most. He has even admitted: "I just like to experiment with the technical side of things, maybe that’s why I’m not too good at directing since I always put in a lot of time into the technical aspect" (Massaccesi 8).

Obviously, the next logical step was to direct films of his own. One of his very first films, 1973’s Morte ha sorriso all'assassino (AKA Death Smiles on a Murderer), featured his real name in the credits (Monell "D’Amato’s true directorial debut?"). This would be the only time he would have a directorial credit under his real name. He had previously declined to sign his real name to other projects because of shaky budgets, but because he "felt encouraged by the budget…and by the presence of two important actors like Ewa Aulin and Klaus Kinski" Massaccesi decided to credit his real name. Ewa Aulin, a Swedish native (incidentally, from the same area as fellow Italian genre actress Janet Agren), was already a relatively established star, coming off of roles in 1967’s delirious Morte ha fatto l'uovo (AKA Death Laid an Egg) and 1970’s Microscopic Liquid Subway to Oblivion (Palmerini, Mistretta 77). And German native Kinski already had dozens of spaghetti westerns, horrors and krimis (German-made thrillers) under his belt.

Massaccesi blames the shoddy script that he himself had partially penned for the lukewarm box-office reception. The film is indeed rather meandering and sometimes stilted although it is by no means a total loss as it displays some of the director’s most atmospheric and suspenseful moments.

After this film Massaccesi began his somewhat notorious practice of directing under a pseudonym. He credited his first pseudonymous films to the fictitious "Michael Wortruba." Four of his films bear this name: 1973’s Novelle Licenziose di Vergini Vogliose (AKA Diary of a RomanVirgin [5]) and Pugni, Pirati e Karat, 1974’s Eroi all’inferno and La Rivolta delle Gladiatrici (AKA The Arena [Paluci "The Arena"]). Then came 1975’s Giubbe Rosse (AKA Red Coat), which he credited to the fictitious "Joe D’Amato." Massaccesi simply made this name up when he saw it on a calendar (Massaccesi 8)! Under this pseudonym, Massaccesi made some of his most financially successful, fascinating and satisfying films.

Undoubtedly, Massaccesi’s largest cash-cow was his "Black Emanuelle" series. Although he certainly didn’t originate the series, he took it further and achieved greater success with it than any other director. This series of films starred Laura Gemser, an exotic beauty native to Java, Indonesia. Gemser christened her role as the shameless globe-trotting newspaper reporter Mary Jordan (known to her readers as Emanuelle) in 1975’s Emanuelle Nera (AKA Black Emanuelle and directed by Albert Thomas with the spelling of "Emanuelle" altered to avoid a lawsuit). She then resumed her role in Massaccesi’s own take on the series, 1976’s Emanuelle nera orient reportage (AKA Emanuelle in Bangkok) . Although the film is of interest to die-hard fans of the series because it is the original in Massaccesi’s contribution to the series [6] , most viewers will likely gravitate towards two titles in Massaccesi’s "Black Emanuelle" canon: 1977’s Emanuelle in America and the same year’s Emanuelle e gli Ultimi Cannibali (AKA Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals). The former title is perhaps the most unrestrained Massaccesi film. It’s a virtual lazy Susan of jaw-dropping sleaze and appalling violence. Among other things, the film includes an authentic scene of a woman masturbating a horse, hardcore group sex (complete with "money shots"), and most shocking of all, uncomfortably realistic pseudo snuff footage that would make even the most hardened horror fan squirm. It is not these disparate elements alone that astonish, but the fact that such a wide range of taboos would ever be grouped together in one film. In fact, it was the pseudo-snuff footage-featuring women being force-fed molten steel through iron dildos and nipples messily sliced off (the special effects done by famed Italian makeup man Gianetto De Rossi)-that supposedly inspired Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg to make his seminal 1983 film of perversion Videodrome (Sulev 34). The film doesn’t merely affect the viewer. It brands them. Similarly, his 1977 film Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals [7] featured an unwholesome marriage of sex and violence, in which Emanuelle and a troupe of adventure seekers (including her husband Gabriele Tinti, who died prematurely in 1995 due to cancer) travel to a cannibal-infested jungle (actually Fogliano, Italy). The gore effects, although crude, are appalling in their unflinching brutality. The effects were done by Fabrizio Sporza (Donald Willis), along with Fabrizio de Angelis. De Angelis, along with D’Amato, also co-produced this film for the two men’s short-lived production company Fulvio Film. Gemser continued to work for Massaccesi outside of the Emanuelle series in such films as his 1976 film Eva Nera, which co-starred Jack Palance [8].

