Ruggero Deodata
Biography
Date of Birth: 7 May 1939
Place of Birth: Potenza, Italy
On the basis of just one movie, Deodato
became the enfant terrible of Italian cinema, a wayward talent who has sadly
never really achieved all that much since the devestating Cannibal Holocaust
[1980].
A brief spell of acting in the 1950s gave way to a much longer tenure as
assistant director, working with some of the key figures in the development of
Italian popular cinema in this capacity for over a decade. In the late 1960s, he
moved into television, producing highly regarded commercials and news programmes
before venturing into drama series with equal success.
The move to the big screen was a logical next step and Deodato attacked it with
some gusto, making no less than four features in his first year, 1968. In fact,
he'd unofficially made his directorial debut in 1964 with the entirely terrible
Ursus il terrore dei Kirghisi, a peblum abandoned mid-shoot by Antonio
Margheriti and completed by director of photography Gabor Pogany after Deodato
also walked. The film was eventually credited to Margheriti for commercial
reasons.
Deodato didn't stay in films for long, however, and quit the industry in 1969 to
go into advertising. By 1976, he was Italy's leading producer of TV commercials
and teamed up with Lamberto Bava who acted as his assistant. 1975 had seen
Deodato tentatively return to the big screen with Ondata di Piacere, a low key
sexy thriller and was soon back to full time film production, fitting in
commercials as and when he could.
The breakthrough year was 1980, when Deodato made La casa sperduta nel parco and
his classic Cannibal Holocaust, one of the most galvanising and hardest to
forget violence epics the Italians ever made. The fall out from Holocaust
however, caused severe problems for Deodato and his career never really
recovered. Faced with law suits, critical revulsion and wholesale banning, the
film entered exploitation movie notoriety, earned Deodato a place in the horror
hall of fame and virtually finished him as a credible commercial entity
Deodata movies..I have seen only one of his movies and man is it NOT a movie for the squeamish: