Interview with Lav Diaz (2010-2011)

This interview is part of the book Conversations with Lav Diaz, published by Piretti Editore (Bologna) and distributed internationally by Idea Books (Amsterdam). The English-language book gathers seven interviews with Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz conducted by Michael Guarneri between 2010 and 2020.

Lav Diaz and Michael Guarneri in Paris, September 2021

Michael Guarneri: I noticed a similarity between the premise of your fiction film Walang alaala ang mga paru-paro / Butterflies Have No Memories (2009) and the actual hijack of a bus in Manila on 23 August 2010. In both cases, a policeman who lost his job (i.e., money, respect and authority) becomes a criminal and endangers the lives of innocent tourists. Do you think that what happened in Manila on 23 August 2010 is a sad coincidence, just an isolated case, or can it be considered the result of precise political, socio-economic and psychological causes?

Lav Diaz: Man’s primal nature is fundamentally feudal on issues of power. Money, respect and authority are representations of man’s feudal culture. Take Vladimir Putin, Muammar Gaddafi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ferdinand Marcos or the former Chief of Security (Dante Perez) in Butterflies Have No Memories: it can happen anywhere! The specific case of the tragic Manila hijacking is a clear representation of a culture – the Filipino culture – that remains tragically feudal in nature. The main character here is Rolando Mendoza, a military officer who was about to retire but was discharged without benefits because of his alleged involvement in criminal activities, which he denied. Mendoza could not accept losing his social status, so he hijacked a bus full of Chinese tourists and demanded reinstatement, i.e. to have everything back. According to a survey that came out on 28 March 2011 in the newspaper Philippine Daily Inquirer, the military establishment is the most corrupt of all the institutions in the country. For instance, on 8 February 2011, the former head of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, General Angelo Reyes, committed suicide (an unprecedented event in the country) after he was charged with pocketing hundreds of millions. So, yes, the Manila hijacking can be broadly linked to the political and socio-economic conditions of the country. And, psychologically, Mendoza’s desperate act is not so unlike the murderous rampage of Gaddafi and the horrifying scheme of the former Chief of Security in Butterflies Have No Memories. Mendoza, Gaddafi and the former Chief of Security are three primal beings who can’t accept losing their feudal privileges. The tourist bus in Manila, Libya and the island of Butterflies Have No Memories are the same, bloody and unfortunate stage for human beings who have retrogressed to their barbaric animal origins.

MG: Your films can’t be described as tales of hope, at least not in a classic happy-ending fashion. How do you reconcile the humanist aim of your cinema with its merciless depiction of endless suffering? I mean, your films could be – and actually are – accused of enjoying the gloomy, decadent mood, like some sort of poverty porn.

LD: Tragedy and suffering are an inherent part of man’s existence and death is inescapable. Only truth is regenerating and liberating, if you can find it and accept it. That’s why a culturally committed artist can’t escape the issues of his own culture, and poverty and misery definitely are fundamental issues in my struggle against the escapist lies that the Filipino people are being fed. Through my movies I seek the truth (which of course can be very broad, relative and subjective), and I hope to push the viewer to do the same and co-operate in the struggle. I am trying to be responsible: my cinema is conscious of our culture’s struggle. All my films investigate, examine, confront and challenge the Filipino psyche.

MG: Who owns your movies? I saw that most of them can be downloaded more or less illegally from the Internet. Is the existence of these pirated copies OK for you? Can it be considered part of your “digital is liberation theology” theory?

LD: I own Heremias: Unang aklat – Ang alamat ng prinsesang bayawak / Heremias: Book One – The Legend of the Lizard Princess (2006), Kagadanan sa banwaan ning mga engkanto / Death in the Land of Encantos (2007) and Melancholia (2008), and I am a co-owner of Ebolusyon ng isang pamilyang Pilipino / Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004). Yes, the coming of digital liberated everything that is cinema. Uploading, downloading, copying, sharing and reproducing have become basic parts of the circulation dynamics. Cinema doesn’t just proceed from film studios to theaters, malls, TV, DVDs, museums and festivals now. The zeitgeist presents us with a whole new cinema universe. And contrary to what big business people keep saying ad infinitum – that downloading movies is killing cinema – piracy actually pushes cinema to greater heights just by the fact that one can watch everything now, which can lead to a greater understanding of the medium and of reality itself. On the one hand, we have the discontent of the movie businessmen (and a lot of so-called “independent filmmakers” are actually businessmen), who complain about losing profit while continuing to make millions; on the other hand, we have the viewing masses’ demand to have cinema on their own terms and, indeed, the masses can actually own cinema now. This is because the filmmaker – now I mean the true filmmaker, the committed one – is liberated from the feudal set-up of the old system. Digital made this possible, from the acquisition of filmmaking tools to addressing the demands of the audience, primarily on the issue of access. Accessibility is still a huge problem since in the Philippines, like anywhere else in the world, 98% of the movie theaters are commercial ones, but digital is creating a cultural revolution in cinema. As reflected by the Digital Age, in this twenty-first century the struggle for liberation remains the most important vision and praxis. With the help of committed cinema, by the end of the century man must have eradicated all feudal set-ups: no more kings and queens, no more dictators, no more authoritarian regimes, no more monopolies, no more borders, no more landlords, no more gods.

MG: What did you learn during your pito-pito apprentice period at Good Harvest [a branch of film studio Regal Films] in the late 1990s?

LD: The pito-pito (“seven-seven”) was one of the most exploitative and brutal schemes ever done in film production. Regal Films – one of the biggest studios in the Philippines – imposed seven days of pre-production, seven days of shooting and seven days of post-production on us filmmakers. I saw production people collapsing from fatigue. During the shooting of Serafin Geronimo: Ang kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion / The Criminal of Barrio Concepcion (1998), I was having a severe flu. I was drinking loads of antibiotics, plus endless strong black coffee to stay awake and be able to finish the movie. I passed out on the last day of the shooting. Honestly, I thought I was dead. And everybody was working for very, very low salaries. It was hell. The process woke me up and I left the movie industry, the so-called “system”.

MG: Given your experience in both mainstream/industrial/commercial cinema and independent/arthouse cinema, do you think that it is possible for a movie to be both a cool, ninety-minute exploitation flick and a humanist reflection on contemporary hot topics?

LD: People compromise for a reason: at the beginning I was part of the system too. Things can co-exist and some people can live with contradictions. However, while working for Regal Films, I understood that it is easy to do exploitation stuff and then inject things there, make a lot of money and say: “Hey, I am just having fun and it is only a movie!”. Yes, that’s possible and there has been a deluge of that since the birth of cinema, but I can’t do it: exploitation is never cool to me, both as a movie genre and as a production method.

MG: I read that your next film project will be titled Agonistes (“agonists, competitors”). Can you tell me something about it?

LD: The working title is Agonistes. I already shot some scenes in 2009. I may be able to finish it this year. Agonistes is about three poor men who go digging for a treasure.

