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[Jay]

The Perverse, Deranged Movies and Lost Movies of an Italian Wildcard
A retrospective on Alberto Cavallone by Jay Slater


“They were chopping off their bollocks with their own hands.”
Alberto Cavallone on the Italian censor

The unique cinema of Alberto Cavallone was forged from the turbulent times during the mid-Seventies when Italy was subjected to political chaos, scandal and upheaval, terrorism and murder, rising street crime and a nation’s sense of fear and anxiety. Known as “Anni di Piombo”, or the Leaden Years, Italian film began to reflect the country’s mood for revolutionary cinema – notably after the decline of the spaghetti western – where the bourgeoisie were learning of the younger generation’s extreme viewpoints and political ambitions. There was a need for change and genre cinema, being the most commercial, flourished in that it reflected what the public demanded to see. The Italian “poliziotteschi” crime movie, those featuring the likes of Franco Nero and Maurizio Merli, who blew away politicians, gangs and murderers who escaped the corrupt justice system with their .38 Specials snowballed into a highly lucrative genre that fuelled the public’s desire to see the everyman wipe away scum and to liberate the streets, some movies interestingly predating Michael Winner’s Death Wish (1974). 

Also, sex became a phenomenon in magazines and comic strips that predictably infiltrated the Italian film industry. Softcore comedies, often starring curvaceous beauties such as Edwich Fenech and Gloria Guida, became highly popular for home consumption although a number sold overseas. In turn, these “slap and tickle” titillation movies influenced genre directors such as Aristide Massacessi (aka “Joe D’Amato”) to lens their own soft pictures that led to hardcore which proved to be financially beneficial for the international market. Porn and exploitation was an obvious crossover and the brief run of the Italian Nazi movie included hardcore inserts for various territories such as Cesare Canevari’s L’ultima orgia del III Reich/Gestapo’s Last Orgy (1977). Pier Paolo Pasolini’s final film after his “Trilogy of Life” series was Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma/Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), that although shocked audiences for its graphic portrayal of violence, sexual degradation and torture, influenced independent Italian filmmakers into producing their own cannon of colourful and fetishist cinema, however severe and unsuitable for public consumption by the authorities. Alberto Cavallone, like Polselli – both well-read and intellectual men – were able to voice their art house narrative on politics and social context behind a veil of sensationalistic cinema with a punch. During the Seventies, Italian genre independent film was to spiral to new depths of depravity and high creativity, stunning audience-goers and infuriating the censor.

Little is known of Alberto Cavallone and his movies: some being lost or damaged, and his unorthodox working methods, eccentric and anarchic film style, as well as the majority of his films never being released outside Italy, saw that his genius was to be curtailed by the home censor and limited distribution. Unlike Polselli and Jesus Franco, Cavallone was never to achieve the recognition as an auteur with his own sense of cinéma vérité. Like his protagonists, Cavallone’s films were to go further in the extreme, portraying women in peril or sex objects as a one fingered salute towards authority whilst appeasing the adult crowd: suffice to say, his last movies were to be hardcore porn, and Blue Movie (1978) being Cavallone’s Rubicon. 

After honing his craft on a number of commercials, Cavallone’s first film was La sporca guerra/The Dirty War which was shot between 1959 and 1960. Aged seventeen (his grandmother lying to his parents stating that he was away with friends so he could make his film), Cavallone shot the movie on 16mm and was based on the Algerian War of Independence when the country was rocked by civil war from 1954 to 1962. The young and intrepid filmmaker shot risqué footage of combat and explosions before moving to Paris in 1958 to lens terrorist activity, notably in Billancourt where he filmed three people who had just been hanged. Controversy – to be Cavallone’s thumbprint – hit the fifty minute film on its immediate release when Italian communists were outraged by its political content and demanded alterations to be made: Cavallone refused. La sporca guerra, its only remaining print believed to be stored in Milan, also features one of Pino Donaggio’s first scores.

