There are several female faces in Italian terror cinema, but one in particular is the one on the typewriter.Rossella Drudi is a veteran of horror having created the scripts for many films. Not all, for various reasons, have been credited to her, but she is credited with many images of homegrown terror.
He has given his life, from his earliest readings, to the fantastic, the paranormal. But his passions and interests, are manifold.
For the readers of the website he gave this long interview. He could not say everything but he delighted us with many details and anecdotes that embellish his career even more. And many fleas in the ear form once again.
Zick
By the time you were 12 years old, you were somehow already in the world of terror: you were writing comic book scripts under false identities and were able to sell them through the mail. Do you still retain anything from that period? What memories do you have?
Scarlett:
I don't keep anything unfortunately of those manuscripts. I was not typing them, but writing them in pen,and in secret from my parents who would not have approved. I remember one of those stories in particular, I had set it in a village in Transylvania, where an army of vicious, cannibalistic dwarves impaled wayfarers from neighboring villages, and then bled them dry through a very complicated system of glass and copper tubes and stills. The blood was collected in crystal ampoules that were used to fill the tub of the snow queen, a beautiful woman who was convinced that she could always remain young and beautiful by bathing in blood, like Poppaea in donkey's milk. Definitely influenced by the true story of Elizabeth Bathory, but without omitting comic veins in grotesque episodes that I love. By the time I was 12 years old, I had read a lot about fantasy, dreamlike and horror. The first master was Lovercraft ( my father was a fanatic admirer of him) then Edgar Allan Poe, Polidori, Stoker, Ann Agata Christie, Robert Louis Stevenson,Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliff (mythical!) and all the Italian Gothic from Fogazzaro's Malombra to the Scapigliatura to early Verga, Gadda,Pavese's novellas and others, considered at the time writers(minor... Sic!!).... Keep in mind that I was born in 1963 when TV was still in black and white like dreams and good movies, and my mother made the "intellectual" hag with books hung under the kitchen hood using wooden clothespins. So I got: "The Thousand and One Nights" "Bertoldo Bertoldino and Cacasenno" The Complete Collection of Salgari, Jules Verne (From the Earth to the Moon was the first one I read by Verne, I was 8 years old.) Everyone in the family read a lot and we went to the movies at least 3 times a week. The strangest thing in my 12 years was the discovery of sexuality through a beautiful book stolen from my father's nightstand and read in secret: "The Sun in the Belly" by Jean Hougron which has nothing erotic at least as it is understood today. I would love to write a screenplay based on that novel. Hougron is also known for science fiction novels also published with Urania, but I discovered that years later. Going back to the scripts for horror comics, the thing worked like this: I used to write on the sly after homework, I used to sign with the pseudonym Ghibli, but I no longer remember which character I stole it from by declaring myself male in order to have credibility in a world that is still too sexist today,for those who do not aspire to be a velina there is zero room, and then also because I was too small. My big sister opened a post office box, where I could pick up the check, while at the publishing house I sent the manuscripts from the central post office in Rome (at that time it was near the Pantheon) always poste restante. In this way we never saw or met. The fee was 100milalire per script, if they liked it they would send me the check and then the plates with the drawings made,but in black and white, where I would fill in the comics and captions following the script already written, then I would send them back etc. Too bad I don't have any of that anymore. I think today it is impossible to do work like that, without ever seeing or hearing each other except by mail. Too bad though, after all I trusted them and they trusted me.
What does horror literature represent to you? What are your favorite novels and short stories? What is the origin of such passion?
The horrific fairy tales exuding death. The fascination of death the curiosity of the afterlife, the sixteenth-century prints where death has its ultimate sublimation, I don't think I was ever a "normal" little girl because of this fixation of mine also related to mysticism and the paranormal. It represents the dream, fantasy,life, curiosity, psychoanalysis, the study of the mind in its perversions, the hunger for knowledge, the dark side of man, madness as gift and as curse. The mirror in which to project and discharge one's fears in that adolescence that is replicated in all ages of life. The other dimension, the parallel world,the irrational, the unconscious, the imponderable, the fascination of the unknown, the occult, the esoteric and the magical. In short, you get the picture.