An interesting exception to the Massaccesi Emanuelle canon is the deceptively titled Emanuelle e Francoise: Le Sorelline (AKA Emanuelle’s Revenge, 1975). The film, which does not star Gemser in the titular role, concerns Carlo (George Eastman AKA Luigi Montefiori), a careless playboy who has broken one too many hearts. As punishment for her sister’s suicide (which she blames on Carlo because of his reckless treatment of her), Emanuelle (Rosemarie Lindt-a German actress living in Rome at the time) lures Carlo to her home and chains him up in a sound proof viewing booth. Once there, he is tortured by being denied participation in the various salacious activities of Emanuelle and her amorous partygoers. He is soon driven insane and begins to hallucinate. In the film’s coup de gore, poor Carlo believes Emanuelle’s dinner guests are eating human entrails. They messily chow down on severed hands and legs, smacking their bloody lips and gorging themselves on slippery intestines while fingering each other under the dinner table. Interestingly, this sick little film’s story was imported from Bruno Mattei (a prolific director of grade Z garbage such as Rats: Nights of Terror), from an obscure Greek film.

The graphic and often tasteless marriage of sex and violence (long the ultimate taboo of cinema) featured so prominently in Emanuelle e Francoise: Le Sorelline proved to be Massaccesi’s cinematic calling card. Perhaps his best film, 1979’s Buio Omega (AKA Beyond the Darkness), features his filmography’s most unapologetically brutal and unflinching gore sequences coupled with shameless bad taste and sleaze. Kieran Canter stars as Frank, a deeply disturbed taxidermist. When his lover dies (Cinzia Monrealis), he immortalizes her figure by exhuming her body and stuffing her. His perverse maid, Iris (Franca Stoppi), soon becomes jealous as Frank spends increasingly more time with his new stuffed plaything than her. The film concludes in a blood-soaked battle between servant and master.

A brutally vile and queasy quagmire of a film, Buio Omega succeeds not just because of its nauseous scenes of ultra-realistic exhumation and bodily violation, but because it so succinctly encapsulates the "D’Amato touch." It has shameless bad taste in the form of Iris’s unwholesome relationship with Frank, in which she plays a sort of Oedipal mother figure (in one scene she plays wet nurse to Frank, allowing him to suckle her breast), and a truly cynical outlook on the value (or lack thereof) of life. In one of the film’s most excruciating scenes, Iris kindly helps Frank dispose of a victim by methodically and unfeelingly chopping the corpse up with a butcher’s cleaver and tossing the limbs in an acid bath. She then collects the fleshy broth and dumps it in a ditch in the backyard. Then, in a flash of blackly comedic genius, Massaccesi immediately flashes to a visibly nauseated Frank watching Iris messily slurping up a bowl of beef stew, reminding him of the chunky, fleshy mess disposed of just before. Frank then succumbs to his nausea and vomits in a nearby trashcan. Because Buio Omega has the pivotal triumvirate of Massaccesi’s style (graphic violence, perversion/sleaze and black humor/bad taste) it remains his best film, and one of the most satisfying horrors of the decade. It is also interesting to note that this film was one of the first on which Massaccesi worked with Donatella Donati, who would become his faithful assistant over the years, fulfilling such disparate roles as assistant director and script consultant.

In that same year, Massaccesi joined the burgeoning "nunsploitation" sweepstakes with his Immagini di un Convento (AKA Images in a Convent). The film stars Italian sleaze mainstays Paola Senatore [9] and Donald O’Brien [10] (a native of Ireland, who had starred in Massaccesi’s previous Emanuelle e gli Ultimi Cannibali as one of the doomed expeditioners ). Unfortunately, despite the film’s wall-to-convent-wall sleaze, the film is a mostly tawdry affair. The minimal plot concerns a certain diabolical statue on the grounds of an Italian convent that for no satisfactory reason drives the prudish nuns to sexual blasphemy. It’s just Massaccesi’s excuse to peddle to the fetish crowd, and in that aspect it succeeds. However, for the more discerning horror/sleaze audience, the film will ultimately disappoint as it resembles yet another faceless "erotica" product of the period, easily outclassed by other similar genre efforts such as Gianfranco Mingozzi’s 1974 film Flavia la Monaca Musulmana (AKA Flavia the Heretic) and Walerian Borowczyk’s Within a Cloister. Even the sex scenes are surprisingly tame (save for a gross hardcore gang rape sequence and some graphic dildo play). Massaccesi, ever the businessman, couldn’t resist riding the Exorcist trend for all it was worth, as he slyly slips in a throw-away exorcism sequence with a frenzied priest (O’Brien) blessing the blasphemous convent walls as myriads of horny nuns attempt to seduce him by flashing their supple breasts. Massaccesi tried his hand one last time in the genre with his 1985 film L’Alcova (AKA Convent of Sinners).

