Nocturno Cinema Presents
A Cinema Bis Communication and Legend Production
Written by Manlio Gomarasca and Davide Pulici
Photography Lorenzo Rogan
Editors Roger Fratter and Manlio Gomarasca
Directed by Roger Fratter
Born in Rome December 1 5th 1 936, Aristide Massaccesi a.k.a. Joe D'Amato
one of the most versatile and prolific ltalian filmmakers.
For over 30 years Aristide participated in more than 400 movies, directing 200.
He explored almost every genre in ltalian popular cinema
with an inclination for horror and erotica often bordering on hardcore.
The strength of his movies, the duplicity of mixing different themes and currents:
the bizarre and the disquieting results gained him worldwide fame.
He started as a cameraman and then as DP before making his directorial
debut in the early seventies with Spaghetti western's and sex comedies
called ""decamerotics'' hiding behind a variety of pseudonyms.
When l was 1 4 every afternoon l'd go see Lamberto Bava's grandfather
who had a lab where he designed credits.
You had to cut the letters on a black paper sheet, then put another glazed paper board behind it.
The light would reflect the titles on a black screen and the camera would film everything.
l would help cut the credits. This was my very first job in the movie industry.
Then l worked as a photographer with Francesco Alesssi, my father's friend.
We came to the set with those plates, which were then used to take pictures.
They were made of glass and covered by gelatin+A79
and you had to load one each time you took a picture.
ln those days there were those old cameras with bellows, you know
and you had to put your head under a blanket while taking the picture.
Then l worked with my father for about a year,
it was a difficult period for us, we were four brothers and needed money.
My father worked as an electrician and so l went to help him.
Then l found a job as an assistant cameraman at Mole & Richardson
an old company that rented cameras. Each one was delivered with an AC.
Then l started as a cameraman, DP, director, producer ... and here l am
One of the recurrent traits in his style is the use of hand-held shots
a peculiar trademark that made him one of the most esteemed
and sought-after cinematographers in the ltalian movie industry.
l learned how to use hand-held cameras working with a director; Michele Lupo.
At first it was just a matter of saving time.
We often came to certain locations in a hurry to shoot some stuff quickly.
So we used hand-held cameras and those shots seemed more real.
So we began shooting that way, running after actors and so on. Great results.
From then on l became a sort of hand-held camera specialist.
There was no steady cam in those days
so l made myself a handlebar mount. l had to keep the camera off my body
because when l was running it used to shake a lot and bounce back at me.
l invented lots of tricks and since they worked l kept on shooting hand-held.
You see, a static or tracking shot simply doesn't convey the feeling of ""reality''.
Diego Spataro - Producer
Aristide and l wrote the script for Scansati a Ttrinita' arriva Eldorado together.
Aristide decided to direct it, but he didn't want to sign it with his real name
because he was afraid that others would stop employing him as a DP.
We shot the movie in five days using lots of library footage.
lt was something new, an unconventional western.
You are not worthy a bullet
Another one
What are you waiting for?
Go now
My very first movie was just a joke, after all.
We used lots of stock shots. My friend Diego Spataro had produced some westerns and had
lots of spare footage, like cowboys being shot falling from rooftops.
So we made the movie in three or four days, re-using some of that material.
The movie was not well received in ltaly.
Nobody paid attention to it. ln my opinion it was quiet ahead of its time
there was even a horse that looked like a motorbike
with headlights and handlebars instead of bridles
But l didn't put my name on it because l preferred being a DP.
and l though if l started ''directing'' other directors would stop calling me.
Then, after a while l just didn't care about it anymore.
ln 1 97 1 Pier Paolo Pasolini directed The Decameron
based on Giovanni Boccaccio's work of the same name.
lt was the first part of a trilogy which Pasolini called the Trilogy of Life
and which was completed the following year with The Canterbury Tales and ll fiore delle mille e una notte.