Interview with Dario Argento (2021)

This is the English translation of an interview with director Dario Argento conducted by Malcom Pagani. The interview was originally published in Italian, in the Italian monthly magazine GQ, in February 2021.

Dario Argento: Thinking about my childhood, which was very serene, I especially remember my encounter with fear. Fear made me discover unknown worlds that my friends and family couldn’t even conceive of. Thanks to literature and imagination, I enthusiastically visited these unknown worlds. I discovered abysses of the mind, drifts, horror tales, lyrical operas and tragedies that would become fundamental later in my life, when I began to work in cinema.

Malcom Pagani: What else was fundamental for you?

DA: For me it was fundamental to acknowledge that there was a part of me capable of thinking and imagining horrible things. My dark half.

MP: Did you fight your dark half?

DA: I embraced, cuddled and nurtured it. My dark half has been keeping me company for a long time now. True, it makes me do cruel and terrible things. But I have always been talking with it and I have never had the temptation of mediating [sic]. Perhaps I am being opportunistic. In fact, a lot of these cruel and terrible things end up in my films.

MP: What fears have been accompanying you throughout the years?

DA: My fears are everybody’s fears, I think. I am afraid of being attacked, of being physically hurt, of meeting evil. Some of my fears were absolutely irrational. For instance, when I was young, I didn’t want to share my bed with anybody and I didn’t want to share the intimacy of the night with anybody. I was afraid that my lover could kill me while I was asleep.

MP: Were you ever afraid of something you were writing?

DA: Yes, very often. One night I became convinced that the assassin I was writing about was actually lurking in my house, ready to kill me. I ran out of my house and I woke up the building’s caretaker. He was quite surprised. We spoke for a long time, until my anxieties subsided.

MP: According to H. P. Lovecraft, “the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”.

DA: I have always been fascinated by the unknowable, by weird and bizarre things. I chased them during very long trips that I enjoyed taking by myself. When you are alone, you can think about what you see. When you are with other people, on the other hand, you have to verbalize your feelings and everything ends up in jest: we talk a lot and we understand very little. When you are by yourself, you can really understand the spirit of a place.

MP: What was your first significant trip?

DA: It was a trip to France. It was a period of total freedom. My father [Salvatore Argento] sent me to Cote d’Azur for a study vacation that was supposed to last for two weeks. However, much to my father’s incredulity and concern, this study vacation in France went on and on. My father wanted me to come back, so he stopped sending me money. He was convinced that, without money, I couldn’t continue my trip. He was wrong. I daydreamt a lot and I slept anywhere I could find a bed: I sneaked into hostels, where I ran the risk of being beaten up by the watchmen, and for a short time I shared fetid rooms with two generous and wise prostitutes. I ate no matter what, I saw a lot of movies, I confused dusk with dawn. It was one of the happiest periods in my life.

MP: You began to work as a journalist when you were very young, before you reached your majority…

DA: When my French “holiday” came to an end, I returned to Italy. I liked to write and I did my best to turn my passion for writing into a real job. My trip to France made me feel suddenly adult, and I didn’t want to go back to school. So my father introduced me to Ugo Ugoletti, the old director of L’Araldo dello Spettacolo, a small daily newspaper about film theatres and box-office results.

MP: What was your job exactly?

DA: I wrote image captions, short news, useless articles. In a short time, though, I mysteriously found myself writing for one of the best Italian newspapers. The director of [left-wing newspaper] Paese Sera, Fausto Coen, liked the idea of hiring someone to write about box-office results. My career, aided by chance, started there. One of the main film critics of Paese Sera fell ill with tuberculosis and I substituted him. I started to write film reviews that were completely heterodox if compared to the newspaper’s Communist conformism. I praised the films that I liked and Coen, who was very worried by this attitude of mine, was often forced to scold me.

MP: In 1966 you made your acting debut in a film by Alberto Sordi.

DA: I interviewed Alberto Sordi for Paese Sera. He answered my questions and every once in a while he stared at me without saying a word. When the interview was over, I said goodbye to him. But the assistant director approached me and said: “We will see each other again”. And this is how I found myself on the set of Scusi, lei è favorevole o contrario? (Alberto Sordi, 1966), playing the role of the altar boy.

MP: Were you already thinking about becoming a film director?

DA: Not at that time. My resolution to become a film director was prompted by my encounter with Sergio Leone. In the movies as in real life, Sergio didn’t like long speeches. He spoke through images and shots. He spoke the language of cinema. He was an intuitive person and he had a talent for discovering talented people. If you were worth something, Sergio understood it in a second.

MP: He saw your talent.

DA: He did a crazy thing. He put the film treatment of C’era una volta il West / Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968) into the hands of two nobodies, myself and Bernardo Bertolucci. Sergio wanted the film to be different from his previous ones, he wanted the main character to be a woman. Sergio thought that the traditional Italian screenwriters didn’t understand anything about women. So he was looking for young writers and he hired us. Sergio met Bernardo almost by chance, at a film screening, near the Viminale. Bernardo was quite confident and easy-going: “I like your cinema”, he told Sergio, “I especially love how you shoot the asses of the horses: only John Ford does it so well”. Sergio was captivated by this absence of superstructures and, after a few days, he asked us to work with him.

MP: How did it go?

DA: Bernardo and I got along fine, but the work lasted for several months and it wasn’t easy. C’era una volta il West is a very subtle film, full of plot twists and changes in the personality of the characters. In the end, we submitted our treatment, and the friendship between me and Sergio – a friendship that seemed likely to go on forever – suddenly ended. For a long time, Sergio and I had shared feelings and journeys. We even went together to Florence, to see the devastating effects of the 1966 flood.

MP: The friendship suddenly ended, without a reason?

DA: Without a reason. But cinema is like that. It seems that the shared work experience can tie people together and instead, once a job is finished, people get lost in the fog and lose sight of each other. For almost twenty years I didn’t speak with Sergio, even if I still felt a great affection for him. Then, without notice, he contacted me once again. He was having troubles with the screenplay of C’era una volta in America / Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984). He needed help. He contacted me and Bernardo separately, and he tried to put the old team back together. Sergio asked us to collaborate with him, but by then we had already taken our own path and unfortunately the collaboration couldn’t be done.

MP: What is the set, for you?

DA: It is a place where I never have fun. I have never felt a great happiness while making my films. It was a job that I did methodically, with clerical diligence. A job that often left me totally empty. I felt none of that sort of fake euphoria that seems to be a fundamental characteristic of those who want to be considered film directors. I have never believed in this fake euphoria: I did my storyboard, I tried to stick to my style, I tried to survive. [Laughs]

MP: What do you remember about the making of your debut film L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo / The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento, 1970)?

DA: I remember a lot of difficulties. Nobody wanted to finance L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo. Italo Zingarelli – the man who “invented” the Bud-Spencer-and-Terence-Hill duo […] – didn’t feel like producing my film: “Darietto bello, I would give you my life, but I don’t understand your movie and I don’t want to put any money in it”. In the end, I don’t know how, the shooting of L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo began. I had very little money, all the people around me were sceptical, and lead actor Tony Musante and I weren’t getting along fine. We had a fight on the first day of shooting, and it became immediately clear that we would have never been friends.