My favorite novels (only of the horror genre we are talking about) are too many to list, but you can start with the authors mentioned in the first question for classics where I list all Italian, English and American Gothic,while for contemporaries here are a few: S. King (All), Clive Barker(All), Bret Easton Ellis(All) , Title Elise (the only woman with "Romeo" and "Oscar") James Ellroy ("The Roads of Innocence" an absolute masterpiece between poetry and carnal brutality, never again read such a lacerating story), Thomas Harris(All) and John Douglas (the author of Mind Hunter). He made me understand how to get into the mind of a serial killer, his books are now unobtainable because of the reprints they no longer make, but fortunately for me I have them all. It is because of this FBI agent that the Quantico Detective Agency exists and his hyper sensitivity in understanding deviant minds and feeling them through himself, but that is another story. I'll stop here but my favorites are still many. The origin if there is one I think is related to the perception of the beyond, but this is a gift given to you at birth, a gift also developed through your maternal grandfather. He used to tell me for fairy tales with a grand art of oratory, the Divine Comedy (tell me if hell with its circles is not a horror story, purgatory an essay in metaphysics and heaven pure science fiction), the Odyssey, the Iliad, the Aeneid and all of Shakespeare. So then even "normal" fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, Pinocchio, Tom Thumb, Hansel and Gretel (perhaps this one the most crude of all), etc. seemed to me to be pure horror oozing gothic, mysteries and magic and cruelty related to hunger that "justified" the murder of children and their abandonment in the woods (Tom Thumb, Hansel and Gretel) on every page when sometimes with the bogeyman was identified today's pedophile and worse. I used to think about these things as a child and understood them, perhaps because I was always attentive to the talk of adults and uninterested in the talk of my peers. Knowing how to listen and carefully observe our fellow man helps to understand many things, asking questions about our surroundings in the changes in society helps to understand even more.. I have always thought that changes should not be suffered or accepted with indifferent resignation, but thoroughly analyzed.
Your debut, in the world of filmmaking, came at a very young age as an editing assistant.
According to IMDB your first subject is for Silvio Amadio's film "The Medium" from 1980 (but other sources say 1978 or 1979).Few are lucky enough to have seen this film, apparently only a Spanish vhs is in circulation and it has rarely been broadcast on local TV. It is a rather special film also because the source of inspiration was the professional medium Demofilo Fidani. What can you tell us about it?
So let's go step by step. The film the Medium is from 1980, but it was written between 78/79. That's the first thing I did, but I don't show up in the credits for the speech earlier. I was 15/16 years old, I was not enrolled, and then Silvio Amadio only knew Claudio as a screenwriter, (Claudio is older than me and started working in film in 1971)He had also done assistant director for Amadio in an old Musketeers film but I don't remember the year or anything else yet-I didn't know him. So going back to the medium, I meet Silvio Amadio and his daughter Nicoletta at the cinemontage in via Latina, at Otello Colangeli's where precisely I was learning from the legendary Fernanda, the art of editing (it would take a separate book to tell about all the people I met in there). I became friends with their daughter and since both of us were into esotericism and parapsychology, they invited me to their country house I think in Velletri where they did the sessions. I go there with Claudio and they didn't know that the two of us were together. Anyway they have me do a séance in which Demofilo Fidani, who I knew as a painter and screenwriter, but I didn't know he was also a medium, also participates. During the session Demofilo tells me that I am a very strong psychic and that I have great receptive abilities. So I am made to witness various experiments such as automatic writing, making contributions appear and many other unexplainable things. Demophilus explains to me my "powers" of which I knew very little, but because of the many strange things that have happened in my life, even as a child I suspected something (but that's another story too). In short, to make a long story short they had summoned Claudio a year before to write the script, the film had stopped and then when I met them they asked me to read it and change it following my instincts.
I did it very excitedly and that was my first time. The subject was Demofilo's, Claudio and I wrote the script, the first draft him and the second draft me. Demofilo claimed that souls who came to a session had suggested Claudio's name and mine to him for writing the story. Such a thing had never happened nor ever repeated itself. Amadio was also a medium, but none as strong as Demophilus, incredible things happened at his sittings he was almost as strong as Rol of Florence. Of the story, however, I remember almost nothing and the film I think exists only in vhs but I know there is a French dvd around: I have to ask my friend Federico Caddeo, he does all the interviews today for old Italian films that France burns making them succeed. In France, England and America we have so many fans of our old films.