The next decade proved to be a mixed bag for Massaccesi, seeing some of his most interesting work (his "Caribbean" series), his most workmanlike work (1980’s Anthropophagus and the following year’s sequel Rosso Sangue), his most financially successful work (1987’s Undici Giorni, Undici Notte [AKA Eleven Days, Eleven Nights]) and his most unapologetically awful work (his fantasy-adventure films Ator the Fighting Eagle and Ator, The Return, both 1980).

Although begun in 1978, Massaccesi’s so-called "Caribbean" series continued through 1981, with the films Orgasmo Nero (1980) and Hard Sensation in 1981. The series also includes 1978’s Papaya dei Caraibi (AKA Papaya of the Caribbean) and 1981’s (some sources say 1979) notorious Porno Holocaust and Le Notti Dei Morti Viventi (AKA Erotic Nights of the Living Dead [11] [[Özkaracalar]]). These films received this citation because they were shot in the Caribbean (some back-to-back). The films also share largely the same cast (e.g. Mark Shannon [a hardcore performer], and Dirce Funari [who starred in more than her share of Italian exploitation films]) and were often produced by the enigmatic "Kristal Film". Although the plots may be superficially divergent, they contain largely the same themes and execution: a heavy emphasis on sex and sleaze with a dollop of graphic violence to top it off. Because of this mixture of sex and violence, the films are highly unique, and because of this uneasy collision of taboos they may appear to be box-office death for such a businessman as Massaccesi. But Massaccesi defended his decision to make these films with the statement: "I had endeavored to mingle my two favorite genres, tending more towards the erotic side…" (Palmerini, Mistretta 77). Unsurprisingly, most of these films flopped at the box-office, but continue to endure as genuine curiosities among collectors of obscure horrors (although some of the Caribbean films, including Porno Holocaust, were shown on Caribbean TV stations!). Particularly interesting was Papaya of the Caribbean, which features a sultry Mellisa Chiementi as the eponymous temptress. The standout scene of the film features a frenzied voodoo ritual in a dusty Caribbean dwelling, in which a pig is graphically sacrificed (truncated in the edited German language release Papaya-Die Liebesgsttin der Kannibalen). Another actress, Lucia Ramirez, virtually reprised the role two years later in Orgasmo Nero (erroneously cited as a hardcore production in the otherwise-excellent Spaghetti Nightmares publication). Despite the exploitative title and one sequence featuring a heart removal, this film is the gentlest entry in the series, although there are a few brief flashes of full-frontal male nudity. Ramirez plays a vengeful voodoo practitioner who exacts her revenge on her lover’s (Nieves Navarro) boyfriend via a voodoo ceremony. Orgasmo Nero also boasts the strongest visuals of the series, which act as an effective travelogue of the sunny Caribbean. Because of the sumptuous visuals of the Caribbean’s natural beauty and Stelvio Cipriani’s effectively breezy score, Orgasmo Nero is the most sensual and erotic of the Caribbean films, exhibiting a rare exoticism (courtesy of the bizarre voodoo rituals practiced by an often nude Ramirez) not found in the other entries. Most fascinating is the fact that Luigi Cozzi (a fellow Italian horror and sci-fi director) came up with the concept for the film and penned the script (not Massaccesi himself, as many sources claim). Hard Sensation is a sort of Caribbean rendition of Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, in which three escaped convicts rape a group of young schoolgirls until they take bloody revenge upon them [13]. Finally, Porno Holocaust, although a mostly meandering exercise in lower-tier sleaze, boasts one of Massaccesi’s most delirious excuses for a plot: a mutated black man stalks and kills various cast members by choking them (in graphic, totally hardcore detail) with his enormous penis (alas, not the real thing, but a latex and rubber creation)!