Lontano dagli occhi/Far from the Eyes (1962) was a pseudo-documentary shot in Frankfurt which was one of the first movies to chronicle a trial against Nazis who it was alleged committed acts against humanity such as the horrors of the concentration camps and the use of Zyclone B in the gas chambers. Shot on a shoestring (Cavallone and crew took turns to drive when others slept on their trip to Germany), the film never received distribution where the negatives that were stored in Milan were lost in the sands of time. In the mid-Sixties after earning a crust making commercials, he was tempted to pack his bags for Rome by maverick producer Franco Cristaldi where he would get his foot in the door in the film industry by writing screenplays as Ennio De Concini’s assistant; Concini had penned such works as Mario Bava’s La Maschera del demonio/Black Sunday (1960), Lucio Fulci’s I Quattro dell’apocalisse/Four Gunmen of the Apocalypse (1975), Tinto Brass’s Salon Kitty (1976) and Roberto Faenza’s Copkiller/Order of Death (1983).

Cavallone was then permitted to write under his own name for Dino Risi’s L’Ombrellone/Weekend, Italian Style (1966), Duccio Tessari’s Per amore… per magia…/For Love… for Magic (1967) and Mikhail Kalatozov’s Krasnaya Palatka/The Red Tent (1969) before working fulltime on his own movie, Le Salamandre/The Salamander in 1969. Inspired by the writings of writer Fritz Fanon who believed that a colonial population could only reach freedom by declaring violence towards their occupiers, Cavallone’s tale sees a white photographer (Erna Schurer) who seduces a black model (the lovely ebony Beryl Cunningham). A doctor arrives on the scene – Anthony Vernon (Antonio Casale) who took his pseudo from Jesus Franco stalwart Howard Vernon – and Schurer falls for his charms. Outraged, Cunningham kills the photographer and the doctor. Le Salamandre received a critical drubbing in Italy although it was a hit at the box-office where it cost around nine thousand pounds to make and scooped a staggering four hundred and twenty-four thousand in return; in an age when a cinema ticket cost fifty pence. As his first commercial movie, Cavallone believed its success to be a disgrace stating, “The first movie must be unsuccessful. Only this can make the second a more successful movie!”

Cavallone achieved another homegrown hit with Dal nostro inviato a Copenhagen/From Our Copenhagen’s Correspondent in 1970 where two American soldiers fresh from the Vietnam War are haunted by the atrocities that they witnessed and committed while on a vacation in Copenhagen, Denmark. Based on true events where a number of American soldiers were granted two to three months in Wiesbaden, Germany, to purge the violence they had inside, done or had suffered as a consequence of their actions, Dal nostro inviato a Copenhagen is lazy filmmaking from a technical point-of-view as if Cavallone discovered the zoom on the first day (something that he had admitted). Dull and unengaging, it’s a film where nothing really happens despite the presence of Cavallone’s stunning waif-like wife Jane Avril (Maria Pia Luzi) who he would later divorce. Interestingly, in a method he would use later with some his more controversial pictures, Cavallone intercuts his film with disturbing documentary footage from the Vietnam conflict of burning villages and mutilated corpses, with bizarrely staged action set in rural Italy to compliment its Asian backdrop, as would Antonio Margheriti implement in the Philippines with L’ultimo cacciatore/The Last Hunter (1980), Fuga dall’archipelago maledetto/Tiger Joe (1982) and Tornado (1983). “Dal nostro inviato a Copenhagen… Horrible title, absolutely shit,” Cavallone had accused his producers of changing its original title from Così U.S.A (So U.S.A. but also reads as “That’s the way it goes”) as they had felt that it was too strong considering the My Lai Massacre. The en masse slaughter of Vietnamese civilians by US troops, mostly women and children, on 16 March 1968 prompted widespread outrage, and the producers got cold feet realising that Cavallone’s bloody and unflinching finale predated the bloodbath: so much so, they demanded to cut the movie. Cavallone believed that the producers wanted to filter his antiwar message and political ambitions in a crude and direct way, as the director called it, a new “dirty war.” In typical Cavallone flourish and disregard for sensibilities, “They were chopping off their bollocks with their own hands!” An obscure film that received a limited domestic homevideo release, not much is known of the materials or cast such as Alain N Kalsjy (Walter Fabrizio), who after completing the shoot, it was believed left for India to buy and sell local craftwork.