MP: Why?

DA: Our personalities were too different. It became clear during shot one take one. Musante had to open a door. A banal gesture. I said “Action!” and he started to clown about. I stopped everything and I approached him: “What are you doing, Tony? This is no cabaret”. His answer I found unbearable: “I made a lot of films and you are just a debuting director, you must learn from me”. I reacted to his provocative words, which led to an animated discussion: “If you want to play the bully, you picked the wrong guy”, I told him mustering all my strength. After a few days, the shooting became a source of anguish for me. Musante was a real nightmare. I went on the set every day, and the idea of meeting him scared me.

MP: However, the film was miraculously a success.

DA: L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo was an unusual giallo. Most of the actors were unknown and Titanus boss Goffredo Lombardo (the main financier, who had been persuaded to invest some money in the film by the insistence of my father) began to think that I wasn’t able to finish the shooting. Halfway through the shooting, Lombardo proposed me to hire a “real” director to help me and I firmly declined. I finished the shooting with no additional costs, but Lombardo kept on being doubtful. I was exhausted, so it was my father who went to a private screening of the film for Lombardo (by the way, my father had invested some of his own money in L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo).

MP: What happened at this screening for Lombardo?

DA: Lombardo was angry and you could tell by his face: “The story doesn’t work!”, he said. In his view, L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo was horrible and he said that it was going to be a box-office disaster. My father left the screening room and he saw Lombardo’s secretary, Cesarina, eating her lunch. She was trying to eat a sandwich, but her hands were shaking too much. My father approached her: “What’s wrong? Are you OK?”. She replied: “I am alright, but I feel upset. This is the most shocking film I saw in my whole life…”. My father almost dragged Cesarina in front of Lombardo: “Cesarina, please, repeat to Mr Lombardo what you just told me!”. She did, but Lombardo wasn’t impressed: “So what? It is just her opinion. What does she know?”. My father replied: “She is the audience”. He was right. L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo started slowly, but word-of-mouth advertising made it a success. The film made a lot of money not only in Italy, but also in the USA, where it was the top-grossing film for two consecutive weeks. Variety wrote about this success and Musante unashamedly told me: “We made such a wonderful film together, didn’t we?”. He had forgotten all the unpleasant discussions we had during the shooting. I hadn’t forgotten and I gave him a cold answer. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

MP: Did you have other discussions on the set of the following films?

DA: Not in a violent way, because violence has never had place in my life. But, when you work with other people, it is normal to have different opinions and discuss things. Apart from Musante, I had big fights only with a Spanish actress, Cristina Marsillach. I saw her in a TV commercial and I chose her for Opera (Dario Argento, 1987). She was very young, she was perfect for the role. During the film’s preparation, everything went alright. Then I don’t know what happened, but she changed completely. It became evident that she was trying to get into fights all the time, criticizing every single aspect of the film, from the framing of the shots to the transparency of her t-shirt. Our relationship was a disaster.

MP: You have a sweet character, but firm.

DA: I don’t accept interferences and disturbances on the set. If the actors bring on new ideas to improve a scene, fine. But if the actors just want to break my balls, it means that they are trying to sabotage my work, which is something I don’t tolerate. Filmmaking is a delicate mechanism, a team play. If people don’t cooperate, it is going to be very difficult to finish the shooting.

MP: Your films are being studied all over the world. However, in Italy, your cinema has often been misunderstood.

DA: Time is a gentleman [(quality work eventually gets the recognition it deserves)], so I never cared too much about film reviews. I would have liked that the judgements on certain films of mine weren’t so biased, but I never worried too much about this sort of things. Other things got on my nerves. I remember a public-trial-like evening at the DAMS in Bologna. The year was 1972, I think. I was presenting Quattro mosche di velluto grigio / Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Dario Argento, 1971), and the audience was asking insinuating, hostile and offensive questions. The starting point was the usual cliché – “Dario Argento is a director who only makes women die” – and I was explicitly called a fascist and a misogynist. At that time I was tired, stressed-out, and my private life was full of problems. But during that particular evening I tried to remain calm and reply in a polite and kind way, in spite of all the provocations. At some point a young man stood up and, with a velvety and conciliatory voice, said to the rest of the audience: “Leave him alone! You don’t like his films but there is no need to insult him…”. That insincere plea infuriated me even more than the gratuitous offenses, and I lost my temper: “Don’t pretend to be a moderate person… Yeah, you, with that intellectual-style tie… You are an asshole, just like all the others!”. I insulted everybody, calling them “a flock of sheep”. At the end of my speech about free thought, I realised that I had silenced the debate instead of stimulating it.

MP: You often had to fight against censorship too.

DA: Censorship was often very mean with my work to the point that, on numerous occasions, I had to jump through hoops to save the copies of my films that had been cut to pieces. For instance, Opera – a film that cost me a lot of time, preparation and effort to make – was badly butchered by censors. It was a hard blow for me and I fell into depression.

MP: Did this often happen to you?

DA: I suffered for the outcome of some of my films. I sometimes felt empty, tired, with no desire to go on. I am 80 years old and for very long periods of my life I have lived in hotels. I have always liked hotels. They are impersonal, perfect for finding concentration. They don’t belong to you and you don’t belong to them.

MP: Why are you telling me this?

DA: Because in one of my favourite hotels in Rome – Hotel Flora, near via Veneto – I almost killed myself in the winter of 1976. I was preparing Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977) and my career was going great, but inside myself things were far from good. I woke up one night with the desire to jump out of the window. A couple of weeks later, I had the same feeling and I even started to imagine my body hitting the ground, the sound of the crash, the noise all around, the titles in the newspapers. I started to walk towards the window, but the furniture prevented me from reaching it. I woke up in tears the next morning, my hands still grasping the curtains, and I immediately phoned a doctor friend of mine. He told me: “Suicide is a one-way street: if you take it, you can never go back; but if you do a U-turn at the right moment, you will never think about it again…”.

MP: How did you manage to overcome the suicide drive?

DA: My doctor friend suggested me to put all the furniture in front of the windows. It worked. I had to fight depression, but I managed to get back on my feet and I have never thought about killing myself again.

MP: Solitude has a price.

DA: In that hotel I used to invite friends to have parties but, after the last guest was gone, I always felt very alone. I have never had many friends. The pleasure of solitude has its price, indeed. Solitude is a drug.

MP: What is your relationship with drugs?

DA: Hashish kept me company for a long time. I would have continued to smoke hashish, but I couldn’t. I had to quit because of chronic bronchitis and coughing fits. It was very difficult. I also took cocaine for a little while, but I quit immediately because I didn’t like cocaine. Cocaine annoyed me. It made me feel sick. I couldn’t relax. It was natural for me to stop taking it.

MP: What do you remember about the time you were arrested?