One of the stars of a few entries in the Caribbean series, George Eastman (real name: Luigi Montefiori), had a starring role in what would be Massaccesi’s most famous horror film, Anthropophagus (1980). Although the film was made in 1980, Montefiori’s relationship began with Massaccesi many years prior, beginning with 1972’s Amico, Stammi Lontano Almeno un Palmo (Massaccesi was director of photography). Montefiori, already a writer for the screen since the early seventies, also wrote the script for Massaccesi’s 1975 film Giubbe Rosse. Thus began a symbiotic professional and personal relationship that would continue throughout Massaccesi’s career.

Although the film certainly has achieved notoriety, Anthropophagus is a disappointingly routine film. Although Massaccesi was able to conceal budget constraints in the past, Anthropophagus bears its low-budget earmarks all too well (to date, it was the only film Massaccesi shot on 16mm). The film stars a frenzied Montefiori (in gobbed-on makeup that looks more like a skin infection than a monstrosity) as the titular character, a crazed cannibal who stalks the streets of a desolate Greek island (shot on location) after he was forced to eat his family when their boat ran astray. The film itself is quite slow and wanting, largely devoid of the director’s trademark gross-out gore until the final twenty minutes. However, the film does at least boast one stand-out scene of grue: the removal of a pregnant woman’s (Italian sex-bomb Serena Grandi, in one of her earliest roles) fetus, which is then messily chomped on by Montefiori. Massaccesi filmed this famed sequence in a cave in Rome, and segments of the film were also shot in an island near Rome.

Regardless of the shock value of the title, the enduring interest of the film is undoubtedly the fact that it was the inaugural film for Massaccesi’s production company Filmirage. Throughout the eighties, Filmirage films would be synonymous with that "D’Amato look", and some films, such as 1987’s Deliria (directed by Michele Soavi and produced by Massaccesi and featuring assistant camerawork by Massaccesi’s son Daniele [13]) were genuine classics.

Despite the obvious paucity of budget, the film was a roaring success at box offices worldwide, and such generous profits inevitably required Massaccesi to film a sequel, the following year’s Rosso Sangue (AKA Absurd [14]). Keeping the overseas success of his original in mind, Massaccesi specifically formulated the sequel for American consumption, avoiding any cues that might betray its Italian origins (although one glaring error manages to slip through, as Mark Shannon is seen on a TV set!). He also employed more American actors than usual, using American actor William Berger’s children Katya [15] and Kasimir Berger. Although the filming went swiftly and largely without a hitch, Massaccesi found it very difficult to get a young Kasimir Berger to smile when he triumphantly held the decapitated head of Montefiori up at the film's conclusion (Berger "Anthropophagus 2")! Surprisingly, Absurd is the better film of the two, since it benefits from a swifter pace and a greater dose of graphic shocks. The result is one of the better "slasher" films of the decade, featuring among its sanguinary cavalcade a splattery band-saw skull-splitting, an axe decapitation and a graphic cranial drilling.

Massaccesi delivered only one last hurrah of blood-soaked cinema-1982’s Caligola: La Storia Mai raccontata (AKA Caligula: The Untold Story) -before losing touch completely with the horrific and shocking cinema that had established him. The film, a spurious "sequel" to Tinto Brass’s original, has English actor David Brandon (billed as "David Cain" in the uncut Dutch print) playing the eponymous tyrannical ruler. The film plays as a massively inaccurate exploitation biography of the ruler’s opprobrious excesses and cruelty. And it succeeds admirably, in fact trumping even Brass’s shocking original. In fact, Massaccesi’s film is one of the most shocking and satisfying exploitation films ever made, a delirious smorgasbord of spilt bodily fluids, bodily tissue and unrelenting sleaze and cruelty. In one astonishing scene, a Roman orgy is portrayed unflinchingly. Countless participants engage in sexual activity in hardcore fashion. Penises are inserted in various orifices and sperm flows freely. Senators ogle the crowd and gorge themselves until they vomit onto the crowd. In the midst of this debauchery two gladiators fight with spiked knuckles, splashing blood onto the bared flesh of the orgy. Then, to top this hair-raising sequence off, a "performer" enters and masturbates a horse (an authentic sequence) and is then penetrated. The film contains even more shocking material (anal skewerings, decapitations, infanticide, heapings of hardcore sex, and stabbings) in a neat, 100 minute package that expels more stench than an overstuffed garbage bag in the summertime.

After such mind-melting excess, it appears that Massaccesi simply burned out, badly needing to empty the putrid bilge water from his cinematic vessel. He went on creative auto-pilot from 1980 to 1982 (excluding the films previously mentioned, of course) when he allowed some thirteen films to be made from existing footage from his hardcore films from the late seventies. These new hybrid films include Blue Erotic Climax (1980), Super Climax (1980) and Bocco Golosa (1981).