These movies proved to be successful leading to a peculiar subgenre
known as the ""decamerotic'' which is comprehensive
of more than 50 titles made in just a couple of years.
Even though they often took inspiration from the same medieval literary sources
these movies were obviously lacking the stylishness of Pasolini's opus
and mixed farce and eroticism. Aristide tried his hand at the genre twice
first with Sollazzevoli storie di mogli gaudenti e mariti penitenti shot in '72
and signed Romano Castaldi a.k.a. Romano Scandariato
Massaccesi's friend and assistant director on the movie
and then with Novelle licenziose di vergini vogliose.
The latter had trouble with the censors and was eventually released in 1 97 4
when the genre was already fading.
You made another movie with producer Diego Spataro, a ""decamerotic'' ...
Yes, it was called Novelle licenziose di vergini vogliose.
lt was rejected four times by the censor board.
lf a movie was rejected twice you had to change its title before re-submitting it.
The original title was Le mille e una notte di Boccaccio a Canterbury because of Pasolini's trilogy
Decameron, Canterbury and Le Mille e una notte, so we did a summary...
Aristide Massaccesi a.k.a. Joe D'Amato became popular with this name.
He became better known for his hard- core movies.
We'd known each other for a long time
and he will always have a place in my heart as one of my closest friends.
For me eroticism is what hardcore is not. Hardcore destroys eroticism.
Eroticism is voyeurism, everything you peep at without anyone knowing.
l was born in 1 936, so let's say in the early 50s l began fantasizing about sex
l was precocious, you know - car doors opened upwind
l stayed from morning till night in parking lots
peeping at women who were getting out of cars. That way, l could have a perfect view of their things
To me, that was eroticism at its peak. Now you know it!
ln Emmanuelle's revenge we find a very anthropophagic sequence in a Massaccesi movie,
when Luigi Montefiori, exhausted by drugs and hunger, hallucinates a cannibalistic feast.
lt was shocking for its time, not only for the abundance of blood and gore...
but also because it briefly showed some actor's genitalia.
Cannibalism would resurface again in his later movies and not only in horrors.
ln Anthropophagus the monstrous Luigi Montefiori
devours a fetus he has ripped out of Serena Grandi's womb
in Emmanuelle and the last cannibals the gruesome mutilations
show exotic imagery mixed with visceral horror.
And how could one forget Kieran Canter biting Cinzia Monreale's heart
Laura Gemser emasculating Mark Shannon in Erotic Nights of the Living Dead.
and a similar scene with Elisa Chimenti in Papaya dei Caraibi.
Shocking images, splatter effects were elements of a cinema looking for the extreme
showing what others never dared and knocking the audience in the stomach
A genre in which D'Amato was a master.
What about Emmanuelle's Revenge What was Bruno Mattei's contribution?
Bruno Mattei had a story he had ""borrowed'' from an obscure Greek movie.
He took this fascinating concept of a character being imprisoned in a cage - it was a tragic story.
That was my first erotic movie and it was quiet successful.
From then on l teamed up with Luigi Montefiori
whom l already knew as we did some westerns together.
He had an ideal character for westerns, because he is very tall, with a beard.
After Emmanuelle's Revenge, le sorelline on which he just acted,
we wrote some scripts together such as ""Giubbe Rosse''
How was it to direct your first erotic movie?
As l told you before, each one of us has a peculiar conception of eroticism.
turning your fantasies into images on the big screen, then you created something which is erotic ...
There also some cannibalistic sequences in the movie ...
l like making horror and erotic movies, because l like to shock my audience.
When you go and watch a movie, you have to be involved in it.
To shock the audience is the best way to involve them.
Cannibalism, of course, must be shocking because
watching somebody eating someone else is not something that happens every day ...
Your relationship with Luigi Montefiori has always been a love/hate one ...
Luigi and l certainly have different points of view. He is more stubborn than me
thus often struggles for his ideas ... and frankly, he is right most of the time.