A year later, Cavallone returned with his best-looking movie: Quickly, spari e baci a colazione/Quickly, Shootings and Kisses for Breakfast, a bizarre and surreal slapstick action movie with Terry Gilliam inspired animations (by Cavallone himself) spliced throughout the movie with no regard for comprehension. A diamond heist with colourful characters and crisp cinematography, the humour is best described as unsophisticated Terence Hill and Bud Spencer larks complemented by crude animation, a bright and jazzy score by Cavallone regular composer Franco Potenza and a bevy of stunning women: Maria Pia Luzi, Beryl Cunningham, Magda Konopka and Claudie Lange – what’s not to like in a commercial movie with experimental qualities? With Zelda (1974), Cavallone described Quickly, spari e baci a colazione as a “mercenary movie”, or in other words, “messed up, because it couldn’t be otherwise than that way,” with monies attributed from Italy, Morocco and Tunisia.

Cavallone returned in 1973 with Afrika, a violent examination of male homosexuality in a time when it was considered taboo where Ivano Staccioli and his lover engage in a self-destructive relationship against the background of Africa. Typically Cavallone, the film starts with a naked white woman who is tortured by having a lit cigarette extinguished on one of her breasts by a black soldier, who is then shot in the vagina by machine gun fire. A male protagonist is raped in unflinching and uncomfortable detail and the film is graced with much in the way of female nudity – if it wasn’t for the director’s claims that he had made a social document on homosexuality, Afrika could have been rubber-stamped as an exploitation film, which it is. Cavallone claimed he made a major mistake by casting Staccioli for lead – who would later appear as Gestapo kingpin in Bruno Mattei’s KZ9 – Lager di sterminio/Women’s Camp 119 (1977) – as he did not realise that the actor was homosexual before shooting commenced. The outspoken artist claimed that he would have chosen someone else as, “an actor can’t play himself, unless he’s at [Dirk] Bogarde’s level,” was “a bit above the line,” and to nail his colours firmly on the mast: “he wasn’t good enough, anyway.” Filmed mainly in Ethiopia, the production was plagued by incidents as the country was going through a turbulent change of regime. Witnessing cruel atrocities around them, Cavallone and crew were arrested for ten days and constantly paid unpleasant visits by the police and army. Indeed, during a scene where a boy is kidnapped in a town square, Cavallone was thrown into a cell for two days where his interrogators who once spoke in Italian, refused to converse with him unless it was in their native tongue – the Italian eyeing edgy guards sporting machine guns and tools of torture, never knew if would face the firing squad. Understandably, Cavallone hated everything about Afrika due to what happened on the shoot, which was just as well as it flopped at the box-office; the public hated it. Most prints have been lost but a scratchy 8mm version is in circulation that has lost much of its colour and is missing twenty minutes of footage from the eighty-five minute theatrical release.

Cavallone was finding it more and more difficult to paint on his own canvas – his surreal vision and thought, experimental approach to filmmaking and gratuitous imagery were becoming verboten for commercial acceptance. Zelda (1974) was to be Cavallone’s last film where he compromised with producers and distributors to make a marketable picture before going solo and painting the town red with his own ventures such as Blue Movie and Spell (1977). Focusing on female homosexuality, Zelda was not of interest to Cavallone because he believed that the film never took risks despite prints being seized by Italian police for twenty days for obscenity charges featuring Turinese actress Franca Gonella – who also revealed all in Polselli’s Rivelazioni di uno psichiatra sul mondo perverso del sesso/Revelations of a Psychiatrist on the Perverse World of Sex (1973) – in a scene where she had sex on her father’s grave.

Spell was to mark an eclectic medley of surrealistic images, sexual energy, angst and wrath that Cavallone would consummate with distinction, if that is an acceptable accolade, a year later with Blue Movie. Chronicling the working lives within a small Italian town, the film follows a number of characters – most sexual frustrated within the boundaries of their mundane and predictable existences – that eventually explode in fury and lust at the local carnival. Cavallone’s inspiration for Spell came from when he became disillusioned of Rome and lived in a remote town for five years and realised that the carnival, or other local festivities of the type, were a welcome pressure valve for the locals where everything could be out in the open without fear of reprisal or embarrassment. Spell was attacked by its critics, one claiming that Cavallone was not a director, but the material for a mental institute. It’s understandable to see why art house intelligentsia despised such a movie where the working class and surrealism inspired by the works of Georges Bataille clashed, but Spell was more welcome in the southern provinces where people could identify with the non-actors and their lives despite the heavy-handed political and fantastic imagery on offer (the Italian western was also popular in the south for such reasons, the cities less so).

