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Joe D'Amato (birth name: Aristide Massaccesi) (15 December 1936 in Rome - 23 January 1999 in Rome) was an Italian filmmaker who directed roughly 200 films, usually at the same time acting as producer and cinematographer, and sometimes providing the script as well.〔(【引用サイトリンク】work=The New York Times )〕 While D'Amato contributed to many different genres (such as the spaghetti western, the horror film, the war movie, the swashbuckler, the peplum, and the fantasy film), the majority of his films are exploitation-themed pornography, both soft and hardcore. He is generally considered the most prolific Italian filmmaker of all time. D'Amato is perhaps most well known for his horror films, many of which went on to become cult movies (such as ''Anthropophagous''〔 and ''Beyond the Darkness''), and for his hastily produced remakes of popular American films (such as the ''Ator'' series, based upon the ''Conan the Barbarian'' films). D'Amato's remakes often incorporated elements of several popular films of disparate genres, in an attempt to reach the widest possible audience. In his later years, D'Amato was almost exclusively a director and producer of adult films, becoming one of the most renowned directors of pornography in Italy. In his honor is held in Pietrasanta the ''Joe D'Amato Horror Festival'', with the art direction of Paolo Ruffini. == Biography == D'Amato was familiar to the environment of cinema through his father who worked as an electrician at Cinecittà. He began his career in 1961 as camera operator (often working under cinematographer Franco Villa). Then, starting with ''Pelle di Bandito'' in 1969, he regularly worked as director of photography for directors such as Demofilo Fidani (''Dead Men Don't Make Shadows'', ''One Damned Day at Dawn… Django Meets Sartana!'', ''A Barrel Full of Dollars''), Alberto De Martino, Massimo Dallamano (''What Have You Done to Solange?''), Silvio Amadio, Mino Guerrini, and Michele Lupo (''Ben and Charlie''). In 1972, D'Amato started directing his own movies whilst still continuing to work as cinematographer for other directors. His first directorial efforts include the spaghetti westerns ''Scansati... a Trinità arriva Eldorado'' and ''A Bounty Killer in Trinity'', the decamerotic movies ''Novelle licenziose di vergini vogliose'' and ''More Sexy Canterbury Tales'' (''The Last Decameron''), the swashbuckler burlesque ''Fists, Pirates and Karate'' (starring Richard Harrison), the war movie ''Heroes in Hell'' (with Klaus Kinski), the sword and sandal movies ''The Arena'' (uncredited) and ''Livia, una vergine per l'impero romano'' (aka ''Diario di una vergine romana''), the gothic giallo ''Death Smiles at a Murderer'' (starring Klaus Kinski and Ewa Aulin), and the western ''Cormack of the Mounties'' (with Fabio Testi and Lionel Stander, shot in Canada alongside Lucio Fulci's movie ''The Return of White Fang'' (on which D'Amato worked as second unit director). In the latter 1970s, D'Amato tried to capitalize on the worldwide commercial success of the French softcore movie series ''Emmanuelle''. His first attempt, ''Emanuelle's Revenge'' (a collaboration with Bruno Mattei) only referred to the French heroine by name. The next movie, ''Black Cobra Woman'' (aka ''Eva Nera''), starring Jack Palance and Laura Gemser), already incorporated several plot elements from the French series. Laura Gemser had previously impersonated the character of Black Emanuelle in a film by Bitto Albertini. Under the direction of D'Amato (who had first cast her as a maid in his 1976 erotic comedy ''Vow of Chastity'', Gemser continued the series with a total of five sequels (''Emanuelle in Bangkok'' (1976), ''Emanuelle in America'' (1977), ''Emanuelle Around the World'' (1977), ''Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals'' (1977), and ''Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade'' (1978)), a series which grew increasingly violent, including gang rape, zoophilia, cannibalism, and fake snuff film footage. (Some versions for the foreign market — especially in France — also contained hardcore sex scenes, which D'Amato claimed not to have directed himself.) Besides the Emanuelle movies, D'Amato also directed ''Ladies' Doctor'' (1977), a sexy satire on the Italian health care system starring Renzo Montagnani, the mercenary movie ''Tough to Kill'' (1978), made two erotic mondo movies (''Emanuelle and the Erotic Nights'' and ''Sexy Night Report'') again in collaboration with Bruno Mattei, and the sequel ''Sexy Night Report 2'' on his own. At the end of the '70s, D'Amato directed ''The Pleasure Shop on 7th Avenue'' (which follows the ''Last House on the Left'' formula and, though essentially a softcore movie, contains in its uncut version, a brief scene of fellatio), and ''Images in a Convent'' (a nunsploitation movie containing a hardcore gang rape & fellatio scene). In the early 1980s, D'Amato made some of his best known gore films such as ''Antropophagus'' (''The Grim Reaper''), ''Absurd'' (''Rosso Sangue''), and ''Buio Omega'' (''Beyond the Darkness''), for which he later gained cult status among horror film fans. He then went into an early hardcore phase, starting out with a series of hard and soft porn movies shot around Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Some mix eroticism with horror movie themes like cannibalism (''Papaya, Love