As it always happens between people who like each other, one never wants to give up
and accept what the other has in mind... so let's say it's a love hate relationship.
1 976 was a turning point in Aristide Massaccesi's career, with the release of the first
in a successful series which blended eroticism and exoticism featuring
lndonesian actress Laura Gemser as Black Emmanuelle.
Born in Java, a former model who reached popularity thanks to Vito Albertini's Black Emmanuelle ,
Laura Gemser met Massaccesi in 1 975, when she starred in the sex comedy Voto di Castita'.
They then teamed up for Emmanuelle in the Orient.
which was followed by Emmanuelle in America, Emmanuelle around the World,
Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals and Emmanuelle and the white Slave Trade.
The artistic relationship between Massaccesi and Gemser ended in the early nineties
when the actress retired after the death of her husband Gabriele Tinti.
The Black Emmanuelle series were a decisive step towards erotic cinema
a peculiar mixture of genres - erotic, action, adventure and horror
which later made his movies popular and appreciated worldwide.
lt all started with Black Emmanuelle, directed by Vito Albertini, which had just been released.
Gaudenzi heard that Laura's agent wanted her to act in more ltalian movies
because she had suddenly become very popular in ltaly.
Gaudenzi and l went to see her in Bruxelles and stayed a whole night talking to her about our project ...
The Black Emmanuelle movies were shot in all sorts of exotic locations.
Once we even made a full world trip on Emmanuelle Around the World
We started shooting in Rome, then we moved to San Francisco, New York,
then westward we got to Tehran and then ...back to Rome again.
Emanuel in America has become famous because of the hardcore scenes you shot for foreign markets.
lt was quiet anomalous since the movie is dated 1 976 ...
ln that period French distributors asked us to put strong stuff into our movies
so if a movie was originally soft-core they wanted us to add hardcore bits.
You see, we didn't think about TV then it was just a matter of theatre distribution.
Now the Black Emmanuelle movies are shown on TV after they have been cut.
So it was just a commercial move, because to sell the picture in some foreign countries
you just had to add something.
Anyway, Laura Gemser never did any of those scenes, it was Maria Frajese who did them.
lt was her very first time in hard core.
Was it difficult to persuade actresses to do such scenes?
You mean Maria Frajese? Well, l think she was very happy to do them.
Who was her partner on that scene?
A guy we nicknamed Ercolino, his real name was Rick Martino
because he was a very well built guy, sort of a culturist.
Let me tell you a funny story about Ercolino. We were shooting Notti Porno Mondo , l think
and Ajita Wilson was in it, she was a transsexual, but looked like a women.
Ercolino didn't know that. ln a scene he was all dressed in white as a statue
and Ajita was dancing by his side nude.
While shooting the scene, we had to stop for 2 minutes to change the film. l approached Ercolino
and told him that ""she'' was a man. From then on he didn't have erections on the set any longer
not even when we had to shoot a hardcore scene, and it was a catastrophe!
Poor man, l met him twenty years later in New York, he has a difficult life now
and he has become a homosexual. That's how Ercolino ended up.
l hope it was not my fault.
Let's talk about Emmanuelle ln America, the famous snuff sequence, which caused you lots of trouble...
l heard about these so called ""snuff movies'' shot in 8mm
in which people were tortured and eventually killed
so l wanted to recreate that shocking atmosphere.
Therefore we shot the scene in 35mm and then purposely scratched the film
in order to make it look as if it had been shot in 8mm.
Then the actress that had her breast cut off in fiction sued me and the crew claiming
that she was left traumatized despite the fact that the scene had been carefully planned and shot.
Giannetto Rossi did the special effects.
She said that it was too brutal and realistic and therefore she had been
shocked by it she wanted compensation.
l had my passport taken for five years, we eventually paid her and so it ended.
lt was really shocking, indeed.
Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals was quite gruesome too.