Spell is a simplistic tale, electrically charged by composer Claudio Tallino’s score and shocking scenes of astonishing realism that shatter the placid beauty of the sun-bathed town, cobbled streets and simplistic lifestyle. Although Cavallone’s brush paints an obvious canvas of life and death, such as gravediggers exhuming a coffin to eat hardboiled eggs, or a butcher lusting over teenager girls and thrusting himself into a side of cow, the violent spectacle stands out, notably a stranger who is defecated upon (maize porridge and chocolate, claimed the director) before being stabbed between the legs. Macha Magall, a German actress who starred in Luigi Batzella’s video nasty La Bestia in calore/The Beast in Heat the same year before achieving success in the theatre, had an opportunity to act as a frustrated wife as well as being prematurely aged. Mónica Zanchi, who was to appear in two other movies in 1977, Giuseppe Vari’s Suor Emanuelle/Sister Emanuelle and Aristide Massaccesi’s Emanuelle e gli ultima canniabli/Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, was to be Cavallone’s whipping girl. In one scene, a chicken is killed on camera in front of Zanchi which repulsed her. Two days later, Cavallone asked her to partake in a scene where she was to lie on a pool table where a butcher would shoot balls between her open legs. Needless to say that Zanchi was furious, but despite her tantrums, the scene was shot.     

I

[Jay]

 

In the same year, Cavallone wanted to do something different to Spell, and after reading the poems from Maldoror by Lautréamont (1868), was inspired to write a screenplay based upon his writings. A tragic love story of acceptance and denial, the film tells of a movie director (spaghetti western regular Gianni Garko) who commits suicide after being snubbed by American photographer Sherry Buchanan after a series of hallucinogenic dreamlike set-pieces fuelled by drug use. Incorrectly reported as an unfinished film, it was completed and screened twice for distributors but failed to gain a theatrical release, possibly due to complex issues regarding finances with its producers and location and condition of the remaining negative is unclear. Cavallone remembered delightful anecdotes from the movie such as Garko being a “madman” but a seriously professional character actor (in one scene, his character suffers from a limp, so Garko screwed a ball of paper in to the heel of his shoe, that that when worn, he would suffer from a large painful blister) and considered Maldoror to be one of his best roles. Production was halted for over six hours when police stopped the shoot to investigate a prop – a car with a coffin strapped to its roof – because only an authentic mortician’s car is allowed to do so, and an American actress, who was stapled inside the gut of a real cow. The animal was killed, skinned and its belly opened, where in the movie, the naked actress would spring forth from within the carcass (a reference to Fernando Arrabal’s Viva la muerte (1971), a favourite director of Cavallone, and interestingly a very similar scene is featured in Gianfranco Mingozzi’s Flavia, la monaca musulmana/Flavia the Heretic (1974)). Naturally the poor girl was less than pleased to commit herself to be sewn within the belly of a freshly killed cow. The scene took half a day to film with the actress sealed within the cow for the majority of the shoot. Once completed, the actress was delirious, having visions and behaving like a drunk, apparently subjected to blood intoxication from within the cow’s innards.

Whereas Spell had alienated the mainstream, Cavallone went for jugular with Blue Movie, pushing boundaries that were for most, unacceptable cinema where the director appeared to be in anguish and out of control: absurd in that the extreme content matter was a catharsis for the moral, political and intellectual tapestry. Whereas Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma was possibly as far as Pasolini dared go in terms of graphic content, Blue Movie could be considered Cavallone’s suicide and blunt force trauma in that he had extinguished all avenues of interest to make a commercial film. Shot and edited in twenty days and featuring unprofessional actors (except that of Dirce Funari who would later appear in Aristide Massaccesi’s hardcore horrors Le Notti erotiche dei morti viventi/Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1980), Holocausto porno/Porno Holocaust (1981) and Cesare Canevari’s Delitto carnale (1983), a giallo released in two versions: contemporary thriller and hardcore), the director’s inclinations are clear. The title takes its cue from Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie/Fuck (1969) whereas major elements of the film are taken from Dusan Makavejev’s Sweet Movie (1974) and Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960). A male fashion photographer, haunted by the horrors of the Vietnam War, subjects a willing model (Funari) to humiliating sexual acts and to become his slave, whereas he meets a beautiful girl (Danielle Dugas) who suffers from sexual anxiety and hallucinations of being raped. The three protagonists’ lives retreat to that of solitude, away from society and consumerism, before imploding in violence.