Massaccesi continued his creative slide with the "Ator" films. These cheap adventure films (directed under his "David Hills" pseudonym and shot in Italy) are instantly forgettable, although they did feature prominently during the earlier days of the US home video explosion of the 80s (released on the "Thorn EMI" label). Equally poor was his Bronx Lotta Finale [16] (AKA Endgame,1983) and his Anno 2020-Il Gladiatori del Futuro (1983-credited to his uncommon "Kevin Mancuso" pseudonym [17]). These two post-apocalyptic films (shot back-to-back) plumb the depths of the already notoriously awful sub-genre that was largely hatched from the popularity of the "Mad Max" films. Unlike other post-apocalyptic films, Bronx Lotta Finale was not shot on location, but instead shot in Italy, at the De Paolis studios in Rome (Slater 38). The second assistant cameraman was a still-young Michele Soavi (under the pseudonym "Mike Soft"), a future Italian horror superstar director whom Massaccesi mentored under a handful of his films.

An interesting footnote in Massaccesi’s career was his Undici Giorni, Undici Notte (shot on location in New Orleans). An obvious rip-off/remake of Adrian Lyne’s 1986 film 9 1/2 Weeks, the film is effectively erotic without being repulsively leering and pornographic. Both films obviously struck a chord with audiences worldwide, as Massaccesi cites this film as one of his most successful overseas.

Unfortunately, Massaccesi’s unique career did not end on a high note. The final leg of his exhaustive career-his hardcore pornography output-was perhaps his most dire. Massaccesi himself believed "there is no artistic aspect in the making of pornography" (Massaccesi 9). And his dozens of hardcore pornos only corroborate this statement. Throughout the 90s Massaccesi churned out countless hardcore productions (many starring Italian adult film superstar Rocco Siffredi) that sorely lacked the perverse imagination and cynical tone of his earlier horror/sex hybrids, although they certainly were graphic. Interestingly, rumors have spread via the internet concerning Buio Omega star Kieran Canter’s involvement in some of these hardcore films, but to date no source has been able to confirm his involvement in any capacity.

When he wasn’t making faceless pornographic films, Massaccesi cranked out a few insultingly awful "horror" films before he ultimately had to close his Filmirage production company due to financial duress. These films include 1990’s Crawlers (in which he produced and co-directed under his "David Hills" guise). The film was actually filmed as Troll 3 (Bissette 11), a sequel to Massaccesi’s own misfire Troll 2. The only link the film has to Massaccesi’s glory days is a lame "costumes by Laura Gemser" credit. Massaccesi also produced his old friend Luigi Montefiori’s DNA: Metamorphosis in 1989. Massaccesi’s final film was probably The Show, filmed in Las Vegas shortly before his death (Monell "D’Amato’s Very Last").

When Massaccesi died of a heart-attack on January 23rd, 1999, horror and exploitation cinema was robbed of one of its most fascinating icons. Although the man certainly has his detractors who criticize his "profits first, art later" approach, few other directors have such a devoted cult following and even fewer have dared to take cinema as far as that man of many names, Aristide Massaccesi. And it appears that Massaccesi’s legacy may not be lost, as Massaccesi’s son Daniele (who had worked on some of his father’s films as assistant cameraman) has continued in his father’s footsteps as a film technician, most notably as a steadicam operator in the 2001 blockbuster Hannibal and the same year’s Black Hawk Down (as a camera operator).

1. Made in a scant three to four days. The film, Massaccesi admits, was largely made as a joke and heavily comprised of unused stock footage from previous spaghetti westerns.

2. The film has surfaced in truncated form on a Greek video label and as a black-and-white grey market dupe under the title Justine and the Whip. Thanks to Robert Monell for this information.

3. The film has also been recently released in Italy on the "Sex and Violence" video label under the original title (pictured in this article).

4. This film was released as Julietta 69 in France and Justine, Lady Lujuria in Spain. This newly-edited film was released in 1979.

5. This film, along with the same year’s Cantebury N. 2, was a "Decamerotic" film. The "Decamerotics" were period films set in the time of Giovanni Boccaccio’s eponymous classic work of fiction. The cinematic trend began with director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Il Decameron.

6. The entire D’Amato "Black Emanuelle" catalogue of films is, in chronological order, 1976’s Emanuelle in Bangkok and Emanuelle in America, 1977’s Emanuelle Around the World, Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade and Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals.