DA: An unknown person sent some drugs to Fiumicino [airport] and he or she put my name on the package. The narcotic squad got hold of the package and came to my house. I let the policemen in and I candidly admitted that I was a hashish smoker. I showed them the small quantity of hashish in my possession. They took me to Regina Coeli [a prison in Rome]. I didn’t want to end up in a dramatic situation like “Famous director busted for drugs”, so I tried to make the policemen laugh.

MP: How?

DA: I smiled and I said something in Roman dialect… Something like “Don’t smoke my stuff while I am away”. The policemen weren’t amused. They were embarrassed.

MP: You have always liked to have a good laugh.

DA: I like to have a good laugh as much as I like a good scare. My films are full of ironic and grotesque elements, even in the most dramatic situations.

MP: What is fear, for you?

DA: Noir, horror and giallo are just words – containers for our dreams. Fear is a feeling. A feeling different from the shiver you feel when watching a film that scares you. Fear is born from the subconscious and everybody has a subconscious, even if sometimes we pretend that the subconscious doesn’t exist.

MP: Do you feel that you are a lucky man?

DA: I am a very lucky man. Growing up, I never thought about working as a film director and, instead, making movies has become a strong necessity for me – a desire that still gives me energy. I still have a lot of films in my head, a lot of stories to tell. And I want to keep filming these stories because, without cinema, the world appears to me as a poor, empty and insignificant place. I don’t have many certainties, but one thing is very clear to me: as long as there will be a person to be scared in the movie theatre, I can call myself a happy man.

MP: In May 2021 you will start to shoot a new film.

DA: The title is Occhiali neri [Dark Glasses]. Maybe we already have the cast. It is a strong story, I have been thinking about it for many years now.

MP: How does it feel to be 80 years old?

DA: It is a very strange feeling. I don’t feel like an 80-year-old man. And then there is a curious thing: the more I grow old, the more my audience becomes younger.

MP: Do you ever think about death?

DA: How can you avoid thinking about death? Death scares us all. One day it will happen to me. I hope that I will be ready.

Interview with Mario Bava (1970-1971)

This is the English translation of an interview with director Mario Bava conducted by Luigi Cozzi. Luigi Cozzi’s questions are omitted in the original text, so Mario Bava seems to speak freely, stream-of-consciousness-like. The interview was originally published in Italian, in the Italian monthly magazine Horror, in December 1970 – January 1971. You can find more info about Italian horror movies in the monograph Vampires in Italian Cinema, 1956-1975 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). If you are interested in buying the book, feel free to use the launch discount code EVENT30 for 30% off.

Mario Bava: Barbara Steele used to spend her days sitting around at Caffè Rosati [in Piazza del Popolo in Rome], with a pair of eyeglasses and a highbrow book, in the company of [Alberto] Moravia. I really don’t understand her. She had a career in front of her: she wasn’t a great actress, but she was allright. Then, she made a brief appearance in that movie by [Federico] Fellini and that was the end of it all… From that moment on, she began to reject all the job offers she received: she only wanted to be in movies of high intellectual value, but who would offer this kind of movies to her? So, basically, her acting career was over…

I am telling you about Barbara Steele because I launched her career (if I can say so) with my directorial debut La maschera del demonio / Black Sunday (1960). Do you know that I am going to shoot a remake of La maschera del demonio? I will discuss the project with some American producers tomorrow. They bought the rights of my old screenplay and they updated it a little bit. Now they want me to direct the remake of my own film. Why not? With all the overdue taxes I have to pay, I can’t afford to be picky with the projects I am offered. I accept any project, as long as the producers pay me straight away.

Of course, I sometimes get swindled, or I end up shooting movies that are not up to my usual standards. The case of [my film] 5 bambole per la luna d’agosto / Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970) is a good example, it went like this. The producers give me a screenplay, I read it and I say that I don’t like it, it is identical to [Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel] Ten Little Niggers / And Then There Were None. But the producers insist and, in the end, I accept to direct the film. I tell them that we will discuss the project in detail when they will pay me. So I start working on other things and I forget about 5 bambole per la luna d’agosto, until one Saturday morning the producers call me in their office, they give me my cheque and my contract, and they tell me that the shooting begins on Monday, in two days’ time. I take the money and I sign the contract, but I tell the producers that the screenplay isn’t good, that I need at least ten days to fix the story and make preparations… but, no, the shooting begins on Monday. So, in the end, what do I care? The film is done. It is a terrible movie, it certainly is the worst movie among those I directed. I couldn’t do anything about it, we were working under disastrous conditions, it was October, it was very cold, and most of the film took place at the seaside as if it was summer. I could only make two changes in the story. First, putting the corpses in the fridge was my idea (in the screenplay the corpses were buried and there were little crosses on the graves, just like in western movies!). Second, I changed the ending […] a little bit, but I don’t think that I managed to save the film. My daughter watched the movie in Padova, and she asked me if I had gone mad.

You see, my mistake is that I accept any job they offer me. Moreover, I am unable to take things seriously, I always feel like joking, and for the producers a director who makes jokes is unconceivable, incompatible [with the job’s duties]. But I have been in the film business for too many years now, just like my father [Eugenio Bava], who directed the mythological films of the silent era; I know everything and everybody [in the profession], so how can I take seriously this gigantic, absurd circus [baraccone]? But I have taxes to pay and I work with my own personal crew, my regulars – the camera operator, my son, the electrician… They have been loyally following me for the past twenty years… If I stop making movies, how will they make a living? So, let’s get on with the next movie!

With [my film] La ragazza che sapeva troppo / The Evil Eye (1963) I tried to make an experiment, a romantic giallo [giallo rosa]. I have been told that L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo / The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento, 1970) plagiarizes La ragazza che sapeva troppo… I can’t say if this is true, because I haven’t seen L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo yet. In any case, La ragazza che sapeva troppo is a romantic giallo: at that time I was recovering from a six-month nervous breakdown and I didn’t feel like shooting the film, but I needed money and I did the job. The only problem was that I found the film absurd as a romantic giallo. Maybe it could have worked with stars like Kim Novak and James Stewart, but my actors were… well, I forgot their names! So I started shooting the film in a very serious way, as if it was an actual tale of the macabre. When La ragazza che sapeva troppo was released, it even had a certain success.

One of the worst experiences in my life was the making of Diabolik / Danger: Diabolik (1968). I was shooting this film for Dino De Laurentiis, it was an important project and the distributors had paid 1.5 billion lire in advance [for the distributions rights]. But you know De Laurentiis, he is worse than the Ministry of Economy and Finance: the production company made me work for months and months (I, who shot Operazione paura / Kill, Baby… Kill! (1966) in twelve days!), and I wasn’t being paid for working overtime… Moreover, I had very little resources at my disposal, the final cost of Diabolik was 200 million lire. I had to come up with all sorts of cheap tricks because the production company didn’t give me anything to work with. Did you see Diabolik’s hut in the countryside, his hideout, his laboratory, the garage? I swear: they were all scale models, photographs that I cut out and pasted on a glass in front of the camera – an improvised solution that allowed me to make up for the misery of the whole scenery. And then, after exhausting myself with this kind of work, I also had to direct John Phillip Law, who wasn’t able to play the bad guy for more than thirty seconds… Finally, I told De Laurentiis: “How can we make a film about Diabolik without the bloody murders?”. But De Laurentiis didn’t want any violence in this movie because at that time there were trials against crime-themed comics [pubblicazioni nere] in Italy, and he was afraid [of censorship and legal repercussions]… Recently, De Laurentiis called me and asked me to direct a sequel of Diabolik. I sent him a message saying that I am ill, permanently confined to bed.