The narrative is non-linear and almost nonexistent, the movie fuelled by surreal and excruciating imagery, threatening to eclipse the barbarism towards women as seen in Italian shockers Fernando Di Leo’s Avere vent'anni/To Be Twenty (1978), Mario Landi’s Giallo a Venezia (1979) and Camillo Teti’s L’Assassino è ancora tra noi/The Murderer Is Still with Us (1986). Cavallone’s inspiration from Makavejev’s cult movie is obvious: whereas Sweet Movie cuts to images of the Katyn Forest massacre, Cavallone uses grainy stock footage of Nazi death camps with bodies piled high and some consumed by fire. Also, in Sweet Movie, Carol Laure smothers her body in chocolate: here Dirce Funari does the same but with her own excrement. Blue Movie is certainly controversial and there is more to the film than a work of titillation, degradation and a question of a misogynistic hatred towards women graced with an art house classical score by Bach. Cavallone composes an eclectic series of surreal imagery, some based on consumerism where Coca-Cola cans and Marlboro cigarette packets are filled with urine and faeces, and sexually charged dreams. With regards to the latter, Dugas pours a bath that floods with blood. A male arm rises from the depths and grabs her, the camera focusing on her nether region which is adorned by a tattoo of a spider, the vagina being the arachnid seeping blood from its mouth: the vagina. The scene is intercut with brief hardcore and clips of real human atrocities – we’re in seriously deranged Polanski country. The Italian board of censors asked for a number of cuts but they did not ask for a complete ban, possibly preferring to ignore Cavallone’s monstrosity than to acknowledge its existence. Regardless of censorship cuts, Blue Movie is a work of passion and fury by a filmmaker saluting one finger of resistance to authority although it was to be the abreaction of his own self-destruction as an artist. Cavallone was to never reach the dramatic and dangerous heights of Blue Movie and was the swansong of violent Italian independent cinema which two decades on, still upsets the majority who see the film; it comes to no surprise that actress Funari left the set feeling disgusted. Much to the surprise of Cavallone whose main aim was to “piss off the sexy movie fans”, Blue Movie was a success at the Italian box office.

In 1980, Cavallone directed Blow job dolce lingua: a misleading title considering the film’s narrative. Originally shot in the summer of ’79 and released in May ’80 under the title of La Strega nuda (The Naked Witch), it tells of a young man (Danilo Micheli) who is tempted to a weird house by an ugly witch (Anna Massarelli) where he encounters a group of surreal characters in surreal circumstances. More a film of images and sensations than a cohesive storyline – including arresting shots such as the witch mutating from ugly to beautiful while circling Micheli, and the lead character foreseeing his own funeral escorted by bikers - Blow job dolce lingua is yet another Cavallone movie in censorship limbo after the authorities put a stop to an uncut release: it’s only hard scene being a scene of fellatio set in a storm (producer Pietro Belpedio claimed that hardcore shots were filmed and Cavallone had been spicing his films with hardcore scenes for the French market since Zelda). The director preferred to use non-actors for the movie, more interested in faces than acting ability, even if they were as expressive as a piece of wood. “I use different camera angles,” Cavallone admitted, “making it an editor’s problem.”

Le gemella erotica/Erotic Twin (1981) is a pedestrian softcore thriller that goes nowhere fast. A film that Cavallone hated with a passion – in fact, he claimed to have dropped the movie halfway through shooting – it tells of two female twins: one a saint, the other a whore with disastrous consequences. Some inside sources claim that Cavallone was replaced by Luigi Cozzi who was left to complete the picture which is highly doubtful considering that Cavallone edited the completed film! Cavallone, like Jesus Franco, would bend truths and lies when it suited him best: in fact, he had been shooting and inserting hardcore footage into his latter movies and it was reported that Cozzi met the director in the mid-Eighties working on the Italian dubbing on a number of foreign hardcore porn films.     