Why did you make an erotic movie set among the cannibals?
l often steal from others and since Deodato's movie had been successful
we thought of something along the same line.
l teamed up with Fabrizio de Angelis to make this movie which did fairly well at the box office.
As a mixture of horror and erotic, it worked quite well.
What about Emanuelle around the world featuring Luigi Montefiori as a guru?
When l watched it again l noticed that Laura Gemser often burst out laughing while she's acting
because working together was always great fun, l often used to give her hints during shooting for everytime
she felt like laughing. Perhaps on those scenes l might just have done that
and you can notice that she is trying not to laugh out loud.
Oh, what a great time we had working together.
What kind of person is she?
Great, a wonderful person. We have been close friends for many years, when Laura gave up acting
l employed her as costume designer, just to keep working with her.
A delightful person, really.
We are at the FlDA's headquarter in Rome and besides showing you Paola Senatore's legs,
we are making a small documentary about FlDA's new movie.
The movie is called ll Ginecologo della Mutua.
ll Ginecologo della Mutua was produced by Edmondo Amati who l made the Black Emmanuelle series with
first it was an erotic movie, then we decided to turn it into a comedy.
So we casted Montagnani, who was popular back than, and the late great Aldo Fabrizi
who wanted to act in a movie again after many years. l still remember him with much fondness.
Here we are with the actors and they will tell us more about the movie.
Renzo Montagnani is ""il ginecologo della mutua'', tell us about the movie.
The movie is about a gynecologist working in the public system, badly paid
who takes his work very seriously.
One day he is hit by the idea of becoming rich ...
How much do you make in a month?
ln a month ... 3,4
Only $3000?
No, $300-400 ...
l bet you've seen all sort of things while making this movie.
You can say that! The plot develops around this poor gynecologist, who is completely clueless
and surrounded by women ... but, let me tell you, the real danger lies not in the women
but in their husbands
You have to give me a baby!
Me?
Bullshit!
l don't bullshit!
We are now with the movie's director, Joe D'Amato, what can you tell us about the movie?
This movie is about a lot of things, particularly lots of beautiful women, here they are.
Maybe they can tell you about the movie better than me.
First of all, l don't get undressed, l absolutely don't get undressed...
l am a young woman married to a fifty year old and we can't have children
We have to rush, your husband is out there
Don't worry, he can wait
Will you be seeing her during her pregnancy?
l will be her gynecologist. For life
This is not a doctor's office, this is a whore house
l am a pretty nurse, all in white
ln 1 977 Franco Gaudenzi produced two sexy report, Notti Porno nel mondo
and Emmanuelle e le porno notti nel mondo 2
which were made using lots of stock footage plus some new scenes.
lt's an attempt at launching again a peculiar genre which was very popular toward the end of the sixties
the so-called ""mondo movies''.
Laura Gemser introduces the various episodes at the beginning of Notti Porno nel Mondo
while Bruno Mattei, who had already worked with Aristide
on Emmanuelle's Revenge, supervised the editing.
Mattei is credited as director, although the new footage was shot by Massecesi.
Then Aristide directs two more sexy- mondo, shot back-to-back
with the aforementioned Notti Porno nel Mondo 2 e Follie di Notte.
Franco Gaudenzi is once again the producer while our hostesses this time
are Ajita Wilson and Amanda Lear both notorious because of their sexual ambiguity.
These two movies were made using old footage bought by Gaudenzi.
lt was all taken from Mondo Cane and other movies like it you know
stuff like erotic live shows and so on.
To make it all more seductive we shot some new stuff with Ajita Wilson.
How did you shoot the scene in which a ping-pong ball is fired from a vagina?
There was simply this woman spitting out the ball...
No .. no wait a minute.
We tied a black nylon thread to the ball and someone off camera pulled it out.
Sirpa Lane did that Borowozyk movie, La Bestia, while Melissa played Papaya, she was very pretty girl ...
but Sirpa was the most charming. Since she had just done a very erotic movie
we paid more attention to her role than to Melissa's.
ln his early ""decamerotic'' omnibus Sollazzevoli storie di Mogli gaudenti a mariti penitenti,
the story showed nude nuns about to copulate with several horny friars.