I wish that the audience and the critics knew the conditions under which I am forced to make movies. For [my film] Terrore nello spazio / Planet of the Vampires (1965) I didn’t have anything to work with. There was only a studio, completely empty and squalid, because there was no money: I had to turn that into a [mysterious, alien] planet. So what did I do? In the studio next door there were two big plastic rocks, a leftover prop from a sword-and-sandal movie or something. I took these two rocks and I put them in the middle of my studio, then I covered the floor with smoke and I darkened the white wall in the background. I shot the whole movie by moving the two rocks around the studio. Can you believe it? And, while I was shooting, there was this American screenwriter who kept rewriting the script, changing scenes and dialogues… After a while, I stopped listening to him. Do you remember that, at the end of Terrore nello spazio, the astronauts land on planet Earth at the beginning of its existence? Well, the screenwriter wanted the astronauts to get off the spaceship and meet Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, which was located in Missouri, USA. Naturally, I refused to shoot this kind of stuff.

Not to mention [my film] Ercole al centro della Terra / Hercules in the Haunted World (1961). I made a bet that I could make a feature film only by using a modular wall with a door and a window, and four mobile columns, without any other scenery. Therefore, I shot Ercole al centro della Terra by continuously moving these few elements around [the studio], in an endless series of shot-countershot. No spectator ever noticed. But my best film is Operazione paura… In Fellini’s episode Toby Dammit from the omnibus Tre passi nel delirio / Spirits of the Dead (Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, Federico Fellini, 1968) there is a ghost-child playing with a ball, just like in Operazione paura. I mentioned this similarity to [Fellini’s wife] Giulietta Masina, and she shrugged with a smile: “You know how Federico is…”, she told me.

A new film of mine, Il rosso segno della follia / Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970), has recently been released. I shot it in Spain, in a villa owned by [dictator] Francisco Franco. The police didn’t want me to get the stairs dirty with [fake] blood, and the Spanish technicians drove me crazy… I will never go back there, I swear. But Il rosso segno della follia is a good film, I am quite satisfied with it. It is the usual story of a madman, but I could work on this project with calm and I prepared everything with meticulousness. You see, a long time ago, before starting my career in filmmaking, I was a painter, so now [that I am a director] I usually draw storyboards for my films. That is to say, I draw the whole film on paper, all the shots, all the cuts. This really helps me, but if the producers don’t give me time to prepare, I work almost blindly.

I have just finished another film, a comic western [titled Roy Colt & Winchester Jack (1970)]. It is a funny movie. Well, you won’t believe me, but the screenplay they gave me was very serious, very dramatic. I read it and I found it so grotesque and ludicrous that I decided to improvise stuff and make a comic film. Therefore, there was a lot of improvisation during the shooting. I wonder what the audience will think.

Besides remaking my own film La maschera del demonio, I have another project. It is titled Once upon a time there was a leaf… [C’era una foglia…], it is the story of a group of ghosts haunting a castle. The ghosts try to turn the perverted and evil lord of the castle (who is the last living member of an aristocratic family) into a good guy. It is yet another comic movie, full of humor. I wrote it myself and the shooting should begin soon. I have another story in mind, but for now it is just an idea: some crooks buy a destroyer from the World-War-Two years and sail around the world attacking ships like pirates. It would be fun, wouldn’t it? Meanwhile, I got another job. I made a series of sci-fi-style TV ads [Caroselli] for a big Italian oil company. I accepted this job because they pay really well. How could I refuse? […]

Interview with Antonio Margheriti (1970)

This is the English translation of an interview with director Antonio Margheriti alias Anthony M. Dawson conducted by Luigi Cozzi. The interview was originally published in Italian, in the Italian monthly magazine Horror, in May 1970. You can find more info about Italian horror movies in the monograph Vampires in Italian Cinema, 1956-1975 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). If you are interested in buying the book, feel free to use the launch discount code EVENT30 for 30% off.

Antonio Margheriti: I started trafficking in the film business [in the late 1940s] when I was nineteen years old. I did a bit of everything, the most disgusting stuff, believe me, and I worked my way up. Up to now, I had an active part in the making of at least 100 films, an incredible number, if you think about it. At the beginning of my career I was a jack of all trades, then I started writing stories and screenplays, and finally I specialized in film editing.

Luigi Cozzi: And then you became a film director.

Margheriti: Yes, but I also tried – and I am still trying – to be a producer. Probably I am making a mistake: I should just direct films and enjoy life with the money I make… and yet I prefer to spend my money in producing films that cost more and more every day. Unfortunately, cinema is a drug for me and I can’t do without it. I don’t know if you understand what I mean.

Cozzi: What are your preferences? Is there a horror/sci-fi story or novel that you would like to bring to the screen?

Margheriti: After 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968), there was a re-evaluation of sci-fi cinema, and one day I would like to make a serious sci-fi film, perhaps based on that famous book, The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle. As for horror… I don’t know. I have no projects in mind at the moment. The only thing I can say is that my best film so far belongs to the horror genre. It is Danza macabra / Castle of Blood (1963).

Cozzi: Being a 1963 film, Danza macabra predates the current madness of lesbian and sapphic themes.

Margheriti: Yes, Danza macabra had a lot of erotic bits that were quite racy. The Barbara Steele character was clearly lesbian and I showed that. The [Italian] censorship didn’t hinder us and everything went fine. In any case, Danza macabra is my favorite film. Maybe because I could shoot it in tranquility, choosing the actors I considered appropriate [for the story] rather than using the actors imposed on me by producers and distributors… Apart from Barbara Steele, naturally.

Cozzi: You also directed Christopher Lee and Claude Rains, two specialists in the fantastic genre.

Margheriti: Yes, I directed Rains in Il pianeta degli uomini spenti / Battle of the Worlds (1961) and Lee in La vergine di Norimberga / Horror Castle (1963). The latter movie is not bad, it was based on a novel [La vergine di Norimberga by Maddalena Gui alias Frank Boghart] published [in 1960] in Marco Vicario’s horror novel series [KKK (1959-1972)]. Yes, that Marco Vicario, the guy who directed 7 uomini d’oro (1965), whose shooting I helped to prepare. Not coincidentally, [my film] La vergine di Norimberga stars Marco Vicario’s wife, Rossana Podestà.

Cozzi: Did you know that both Danza macabra and La vergine di Norimberga were big hits in the USA?