1982 saw Cavallone drop his artistic vision, social commentary and bludgeoning depravity for hardcore porn under his “Baron Corvo” pseudo which was a reference to writer Frederick William Rolfe (1860 – 1913). Shot back-to-back between June and September 1981 (initially it was planned to shoot one movie) Pat una donna particolare/Pat, One Particular Woman and Il nano erotico/Babysitter are typical of cheap Italian pornography of the period, such as Polselli and Bruno Vari’s Teresa altri desideri (1983) and Dyane (1984), with grainy film and ugly performers. The first focuses on a plot where theatrical plays are a thin veil for unpleasant hardcore and a dubious thread on snuff filmmaking whereas the latter, which is practically unheard of and is not listed on the IMDB, makes no sense whatsoever. Both films were shot in a villa near Rome which was also used a year previously by Aristide Massaccesi for Rosso sangue/Absurd and Pat una donna particolare also features Italian language dubbing by ADR dubber John Gayford who would probably not want to be reminded of his shady past. The dwarf, “Petit Loup” (“Little Wolf” in French, but real name is unknown) appears in both films appearing to have the time of his life as well as being a regular in Italian sexploitation having appeared in Bruno Mattei’s Emanuelle e le porno notti nel mondo n.2/Emanuelle and the Erotic Nights (1978).

In 1983, after the success of Jean-Jacques Annaud’s La Guerre du feu/Quest for Fire (1981) and the rising popularity of sword and sorcery, Cavallone lent his hand on a screenplay for Umberto Lenzi’s La Guerra del ferro – Ironmaster/Ironmaster, and his final theatrical movie, Il Padrone del mondo/Master of the World. The former is a ridiculous piece of schlock where cavemen do what cavemen do best: grunt and thump bones by a fire. Primitive clans are attacked by other Neanderthals who throw them around as if they were rag dolls, or smash their heads in with axes. Complimented by a totally inappropriate score from the De Angelis brothers that is best suited for an Indian restaurant, the narrative skips from the Stone Age to the Iron Age in less then ninety minutes, but what would one expect from bonkers Lenzi who also directed Incubo sulla città contaminate/Nightmare City (1980) and Cannibal Ferox (1981)? Compared to Lenzi’s take on alternative history, Il Padrone del mondo is a work of genius. Imitating Annaud’s movie, Cavallone drops dialogue by showing the life of Stone Age tribes with an eye on anthropological accuracy but going that extra mile but showcasing scenes of brains being scooped out of skulls and Homo sapiens being ripped to bits in loving detail by special effects maestros Rosario Prestopino and Roberto Pace. The film sold reasonably well abroad (heavily cut for a limited UK pre-cert) but was never released in Italy, the production company, Stefano Film, used the movie as an excuse to write-off financial losses or tax problems, to save themselves from bankruptcy. Cavallone, used to low budget productions, found Il Padrone del mondo to be a difficult movie to work on. Shot on the Canary Islands with a big budget with large cast and crew, Cavallone developed physical and mental issues from the film’s demanding shooting schedule and responsibilities – going so far as to personally teach his actors in a gym physical moves that a Neanderthal might have made. Surprisingly for an ambitious movie, Cavallone relied on relatively unknown actors such as eighteen year-old Swede Sven Kruger, Sacha D’Arc, a Yugoslavian ex-boxer who was “very efficient but completely crazy,” and Maria Vittoria Ghirlanda who was selected for a role because “she looked like a monkey… a pretty monkey, though!”

A sequence where a wild bear attacks the cavemen proved to be a bridge too far. Naturally, the cast did not warm to the idea of wrestling with a large bear with sharp teeth and claws. Rosario Prestopino, who had previously cut his cloth on Marino Girolami’s Zombie Holocaust (1980) and Lo Squartatore di New York/The New York Ripper (1982), had designed a fake bear suit with new special effects materials imported from America but proved too claustrophobic for the stuntman who was exhausted after three minutes of use. In desperation, Cavallone paid for two animals and their trainers for a scene by a waterfall where a bear attacks a group of cavemen. Unaware that bears enjoy playing in water, both of the animals bolted from their trainers to cool off in the waterfall and the Cavallone lost two days filming because he could not change the location due to permissions being granted. Not paying heed to “never work with children and animals” one of the bears sunk her claws into a trainer’s bicep during a shoot and the other animal escaped from her owner to charge down a field into a herd of sheep, killing twelve of them. Understandably, the shepherd was furious and called the police who charged the producer for a lot of money to pay for the damage. 

