Ernesto Gastaldi

Masaki Tezuka, three films.

And then tied for fourth, we ha- at two films, Ishii Rojando, Ernesto Gastaldi, Vittorio Salerno, Darren Lynn Bousman, George King, David A. Viner, Ruggero Deodato, Tyler Gillett, Matt Belzoneli Open, and Kevin Tenny.

And I'm actually starting to think about that.

Darren Lynn Bousman probably should be tied up with Tezuka because I have watched another film from him and everything like that.

I have to say, that trailer made the movie sound a lot more exciting than [laughs] it actually was.

But, uh, anyway, this film was directed by Sergio Martino, written by Ernesto Gastaldi, George Eastman, Mara Merrill, Sergio Martino, and Caesar Frugoni.

Took five people to come up with that script, Andrew.

Hmm.

presented.

As screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi put it in a later interview, It initially seems like a supernatural film, and then it takes a sinister and more human turn.

The ability to move the story forward while maintaining a certain ambiguity is one of its great qualities.

It is, though, a film with more pretensions than others, and I remember at first it left me perplexed.

The credits suggest that the story was written by a Spanish writer called Santiago Moncada, who wrote Mario Bava's Hatchet for the Honeymoon and the brilliant Spanish thriller The Corruption of Chris Miller, released in 1973.

There is also a co-screenwriter credit for another writer, an Italian called Sauro Scavolini.

But Ernesto Gastaldi disputes both of these, saying that other names alongside his were there for co-production reasons only, and that, quote, All the thrillers I wrote, I wrote alone.

End quote.

you really compare them, though? It just feels hard to put that.

Again, I think this lives more in the Umberto Lenzi and Ernesto Gastaldi, Dario Argento wheelhouse.

I don't think it's really comparable to those two guys.

De Palma, maybe.

I don't think they would do that.

That just, I, there wasn't that kind of respect for jello, uh, Italian crime films in America to be like, let's fly in today.

We might think like, oh yeah, of course, bring in Ernesto Gastaldi.

But in the seventies, no one was thinking that in Hollywood.

And this article goes on to describe the plot in roughly the same way that it plays out, but with the difference that the Suzanne character was named Deborah.

But Ernesto Gastaldi, who was 33 at the time of this, he gets the sole credit as the writer of the screenplay, even though the idea is based on one of his and, um, Luciano Martino's.

And he's adamant that Rondi wasn't involved in the project.

And so possibly Martino floated this idea first to Rondi a- and had him as a possible director before proceeding with Gastaldi and Guerrieri.

That was a good show.

1934, Ernesto Gastaldi.

Hey.

Hey, Ernesto.

Hey, Ernesto Gastaldi.

Screenwriter for The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock, Horror Castle, Crypt of the Vampire, The Long Hair of Death, The Murder Clinic, and also All the Colors of the Dark.

Also, great film.

So that was three and a half stars for that.

I stuck with Italy with Lycanthropus or Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory, 1961, directed by Paolo Hirsch, written by Ernesto Gastaldi.

And this is an interesting early Italian Gothic take on werewolves, again, and follows in the tradition of equating them with sexual assault movies.

Possibly popularised in the 20th century by Guy Endor's 1933 novel, adapted several times for the screen, this is not one of those adaptations though.