Margheriti: Indeed. For a number of years now I have been working in close relations with American companies and I funded my own company over there, with two American associates. Business is good in the USA, especially thanks to MGM, which holds me in high regard: MGM has just asked me to make a film called Buck Rogers in the 21st Century. But I don’t know if I will accept the offer, this project would interest me only for its satirical aspects. And just to give you an example of how much they appreciate me in the USA, did you know that they even called me to work on 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Cozzi: Please, explain.

Margheriti: Well, it is the usual story. They were convinced that I was a sort of magician with special effects… So MGM and Kubrick called me to take care of the special effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey and we worked together for a long time, even if in the end a lot of the materials we prepared were not used in the film, because for the shots in outer space Kubrick decided to use a photography technique I didn’t know much about. In the end, Kubrick continued his work with other technicians.

Cozzi: What do you think about 2001: A Space Odyssey? Have you seen it?

Margheriti: Sure, I was there in the studios during the shooting of the film and I saw the original print [the director’s cut], the one that lasted more than five hours. The version that was released in theaters all over the world is only half of the Kubrick version; and, believe me, the [director’s cut] was far better and more comprehensible [than the theatrical version]. The cuts of the theatrical version are too violent and abrupt. They were not made by Kubrick but by MGM, for the usual distribution issues.

Cozzi: Your first film was Space Men / Assignment: Outer Space (1960), an epic adventure set in outer space. Tell us how did you get involved in the project.

Margheriti: Well, what can I say? It simply happened. In that period I was doing a lot of editing work for Titanus. Back then Titanus was a big production company and one day they asked me if I wanted to make this film. I said yes, obviously. I am not going to tell you under which conditions we worked in order to make Space Men. Crazy stuff. I made the film in fourteen days and I spent 41,000,000 lire, which is very little money. And I remember that Titanus released the movie without even telling me. One day I was in my cubbyhole in the Titanus building, making some trick shots with stars and spaceships. A friend of mine came in and told me that Space Men had its premiere in Trieste and made 750,000 lire in one day, a big sum. I am not going to tell you how I reacted to this news, because the trick shots I was making were to be used in Space Men.

Cozzi: […] What are your plans for the future?

Margheriti: I have a big project now, a Disney-style comedy that I am making for the US market. It will also be released here [in Italy], at Easter, I believe. It is called L’inafferrabile invincibile Mr. Invisibile / Mr. Superinvisible (1970) and the protagonist is Dean Jones from The Love Bug (Robert Stevenson, 1968). […] Then I want to make another Disney-style movie. I bought the rights of the second novel in the That Darn Cat! series and I am going to adapt it for the screen. These are very expensive films, but with the help of American distribution they should do well [at the box office]. At least I hope so: we are going to use 40,000 meters of negative film but, as of now, I have already signed 80,000 meters of promissory notes.

Cozzi: For your That Darn Cat! movie are you going to use Disney’s Siamese cat?

Margheriti: Oh, no! I will use a dog called Geremia, from that awful English film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Ken Hughes, 1968). I had to pay an excessive amount of money for this dog to be in my film […]. Luckily, I love animals. My house is full of them, it looks like a zoo. Last time I checked, I discovered that I have ten dogs and thirty cats. And since I own a Siamese cat that is very beautiful and good-natured… well… my own cat will obviously be the protagonist of my film. You have to save money once in a while, if you can.

Interview with Roger Vadim (1971)

This is the English translation of an interview with screenwriter and director Roger Vadim conducted by Ornella Volta. The interview was originally published in Italian, in the Italian monthly magazine Horror, in November 1971. You can find more info about Italian horror movies in the monograph Vampires in Italian Cinema, 1956-1975 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). If you are interested in buying the book, feel free to use the launch discount code EVENT30 for 30% off.

Together with Valerio Riva, Ornella Volta edited the Italian-language, vampire-themed anthology I vampiri tra noi: 37 storie vampiriche, published by Feltrinelli in 1960. The foreword of this anthology was written by Roger Vadim (available here in Italian and here in English) as a tie-in for the Italian release of his feature film Il sangue e la rosa / Blood and Roses (1960).

Ornella Volta: Roger Vadim, so far you have made two movies that belong to the fantastic genre, Il sangue e la rosa (based on a Sheridan Le Fanu novella) and Metzengerstein (based on an Edgar Allan Poe short story [and part of the omnibus Tre passi nel delirio / Spirits of the Dead (Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, Federico Fellini, 1968)]), and one science-fiction film, Barbarella (1968). Do you prefer the fantastic or the sci-fi genre?

Roger Vadim: I know that it is rare that a person is interested in both the sci-fi and the fantastic, because an abyss separates the two genres. However, I like them both, even if I am perhaps more partial to sci-fi. For me, the fantastic has the fault of being based on a psychology that is connected too much to the everyday. When we enter the realm of the “fantastic”, there is always someone (the protagonist of the story, the spectator or the reader) who is afraid of something. And fear – nobody can deny it – is a feeling that by now has become too ordinary, too commonplace.

Ornella: In any case, you don’t consider the fantastic as a lesser genre?

Vadim: A lesser genre? For me the fantastic is the future of cinema. If you consider that cinema is the only medium that allows you to “see” ghosts, apparitions and marvels in action, how can you underestimate the extraordinary potential of the fantastic genre? Only a minimal fraction of this potential has been explored so far, due to the lack of resources and to the filmmakers’ lack of courage. I myself haven’t gone as far as I wanted and want to. Maybe because I felt that the audience wasn’t prepared enough to welcome my ideas.

Ornella: Do you think that sci-fi is more ductile?

Vadim: Sure. Sci-fi gives us more freedom. We are free to imagine all sorts of planets without any relation to our world – planets full of individuals with feelings and behaviors completely different from the ones we know. Indeed, my greatest ambition is to bring to the screen human relationships that have never been seen before. Just think of how conventional was female psychology before [my film] Et Dieu… créa la femme / …And God Created Woman (1956). One can easily say that Brigitte Bardot entered the history of cinema like a Martian… And even the realist authors I adapted for the screen managed to strike me only when they clashed against reality.

Ornella: You dislike reality, then? Are you a fan of escapism?

Vadim: Not at all! I like reality very much. But I don’t believe that only what man does is real. I believe that what man would like to do is real too. In sum, I believe that it is a big mistake to underestimate the part of reality that is commonly called “imagination”. Imagined and factual things have the same influence on events. And, in any case, imagination is more enjoyable. I like and I am interested in everything that increases the possibilities of man’s life. Even God can interest me, as long as God is seen as an incommensurable entity. That is to say an entity that can’t be measured and that doesn’t measure other beings. On the contrary, I lose all interest when God is conceived of as a sort of tailor who wants people to wear clothes that are too tight. I lose all interest when God becomes a pretext to make human life more miserable.

Ornella: Did you ever have the temptation to bring to the screen the so-called “parallel universe”?

Vadim: Yes, of course. But I certainly don’t want to do so in order to demonstrate the existence of such “parallel universe”: when ghosts will be decoded, I will lose interest in them.

Ornella: Did you ever deal with occultism and spiritism?