Goddess of the Cannibals'', softcore, with Sirpa Lane), zombies (''Erotic Nights of the Living Dead'', hardcore, with Laura Gemser), voodoo ''Sex and Black Magic'' (a softcore movie starring Richard Harrison), and homicidal radioactive mutants (''Porno Holocaust'', hardcore). Less horrific are ''Black Sex'' (the first genuine Italian hardcore movie) and at the same time a weird melange of ghost story and cancer drama), ''Hard Sensation'' (another variation on the ''Last House on the Left'' model, also hardcore) and ''Paradiso Blu'' (a softcore Robinsonade starring Anna Bergman). Recurring stars of these movies were Mark Shannon, Lucia Ramirez, Dirce Funari, and Annj Goren. Back in Italy, D'Amato mostly worked together with Claudio Bernabei on a number of obscure low-budget hardcore productions with titles like ''Super Hard Core'', ''La voglia'', ''Blue Erotic Climax'', ''Le porno investigatrici'', ''Stretta e Bagnata'', ''Bocca Golosa'', and ''Love in Hong Kong'', for most of which they used the directorial pseudonym ''Alexandre Borsky''. On his own, D'Amato directed the so-called ''Imperial Trilogy'', starting with ''Caligula: The Untold Story'' (the sequel to Tinto Brass's ''Caligula'') and concluding with the obscure low-budget follow-ups ''Messalina orgasmo imperiale'' and ''Una vergine per l'impero romano''. Recurring stars of this period were Pauline Teutscher, Laura Levi, Mark Shannon (again), and Paolo Gramignano. Around this time, D'Amato also started working as a producer, which eventually led to the founding of his own film company. From 1982 to 1994, Filmirage — as it was called — financed a total of 42 escapist non-hardcore genre entries: slashers, horror, and post-apocalyptic movies directed by Umberto Lenzi (''La Casa 3 - Ghosthouse'', ''Hitcher in the Dark''), Claudio Fragasso (''La Casa 5'', ''Troll 2''), Lucio Fulci (his last movie: ''Door into Silence''), Michele Soavi (directorial debut: ''Stage Fright''), and Luigi Montefiori (''2020 Texas Gladiators''), as well as a number of horror, fantasy, and softcore erotic movies directed by D'Amato himself, most notably three of the four Ator movies, the postapocalyptic film ''Endgame'', the ''Dirty Dancing'' rip-off ''Dancing Is My Life'' (starring Valentine Demy), and the trilogy revolving around the fictional author Sarah Asproon (''Eleven Days, Eleven Nights'', ''Top Model'', and ''Web of Desire'', starring Jessica Moore and Kristine Rose). Cinzia Monreale (co-star of ''Buio Omega'') came back to star in his mid-90s film ''Return From Death'' (''Frankenstein 2000''), one of D'Amato's last horror films. In 1994, when Italian cinema was at a low point commercially, D'Amato returned to hardcore filmmaking. For his first handful of low-budget productions (mostly starring Luana Borgia), he again used the pseudonym ''Alexandre Borsky'' — before teaming up with Luca Damiano to co-direct, mostly uncredited, a number of higher-budgeted costume porn movies such as ''Aladdin X'', ''Marco Polo'', and ''Hamlet X''. Then, from 1995 until his death in early 1999, he mostly directed and produced movies on his own again, founding the production companies Butterfly Motion Pictures and Capital Film (with seat in Los Angeles). He transformed into hardcore pornography such diverse subject matter as the tragedies of William Shakespeare (''Juliet & Romeo'', ''Othello 2000'', ''Anthony and Cleopatra''), Greco-Roman mythology (''Ulysses'', ''Samson and Hercules in the Land of the Amazons'', ''Olympus - Refuge of the Gods''), Roman emperors (''Caligula - The Devious Emperor'', ''Nero'', ''Messalina''), the 1920s and 1930s in the U.S. (''Gangland Bangers'', ''Some Like It Hard'', ''Rudy - The Valentino Story''), the W.I.P. genre (''Operation Sex'', ''The Joy Club'', ''Midnight Obsession''), the western (''Outlaws'', ''Calamity Jane''), and Swashbucklers (''Selen the Girl from Treasure Island'', ''Raiders'', ''Lady in the Iron Mask''). He also devised porn versions of successful movies, such as ''Anal Instinct'' (''Basic Instinct''), ''Dangerous'' (''Damage''), ''Eternal Desire'' (''Highlander''), ''Anal Paprika'' (''Paprika''), ''Robin Hood: Thief of Wives'' (''Robin Hood: Men in Tights''), and ''Anal Perversions of Lolita'' (''Lolita''). D'Amato was one of the few porn directors who in the late 1990s continued to shoot on 35mm film (and not on video). In the last five years of his life, he directed almost 100 hardcore movies for the European video market. During this time, he also sought ways to finance non-hardcore movies with money earned from directing hardcore pornography, of which he grew tired at times. They were to be four: the erotic movies ''Provocation'' (1995) and ''Top Girl'' (1996), the erotic thriller ''The Hyena'' (1997), and the pirate adventure movie ''I predatori delle Antille'' (1998) starring Anita Rinaldi. Shortly after completing the hardcore feature ''Showgirl'', Joe D'Amato died of heart failure at his villa in Rome in early 1999. He had one son, Daniele Massaccesi, who started out by helping his father in the camera department and later moved to the United States where he entered into a lucrative career as a cameraman, working on such films as ''Cold Mountain'', ''Hannibal'', and ''Kingdom of Heaven''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Joe D'Amato」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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