7. Released complete (save for a few missing frame due to damage) on the out-of-print "Twilight Video" label (pictured in this article).

8. Palance’s bizarre appearance in such a low-budget oddity makes sense when one realizes that the film was produced by Harry Alan Towers. Towers had Palance under contract, and he had already acted in Spanish horror/erotica filmmaker Jess Franco’s 1969 film Marquis de Sade: Justine.

9. Senatore, who also appeared in Massaccesi’s Emanuelle in America, stirred up some controversy for her recurring heroin addiction, which, sadly, she is reportedly still struggling with.

10. Massaccesi used O’Brien one last time in his film Frankenstein 2000. The film was notorious because of Massaccesi’s tasteless casting choice of O’Brien as Frankenstein. O’Brien had recently suffered a cranial injury that left him largely brain-damaged, in effect allowing him to fit the role of the monster perfectly.

11. This film, along with Porno Holocaust, contains hardcore scenes that were intended specifically for the films. These XXX scenes were not shot as inserts for foreign releases as many sources claim. However, Massaccesi did have to go back and shoot some XXX scenes for Erotic Nights of the Living Dead because he intended for the film to originally be a "straight" zombie/horror film, until his distributor insisted he film sex scenes as well.

12. Aristide Massaccesi also operated the camera on a few scenes as well, according to co-star John Morghen.

13. Massaccesi made another film that treads on similar territory-his 1979 film Il Pornoshop della Settima Strada (AKA The Sex Shop on 7th Avenue). The film was shot soft and on location in New York, although the film has shown up on VHS with hardcore inserts, which Massaccesi denies filming.

14. Released on the out-of-print "Wizard Video" label as The Monster Hunter, with completely unrelated artwork that tries to pass the film off as a living dead film!

15. Katya retired from acting at the age of sixteen. She now lives in New York and has been married for nine years. She remembers little about the shoot of Rosso Sangue save the incident mentioned above. She can, however, confirm D’Amato’s penchant for shooting films very quickly.

16. co-written by an uncredited Luigi Montefiori

17. This film was also co-directed by an uncredited Luigi Montefiori (who also stars in Endgame). Supposedly, Montefiori was so ashamed of the final product that he insisted his name be removed. Smart man!

1. Aguilar, Carlos. Jess Franco: El Sexo del Horror. Florence: Glittering Images, 1999.

2. Berger, Katya. "Anthropophagus 2." Email to Stephen Gladwin. 5 May. 2001.

3. Bissette, Steve. "Crawlers." European Trash Cinema (1994): 11-12.

4. Fischer, Dennis. Horror Film Directors: 1931-1990. Jefferson: McFarland, 1991.

5. Hardy, Phil, ed. The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Horror. Woodstock: Overlook

Press, 1995.

6. Joe D’Amato: Totally Uncut. Dir. Roger A. Fratter. Nocturno Cinema, 1999.

7. Martin, John and Gianmarco Stacciari. "Do it To Me Once More: The Conclusion of an

Exclusive John Morghen Interview." Giallo Pages. 1994: 5.

8. Massaccesi, Aristide. "The Joe D’Amato Interview." European Trash Cinema. Jul.

1995.

9. Monell, Robert. "D’Amato and Justine." Email to Stephen Gladwin. 2 Dec. 2002.

10. Monell, Robert. "D’Amato’s True Directorial Debut?" Email to Stephen Gladwin. 9

Dec. 2002.

11. Monell, Robert. "D’Amato’s Very Last." Email to Stephen Gladwin. 9 Dec. 2002.

12. Özkaracalar, Kaya. The Big-Screen Legacy of the Late, Great Joe D’Amato. 2002.

Dark Waters. 26 Nov. 2002 <http://www.dark-waters.com>

13. Palmerini, Luca M., and Gaetano Mistretta. Spaghetti Nightmares. Key West:

Fantasma Books, 1996.

14. Pulici, Davide. "The Arena." Email to Stephen Gladwin. 4 Dec. 2002.

15. Slater, Jason. "The Italian Apocalypse." Diabolik (1997): 38.

16. Slater, Jason. "The Italian Apocalypse." Diabolik (1999): 7, 16.

17. Sulev, Erik. "My Baby Was Black Emanuelle." European Trash Cinema (1994):

32-34.

Firstly, a VERY special thanks to Robert Monell for his support and invaluable information on the man and his films. And another thanks to Bill Knight, who has casually dropped many rare tidbits of info on me on numerous occasions.