The ending of Rats - Night of Terror is the brainchild of yours. It is undoubtedly brilliant and captivating, an evolutionary metaphor about a world destroyed by man's stupidity. What were you inspired by?
To human and animal biology and genetics. Rats along with the nastiest insects like cockroaches that I hate, are the most resilient and indestructible animals that exist in nature, able to survive both desertification, glaciation and beta and alpha gamma rays. In short they will always be there even after the heaviest nuclear explosion. I chose rats, though, because in studying them I found that they are the same as humans, living in socially organized communities and learning at an impressive speed to adapt to new living conditions. While cats stand today like man in the Middle Ages in terms of social evolution, rats are in the same era as we are. It takes only one generation to transmit into the dna of newborns, all the information acquired from their progenitors. They are very intelligent and in short without me giving a science lecture, I hypothesized that, the head and brain of man would be transformed into that of the rat in the size of man whose body it kept only. Only possible mutation and form of survival to the nuclear post, for a new race.
Zombi 3 and Beyond Death (Zombies 4) are two completely different films but with the same "protagonists" (although they have a different origin): the living dead.
What convinces you and what still puzzles you about these films?
But, Zombi 3 was to be a sequel to Zombie Flesh Eaters also by Fulci, but then the production decided to shoot the film in the Philippines and so the story was totally changed, only the beginning and middle parts were saved. Lucio apologized to me blaming the production, but he was really sick and the film was finished by Claudio, with Lucio's permission. What an incredible man I am so happy to have met him. The story was totally different and what came out in the end was just an arranged thing. Zombie 4: After Death Instead, it has an entirely different story. The real title is Zombies 4: After Death, changed to Zombie 4: After Death lately by Italian distribution. I wanted to write, in the very distant 1984(year of writing)a story related to an old Voodoo legend. Some scientists were looking for the formula to make the magic pill, which would solve the problems of hunger in the third world,(I had already done this in Virus) but then it gets out of hand, because to use the recipe they had to break the book of the dead (Lovercraft coming back)committing sacrilege. So the awakened demons come back to life killing all the scientists. Only the child is saved by the talisman that protected her,(brucreia and white magic) but then she comes back after many years and everything starts again. You know the story. The difference is that in After Death I wanted to invent talking, thinking, reasoning zombies, zombies as people and not slaves who realize what happened to them and try to organize themselves in the new life situation, who run, shoot etc. many years before that Japanese movie I think where you see zombies running. Filmed with two lira in the Philippines, by Claudio. Zombies have always fascinated me, although never has a movie been made that tells their true story born in the late 1780s in Louisiana. Who knows if someday I will be able to make it and without anyone then changing it for lack of money as usual.
"Beyond Darkness" is a film that will always remain in your heart. In distribution, the title will be changed to "The House 5″ for no reason. But did unexplained events really happen during the making of the film script? Out of curiosity. the book on cases of diabolic possession that you used to write the story where did you acquire it? Apparently you lost it and it would never even turn up in print!
There was plenty of reason to change the title.
The Italian distribution "Cecchi Gori," after the success of the films about houses ["La casa 3″, "La casa 4″], wanted to call it that and you can't help it (the film was released in Rome in August 1990 at the Adriano and was a success). The original title was the English one because the film was made for foreign countries and not for Italy." Beyond Darkness" shot in the swamps of Louisiana. And in the real state prison with the death penalty by electric chair, what you see in the film is real, the chair and the prison guards, some inmates, their death row relatives, if I still think about it I get chills. But back to the writing. A lot of strange things happened, too many, from the car door opening by itself suddenly, with the car running and the script on the dashboard. A Citroen pallas, the iron as we called it in Rome. To the light not working and gone all over the house, to the gas that stopped working while all the other houses did, and so many other things. Suffice it to say that my friends wanted to burn my script that I still hadn't finished writing and who I was always carrying around with me. The story of the book is very true, "Father Malachi and the 100 Cases of Demonic Possession Recognized by the Holy Roman Church".That is the title. I lost my copy in the various moves (I am on my sixth and hope the seventh will be the final one). When I set out to look for the book, I could not find it. I had bought it in the old esoteric bookstore, the oldest in Rome in Santi Apostoli. Some of the older booksellers had heard of it, but there was no longer an edition, no one reprints it anymore, and today they don't even keep the plates. One of them tells me that in the Vatican library there are two copies, one of which is an original. I write an email to the father archivist who kindly replies telling me that that book does not exist and never existed. What should I think in your opinion? Not only I read it, but also Claudio and the producers for the Italian part of the film and some actors including the Englishman who plays the exorcist priest. That we are all crazy? I don't think so. And think I remember so many cases read in that book. The fact that the Vatican denies its existence makes me think very badly, but that's another story, too. (Will I ever be able to write them all down?!)