Vadim: I sure did. I even conducted a long research in those milieus. All those occultists and spiritists were lying in the most pathetic way. And yet their lies, their clumsy efforts to demonstrate the indemonstrable, showed that they really did believe. For them, lying was the only way to communicate to a non-initiate something that even they couldn’t quite grasp. The bottom line is that they did believe just like I believe, even if I don’t feel like analyzing this belief of mine in depth. I believe because I myself am an ultra-sensitive medium. When I was a kid, I could make a table shake without touching it, just by keeping my hand at a certain distance from it. I also have prophetic dreams all the time. And I have already met my doppelgänger twice over the course of my life.

Interview with Mario Bava (1969)

This is the English translation of an interview with director Mario Bava conducted by Alfredo Castelli and Tito Monego. The interview was originally published in Italian, in the Italian monthly magazine Horror, in December 1969. You can find more info about Italian horror movies in the monograph Vampires in Italian Cinema, 1956-1975 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). If you are interested in buying the book, feel free to use the launch discount code EVENT30 for 30% off.

Castelli & Monego: Mr Bava, your films made you famous as the “Hitchcock of Cinecittà”. Why did you choose terror as a form of expression?

Mario Bava: I don’t know. Terror fascinates me and attracts me for no particular reason. Maybe it’s a psychological thing. In real life I am easily scared, so when I shoot a horror movie it’s as if I am taking revenge on fear itself. The lights, the technicians and the actors on set make me overcome situations that, in real life, would scare me to death.

C&M: What is your idea of “terror”?

MB: Terror is what is inside ourselves. Terror is what is released in nightmares or in madness. Terror is what makes objects around us turn into living and scary entities, when we find ourselves alone in a dark room…

C&M: Sounds like Edgar Allan Poe…

MB: More or less. In cinema, the “monster” doesn’t exist anymore. We are the monsters.

C&M: Mr Bava, in your films we often see scary creatures, vampires and repugnant beings. Doesn’t this contradict what you have just said?

MB: Unfortunately, yes. These are the laws of the market. My films are exported in many countries, especially in the USA and the UK, and over there they can’t conceive of a [horror] movie without “creatures”. Have you seen Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)? It’s a great film, with exceptional acting and direction. But they couldn’t refrain from showing the devil as a sort of scaly Frankenstein, which is quite ridiculous. In the original version of the film they even showed Rosemary’s child… A baby with yellow eyes and little horns on his head – a sight to make you weep. Luckily they cut this scene in the Italian version… Moreover, from a psychological point of view, the monsters don’t work with our [Italian] audience. In the audience there is always someone who wants to be the funny guy, and rightly so. I saw Gamera vs. Guiron (Noriaki Yuasa, 1969) recently: the papier-mâché gorilla was fighting the clay dinosaur and, at every blow, ten skyscrapers collapsed. At some point, a jeep full of soldiers approached the monsters… possibly to make things more suspenseful. A guy in the audience shouted “Here comes the army to separate the contenders!”, and none of us in the theater could take the film seriously anymore… Filmmakers should never offer spectators this kind of psychological hooks. If there is a creaking door or a shadow slowly moving in a corridor, the audience will soon “destroy” the scene with a funny joke. If the shock effect is instantaneous, however, the spectators will literally jump on their seats.

C&M: Just like in the famous scene of Wait until Dark (Terence Young, 1967), with Audrey Hepburn?

MB: I haven’t seen the film, but my daughter saw it and she told me that she did scream during the screening.

C&M: What are your favorite films?

MB: Do you mean horror films? Apart from the classics – Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens / Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, 1922) and Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932) – I really like The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961). It scared me a lot. As for “normal” films, I like the movies with Charlie Chaplin. But, above all, I remember All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930), a true masterpiece.

C&M: And what about your own films? What is your favorite?

MB: I have no particular preferences. I like the film I am making now, it has a good story…

C&M: Is there any classic story that you would like to turn into a film?

MB: […] I would like to adapt H. P. Lovecraft for the screen, but his novels are too literary: he is a master in describing beings and things that can’t actually be recreated on screen, so if I made a movie based on Lovecraft it would be a bad one. Some time ago I found a great story for me to turn into a film, The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions. Unfortunately, the story already served as an inspiration for Un tranquillo posto di campagna / A Quiet Place in the Country (Elio Petri, 1968). I must say that the film is quite good.

C&M: We are talking too much about other people. Tell us about yourself. Do you consider yourself a good director?

MB: Well, I can manage: I don’t care about hitting the big time, I care about staying in the business for a long time. My father [Eugenio Bava] always told me that, he was in the movie business since 1906. Maybe I will never become like Michelangelo Antonioni: I absolutely love improvising, adapting to circumstances and creating new scenes in emergency conditions… In my view, a good director shouldn’t be like me: a good director should follow the production plan strictly and to the letter. Then you can make real masterpieces… Cinema is becoming a dangerous profession. I saw too many people ending up badly because they were too intelligent to follow the current trends or because they were too stupid and got carried away by their first, momentary success… Those who have a long-lasting career are the down-to-earth, hardworking guys: maybe they are not great directors, but they have a constant output. Apropos of that, I will tell you about that time I worked with Boris Karloff. He was a great guy, a true English gentleman. He was never late on set, he never behaved like a capricious film star. We made I tre volti della paura / Black Sabbath (1963) together. We all knew that he had arthritis and terrible pains in his legs, but he never complained about his health with us. Maybe he never acted in a movie masterpiece, but he was in the business for almost 40 years.

C&M: So you are pessimistic about your job?

MB: I am a pessimistic… optimist. At worst, I will just have to change movie genre. What matters to me is to last.

Intervista a Mario Bava (1970-1971)

La seguente intervista al regista Mario Bava, realizzata da Luigi Cozzi, è stata originariamente pubblicata nel numero 13 della rivista Horror, nel dicembre 1970 – gennaio 1971, alle pagine 24-26 e 101.

Per ulteriori informazioni su molti dei film citati, si veda il libro Vampires in Italian Cinema, 1956-1975 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), acquistabile con sconto del 30% inserendo il codice EVENT30.

Intervista a Mario Bava (1969)

La seguente intervista al regista Mario Bava, realizzata da Alfredo Castelli e Tito Monego, è stata originariamente pubblicata nel numero 1 della rivista Horror, nel dicembre del 1969, alle pagine 49-50.

Interview with Riccardo Freda (1971)

This is the English translation of an interview with director Riccardo Freda conducted by Luigi Cozzi. The interview was originally published in Italian, in the Italian monthly magazine Horror, in April 1971. You can find more info about Italian horror movies in the monograph Vampires in Italian Cinema, 1956-1975 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). If you are interested in buying the book, feel free to use the launch discount code EVENT30 for 30% off.

Riccardo Freda: I don’t love cinema too much. The world of cinema is too improvised, too ephemeral to be worthy of consideration. It is impossible to make a logic, consequential discourse from one film to the next one: cinema is ruled by trends, genres and filoni… In order to make a living, I adapted to this situation. I made a lot of movies, especially adventure movies, and I am not ashamed of it. My old collaborator and friend Mario Bava, instead, feels ashamed: he made 5 bambole per la luna d’agosto / Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970) and tried to excuse himself by saying that he did it only for the money. It is obvious that we make these films for the money. But if we accept to make a movie, then we must do our best to make the best movie possible, in spite of all the difficulties.