Massaccesi returned to this concept in 1 979 with lmmages in a Convent.
a movie made after Walerian Borowozyk's enormously successful Behind Covenent Walls.
The movie was an explicit, daring description of the erotic excess inside a Clare convent.
Borowozyk's movie was inspired by Stendhal's Roman walks, whilst Aristide claimed his movie
to be ""loosely based'' upon Diderot' s La religieus''.
But lmmagini di un convento is just another genuine savage, impudent product of Massaccesi's mind
as shown by its concept: mixing the erotic angle and ltalian Gothic tradition.
A major influence is certainly Alberto de Martino's L'Anticristo
whose exorcism sequence is liberally quoted when Donal O'Brien tries to chase the evil spirit away.
As often happens in Massaccesi's best movies
a conventional start gives way to something totally unexpected.
The result is one of Aristide most morbid and disquieting works.
The peculiarity of lmmages in a Convent is sex is mixed with demonic possession
lt was quite daring like no other movie of the period
and you even shot some hardcore inserts featuring Marina Frajese...
To my generation nuns were very erotic.
Nowadays no one cares about that but when we were young we saw nuns as objects of desire.
Things are so much different now, but then it was not a matter of being daring,
it's just a flashback to my childhood experience.
By the end of the seventies erotic cinema entered a deep crisis.
ln this period Massaccesi followed different paths, trying other genres, such as adventure,
demoniac possession, and finally straight horror.
Eroticism was a constant reference and exoticism a key element.
These together with the will to come up with something new for those years
paved the way for a number of films shot between '79 - '80 in Santo domingo
with some distinct peculiarities. First, they had hardcore sequences which were shot
purposely for the movie and were connected with the story, unlike Alexander Borossky's flicks.
Second Hard Sensation, Porno Holocaust, Porno Exotic Love and erotic nights of the living Dead.
together with Orgasmo nero and most of all Sesso Nero, bear many analogies
with Papaya dei Caraibi, Joe D'Amato first exotic movie dated 1 978
which blendes horrific/exoteric elements taken from local voodoo traditions.
Sesso Nero was the first you produced yourself with the P.C.M. company.
What does P.C.M. mean?
Production Company Massaccesi. We were in Santo Domingo with some raw stock left
the actors were still there so l decided to produce a movie myself.
l made it using that leftover film stock.
Sesso Nero is considered to be the first porn movie produced and legally distributed in ltaly.
Was it successful at the box office?
Absolutely, it did very well. Of course, although it was a hardcore porn it looked like a ""real'' movie
shot in beautiful locations like Santo Domingo, which could not belong in an average porn
because of the budget these kinds of movies were shot inside hotel rooms
so when Sesso Nero came out it was quite something.
Porno Holocaust features a monstrous creature with an enormous penis
which he rapes women to death with. How did you create it?
We used foam rubber and latex. The make up artist applied this giant fake penis to that tall black actor ...
The only ltalian actress doing hardcore scenes on that movie was Anna Maria Napolitano.
What about her? And what happened to her since?
She came from Bologna and frankly l don't remember how i met her.
She was very receptive and open minded, so we did not have any problem at all on that occasion.
Anna Bergman is lngmar Bergman' s daughter,
so we thought it would be a good commercial move to credit her as director,
but nobody cared about that, moreover she was one of the worst actresses ever.
lt was the general manager, Ugo Valenti who lived in Santo Domingo and he is still in the movie business
that came up with this idea, but the movie had no success.
lt was rather squalid, not just because of Anna Bergman.
Back to the porn movies you shot in Santo Domingo
did you have any problem with Laura Gemser, Dirce Funari and Luigi Montefiori
who did not perform explicit sex scenes?
Honestly l don't remember anything in particular.