How do you explain the great success that "Troll 2″ still has in America today? Until when "Troll 3″?
I can't explain it. In 1989 when I wrote it and in 1990 when it came out it was not a big success. That film was never a horror film. THE producer wanted a film suitable for children and families that was uncensored and bloodless. Also he wanted to use a troll mask the first one I never saw, even after that. In short I say to Sarlui (the American producer), "Do you want a horror fairy tale for children?" He says yes, so I say, "What if I make it demented comedy for you?" and he says, "Okay!" So we leave for Park City the place is already fairy tale-like (there I also wrote a ghost story about Native American Indians that I have never seen, the movie was made, but I don't know the title or the director. The production is always Eureka film by Eduard Sarlui and the director an American). I dust off in order to use that hideous mask, my paternal grandmother's Celtic legends about the forest goblins. ( Don't forget that I am a Druid and descended from Druids). In fact, the script titled Goblins and throughout the story it is always about goblins and never about trolls. Again the title was changed by the distribution. I could not use blood and replaced it with chlorophyll, using vegetarian goblins like vampires, then making them die or liquefy at the sight of a meat burger used as a crucifix, etc. All laugh-out-loud with various metaphors about life and the American Middleman and his family. Maybe today after so many years, they finally realized it was a comedy movie and not a classic horror movie, I was ahead of my time before scari movies with demented horror. I had so much fun playing with the hormonal prudery of teenagers towards mature women (today it is normal, but at the time it was not)the scene of the witch seducing the boy with the corncob is a cult object, Americans are not like us and did not understand where I came up with the idea so exciting to them, simple retort I am woman and Italian. Other myth and that of peeing on food, they always ask me for that one too, how I came up with the idea and I reply that it was the only thing a nine-year-old child could do in a few seconds. That is, I tried to get inside a child's head. Then the ghost of the grandfather who helps her grow up, all the characters in the film go through a journey of growth and maturation in their lives, leaving something behind that dies forever and never comes back. I had lost my father in March 1989 crushed by leukemia, too young to leave, I was very pissed off at the world. When the opportunity came to go to America, (it was my first time)I accepted immediately with family in tow, I thought that by going so far away the pain would lessen, but it didn't. However, this absurd story helped me to accept the detachment, and then I am convinced that he inspired me. There are also druids in the film, with the Stone Age monoliths. But in the American translation they become the magic stones and they don't mention the druids or the Celts, unfortunately there is a great ignorance in them, they don't even know their history and America is not N.Y. Do you think that the actors and crew of the film, when they came to Rome to the cinema house to shoot the documentary on the phenomenon of Troll 2, they did not know the legendary Hollywood actors of the past, such as James. Dean, Gary Cooper, Jhon Wayne, etc. All depicted in the photographs in the movie house. When asked how it is possible that they had never seen those movies, the answer was that they were born too many years later. Arm-twisting. Anyway, the phenomenon is crazy and every year we return to attend the various cinemas. The documentary will be shown at the Cannes Film Festival and the Park City Festival at Sundance. For Troll 3 o Goblin 2 we'll see. I have written and translated the subject and now I am waiting for news from MGM.
"Killing Birds" is a film with an as yet unclear genesis. By now it is certain that Claudio Lattanzi was only a front man, the real director was Aristide Massaccesi.However, Lattanzi claims to have written a subject, "The Obsolete Gate," which later became the film. You, on the other hand, that the real soul of the film was the screenplay of a film you had written with your husband Fragasso, "Artigli. "In medio stat veritas" meaning Massaccesi fused different ideas or is someone wrong?
So here's the thing.