Luigi Cozzi: Do you often go to the movies?

RF: I go to the movies all the time. I watch any kind of movie even if, when I get out of the theatre, I have to tear the film apart. But I am interested in cinema as a medium and I try to keep myself up to date. Moreover, I am working for a state censorship commission these days, so I have to review the films before they are released. I granted 5 bambole per la luna d’agosto the permission to be screened in Italy and I rejected Bava’s Quante volte… quella notte / Four Times That Night (1971), a lesbian-erotic film. Quante volte… quella notte is a horrible movie, to the point that Bava never mentions it as part of his filmography, even if he did direct it. By not granting the film the permission to be screened in Italy I think that I did my friend Bava a big favour.

LC: In your recent erotic giallo A doppia faccia / Double Face (1969), there is a full-frontal-nudity scene. How do you reconcile your activity as a film director with your activity as a film censor?

RF: I reconcile it very well. To make a film is one thing, to watch and judge a film is another thing. And after all, in A doppia faccia you can see “the bush” [il pelo] only in the foreign version [the version edited for foreign markets]. In the Italian version the girl wears her underwear, you can only see her breasts: that’s quite normal, isn’t it? What matters, to me, is the value of the film. The eroticism, or the “audacity”, of the single scene doesn’t matter. I explain myself. In La caduta degli dei / The Damned (1969), Luchino Visconti included an incest and nobody [in the state censorship commission] complained. We approved the film for public screening because it is such a beautiful and intelligent film. But we had to reject Candy (1968), made by an incompetent director called Christian Marquand. I would have greenlighted Candy : Ewa Aulin’s naked breasts and an anal intercourse briefly suggested and seen through the curtains are not that scandalous anymore, nowadays… But then there was the incest theme and the film was so dull and boring that I couldn’t really oppose my colleagues’ decision, so Candy was rejected. After one year, the movie was eventually released in Italy in a heavily cut version and very few people went to see it. It wasn’t a good business for the producers…

LC: How did you start making horror movies?

RF: I started making horror movies because of a bet. I was talking with two producers one day, [Ermanno] Donati and [Luigi] Carpentieri. I said that a film could be made in two weeks, and they replied that it was impossible. I insisted, so they phoned [Goffredo] Lombardo [owner of production and distribution company Titanus]: they explained to Lombardo my proposal and asked if he wanted to distribute the film once it was finished. He accepted without much enthusiasm and I very quickly wrote a screenplay for I vampiri / Lust of the Vampire (1957), which was shot in twelve days. Then I quit the job because I had an argument with the producers, and they completed the rest of the picture in two days. The movie was set in Paris but, thanks to the miniatures and tricks I created with cinematographer Mario Bava, we shot it in the courtyard of Titanus studio, in Rome. I believe in a subtle, psychological kind of horror. No vampires, no monsters, please: they are just vulgar, ridiculous tricks. My theory is that horror – the authentic terror – can be achieved with the simplest, most common means. The most terrifying monster is our neighbour cutting his wife’s throat, am I right? The theory behind my film L’orribile segreto del dr. Hichcock / The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) is this: anybody can marry a lunatic, a raving mad person, a monster… It was a shame that L’orribile segreto del dr. Hichcock had censorship problems.

LC: Which problems?

RF: The film was cut. You see, back in those days they used to cut a film for a half-seen thigh or for a low-cut neckline, and L’orribile segreto del dr. Hichcock dared to deal with the theme of necrophilia, as the protagonist was a doctor who is in love with corpses. So the censors cut the most explicit things like the doctor kissing the corpses. As a result, the film ended up being a bit obscure, because it wasn’t clear that the doctor was a necrophile. That’s why I wanted an opening scene showing the murder in the cemetery: it’s not a film about grave-robbing, it’s a film about necrophilia. But with all the cuts that were made, the logic behind the film was a bit lost.

LC: And what about your film Lo spettro / The Ghost (1963)?

RF: Lo spettro was born to exploit the success of L’orribile segreto del dr. Hichcock. I wrote the screenplay in one day, all in one go. I shot Lo spettro in twelve days and I am happy about it. Barbara Steele was great with me: a real lamb.

LC: And your film Caltiki il mostro immorale / Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959)?

RF: I don’t consider it a film of mine. There are monsters and space jellyfish in it: it is Bava’s stuff, honestly. It is his thing. Caltiki il mostro immorale was born by chance, I made it in order to help Bava. You see, back then he was working as a cinematographer for a director called Pietro Francisci. On set, Francisci was always sleeping, it was Bava who did all the work: setting the camera, creating the tricks, directing the actors, and so on. Basically, Bava was directing the films and bringing them to success. There is nothing wrong with this. But, one day, I discovered that Francisci was always saying bad, humiliating things about Bava. Therefore, since Bava was my friend, I told him to break up with Francisci. Bava agreed with me but his dog was ill, his wife was pregnant and he had to pay his taxes… In one word, he had to make a living… So we met up at his father’s house and we came up with a film: Caltiki il mostro immorale. Then I proposed the film to a production company and it was accepted. I quit the job when the shooting was almost complete, with two days of work left. I directed the film, but Caltiki il mostro immorale is the typical film by Bava. I don’t want to take credit for it. The only thing I remember with pleasure are the statues that we used in the film: I sculpted them myself. As for the horror genre, I am now trying to make this film provisionally titled Il ragno. It is a sinister story, but it is the kind of brivido [thrill] that I like: something real, something possible. No monsters, no bogeymen like the ones that even Roger Corman is forced to use. No, in my film there are real anguish and fears, things that really exist, hidden inside all of us. Anybody can hide a monster inside the depths of his self, right?

LC: What about your film Maciste all’Inferno / The Witch’s Curse (1962)?

RF: Nobody wanted to make the film, because there were too many tricks and special effects to do. But I love tricks and special effects, so I accepted the project. Maciste all’Inferno starts as a witch story, but then it becomes the usual adventure film with Maciste. I would also like to mention my film Romeo e Giulietta (1964), which got great reviews all over the world, and Trappola per l’assassino (1966) (which I made in France, where I lived from 1965 to 1967, after becoming a French citizen). And then I would like to let you know that I made a film with Michelangelo Antonioni.

LC: Really?

RF: Yes, the title was Nel segno di Roma / Sign of the Gladiator (1959) and the credited director is Guido Brignone. Actually, I shot the spectacular scenes (the battle scenes), while the rest of the film was directed by Antonioni. Of course, both Antonioni and I did it for the money…

Intervista a Riccardo Freda (1971)

La seguente intervista al regista Riccardo Freda, realizzata da Luigi Cozzi, è stata originariamente pubblicata nel numero 15 della rivista Horror, nell’aprile del 1971, alle pagine 26-28.