Maybe they just didn't know they would end up in a hardcore movie
or maybe l managed to persuade them.
After the commercial success of Sesso Nero, in the early eighties
Aristide decides to step into hardcore, making something like twenty movies in just a few years.
He directed some using the pseudonym Alexander Borsky while other made together
with Franco Lo Cascio are signed with the name Faar Delly.
These are lesser entries in Joe D'Amato filmography, made for a raincoat audience
with minimal storylines and while watching them one can not help but thinking
they can not be from the same filmmaker who did Sesso Nero and Porno Holocaust
which still had the makings of a real movie.
The stars of Borsky's and Faar Delly's skin flicks were two popular porn actors:
Mark Shannon and Marina Hedman.
Porn is not erotic, that's the point. An erotic movie means to spy, to peep
while porn flicks it's all so evident that to me it does not really convey any erotic emotion.
l make hardcore just for a living but l do not particularly like it.
What has changed in porn since the early eighties?
lt's all incredibly different now, because once we tried to mix porn and erotic
while nowadays you have to put at least eight sex scenes inside a porn
then change actors from scene to scene, use eighteen, twenty performers
you can not convey an erotic feeling this way
Moreover, it's got to be quick and extreme because
to put eight sex scenes into a hour-and- half picture
you got to start the movie with them naked and in the middle of action
otherwise there wouldn't be enough ... once these movies had a story
and you could make a porn with just two or three characters, building a morbid atmosphere.
Now to sell a porn you've got to have eight scenes, twenty actresses
in the US they even make movies with one hundred performers ... and you call that erotic?
The nineties were a difficult period for Massaccesi. The ever-growing crisis of ltalian popular cinema
and some wrong operations forced him to close down Filmirage
and move back to the porn industry for commercial reason.
Although Massaccesi himself does not hide his lack of feeling for the genre,
Joe D'Amato's latest hardcore movies quickly made him the leading filmmaker in the market
and his name a reliable trademark for consumers.
Hardcore in the nineties is something else, which no longer bears any similarity with real cinema.
Sexual performances are the real stars, while story and setting have become just a secondary element.
Despite the fact that today's porn actresses are much more beautiful and charming than before
contemporary porn has lost the fascination which exuded from those first pioneer entries
and is now an aseptic, heartless business ...
l think that everybody in the hardcore business, myself included
is just dealing with butt holes.
There is no other way to put it.
We just deal with butt holes and what comes in and out of them. That' s it.
They just kept asking him to make some stronger erotic stuff. Then he went on to make hardcore.
But Aristide did not really like it and he was even a bit ashamed of it
in fact he made some other stuff now and then.
He gained a position in hardcore industry which he just did not want.
He's always been a bit regretful about this Joe D'Amato trademark...
Joe D'Amato dealt with sex movies in a detached manner, despite being a prolific porn filmmaker.
He reached his best results in the ""film noir'' genre.
Even on the set he behaved unlike other people in the business.
l mean, he did not go about with actors after shooting or something like that
as it happens when you shoot outside Rome.
Nowadays there are extremely poor flicks
which make as much money as one of my most professional movies.
Someone buys a digital handy cam which cost 2,000 dollars, puts his wife on a bed
and films her as she is fucked by his best friend. End of the movie.
Then he takes his sister, his granny and makes another porn. That's how it goes.
Why there are so many Joe D'Amato fans all over the world?
l never understood it, really! l have yet to find the reason why.
l went to a Horror movie convention in New Jersey
and they even bough one of my autographed photos for ten dollars.
Can you tell me why - l mean, they could buy something useful, like a t- shirt for instance
whereas they buy a photo for ten dollars.
Unbelievable, definitely unbelievable. l swear, l just can't understand it.
Would you consider yourself a good cinematographer or a good director?
A good cinematographer.
As a director, would you consider yourself a master of erotic and horror cinema?
As a director ... l would say l am a professional craftsman.