I wrote and alone, as always, even though we were then signing in two, the subject of Claws and Aristide also confirms this in one of the many videos made to him that you find on youtube. Then the script that I made from Claws was not used for the film, but for Roots by Fabrizio Laurenti, who I don't know how he signed his name abroad. Claudio Lattanzi, aka Claudio Millikan, was the front man for directing,(because Aristide couldn't feature in too many films as producer and director, but really then it was always him, a real genius underrated and only considered for hard films, he was fantastic as a cinematographer, as a hand-held camera operator, as an editor and most of all, he never castrated me in the creative part of writing, smiling creative fatherly, we all miss him a shit and he really made so many of them debut).
I remember that in his last years he was always staying in Aristide's offices in Viale delle Milizie, when Michele Soavi also left the factory to go to work with Dario Argento, Lattanzi was one of the factory's last acquisitions, the son of a pharmacist and therefore renamed by Aristide the "pharmacist." He wanted to become a director, but was apparently denied.
I, too, was leaving the factory: I was pondering the hard film finally all Italian and then "Shaved Heads" was born. I was tired of being an emigrant abroad, even though I was having more fun, I wanted to make myself known in my own country and above all I wanted Claudio to be able to showcase his directorial talent in Italy where insulting and mediocre colleagues, but much helped (politically)super hailed by critics with stupid films, were going on. So I convinced him to make Shaved heads and then from there we never stopped carving out our own little space in a cinema that only wants comedies or self-proclaimed "authors."
Your filmography is vast, not only horror, but also science fiction and thrillers (and more). Limiting ourselves to these two genres, however, which of your films would you recommend more than others and why?
I am not the right person to do this, but having to recommend for thriller without a doubt "Concorso Di Gupa" my act of sorrow to a political past lived in first person with a mea culpa, pointing out what we have become today,(all those of my generation) even if it is told through a detective story full of twists and turns, with real time and time references, with the clock ticking the whole thing, definitely my best story. Why this story?, because the truth hurts but it must be told, one cannot be silent forever and those who never change their minds and do not admit their mistakes are either jerks or false opportunists and hypocrites like the characters in the film.
For science fiction definitely Virus - Hell Of The Living Dead, although I don't appear in the credits, but I played the Negro as I have already explained, but the story is all my own. Ambitious transposition of Dante's inferno complete with Charon ferrying the survivors. The idea of the seven oil sisters, the most powerful lobby in the world, the seven-headed hydra, which in order to get rid of the problems of the third world forever, asks scientists to invent a bacteriological weapon, capable of turning human beings into cannibals, but only of their same ethnicity. This way by eating each other, they would eliminate the problem of hunger, of overpopulation in the third world because they would all die or be left alive in limited numbers. It gets out of hand and the virus spreads all over the world. That was the subject,(I had written it in 1978 in unsuspected times, before there was any intention to make a film) The film was to be shot in Africa, but it was made in Spain because of co-production. It did very well all over the world and is still considered a cult film, although it could not be made as it was written, again because of cost issues.
Why this? ... Because in that story my wild imagination went beyond itself, also using a lot of symbolism, the character of the soldier played by Franco Garofalo who at a certain point in the film , wears a pink tutu and improvises a ballet dance, here is that madness absolutely mine, it is worth more than anything else and Franco is a great actor.
Final round of dry-answer questions, between the serious and the facetious.
Very few and concise words for:
- Today's Italian horror film
Why is it still there? I haven't seen him in forever!
- Claudio Fragasso
The human camera,absolutely fantastic!
- Raoul Bova
A dear friend, great guy, who also grew over time in acting.
- Esotericism
My life.
– Tell me about it (his blog)
Right of reply, effective antidepressant.
- John Falcone
True man like few,Martyr, Saint, Righteous, Victim of power and a part of the government that hurt him more than the Mafia. A man who makes you feel proud to be Italian.
-The Rome derby
An unparalleled spectacle at the Olimpico, especially after crossing Testaccio, Portuense, and Trastevere decked out as if we had won the Champions Cup.
- Rome derby when Lazio wins
A third-class funeral.(*)
- The last 56 hours (his latest screenplay)
"When Civil Complaint is Adrenaline!"(a year of research, study, reading and interviews before writing this)
- Your favorite song
Roman Holidays by Matia Bazar sung by Antonella Ruggeri
- The current government
Do I have to?
- Internet and blogs
All the best and woe betide you if you touch them!
- Will you visit us on our website?
Definitely yes. After the filming of the movie though. We leave next week. I'm taking my pc with me anyway.
Interview by Samuele Zaccaro