From the extremities of adult cinema Cavallone cut his cloth on domestic television for Rai until the mid-Nineties. His last venture in film was planned to be shot on digital video based on a true story of a virtual love affair that tragically ended in murder of a young woman and was to star Sherry Buchanan, but was ultimately shelved when the director died in November 1997. On reflection, Cavallone’s heart for Italian cinema had already died when the first reels of Spell and Blue Movie hit the canvas of the projector screen in a series of exploding colours and vibrant images, his remaining contribution to the medium being television that time forgot. It is ironic, and unfair in that his experimental genre cannon have been vastly ignored, less than ten years later, Italian cinema were to also die: its glory days finally laid to rest.


Alberto Cavallone Filmography

[DIRECTOR]
1959-1960
LA SPORCA GUERRA [The Dirty War] (documentary)
 
1962
LONTANO DAGLI OCCHI [Far from the Eyes]
director and story: Alberto Cavallone
script: Sergio Lentati and Massimo Magri
cast: Paride Calonghi, Sergio Lentati and Lino Patruno

1969
LE SALAMANDRE [The Salamander]
original shooting title: C'era una bionda [There was a Blonde]
director, script and screenplay: Alberto Cavallone
cast: Erna Schurer, Beryl Cunningham and Anthony Vernon [Antonio Casale]
 
1970
DAL NOSTRO INVIATO A COPENHAGEN [From Our Copenhagen’s Correspondent]
working title: Così U.S.A. [So U.S.A]
director, script and screenplay: Alberto Cavallone
cast: Jane Avril [Maria Pia Luzi], Anthony Vernon [Antonio Casale], Alain N Kalsjy [Walter Fabrizio] and George Stevenson [Dimitri]

1971
QUICKLY, SPARI E BACI A COLAZIONE [Quickly, Shootings and Kisses for Breakfast]
aka Follow Me, Disparos y besos a desayuno
director and script: Alberto Cavallone
screenplay: Alberto Cavallone, Mario Imperoli and Leone Imperoli
cast: Jane Avril [Maria Pia Luzi], Antonio Vernon [Antonio Casale], Beryl Cunningham, Magda Konopka, Claudie Lange
 
1973
AFRIKA
director and script: Alberto Cavallone
screenplay: based on a novel published by Edizioni 513 [note: probably pulp/porn literature]
cast: Ivano Staccioli, Jane Avril [Maria Pia Luzi] and Debebe Eshetu

1974
ZELDA
director, script and screenplay: Alberto Cavallone
cast: Jane Avril [Maria Pia Luzi], Franca Gonella and James Harrys [Giuseppe Mattei]

1977
SPELL (DOLCE MATTATOIO) [Spell, (Sweet Slaughterhouse)]
aka L'uomo, la donna e la bestia [The Man, the Woman and the Beast], El hombre, la mujer y la bestia
director, script and screenplay: Alberto Cavallone
cast: Jane Avril [Maria Pia Luzi], Paola Montenero, Martial Boschero, Giovanni De Angelis, Macha Magall and Mónica Zanchi

MALDOROR
aka I Canti di Maldoror
director, script and screenplay: Alberto Cavallone
cast: Gianni Garko, Jane Avril [Maria Pia Luzi] and Sherry Buchanan

1978
BLUE MOVIE
aka Blue Movie Sexycompulsion – Blue Movie, Sexycompulsion
director, script and screenplay: Alberto Cavallone
cast: Joseph Dickson, Patrizia [Dirce] Funari and Danielle Dugas
 
1980
BLOW JOB DOLCE LINGUA
aka La Strega nuda [The Naked Witch], Blow-job - Un soffio erotico
director, script and screenplay: Alberto Cavallone
cast: Danilo Micheli, Anna Massarelli and Mirella Venturini

1981
LA GEMELLA EROTICA [Erotic Twin]
aka Due gocce d’acqua [Two Drops of Water]
director and screenplay: Alberto Cavallone
screenplay: Rodolfo Putignani
cast: Patricia Behn [Patrizia Gasperini], Danilo Micheli and Ornella Picozzi

1982
PAT UNA DONNA PARTICOLARE [Pat, One Particular Woman]
aka Die Schöne Pat Und Der Supergeile Liliput
director: Baron Corvo [Alberto Cavallone]
cast: Serwan A Yoshar, Mika Barthel, Franco Coltorti, Dominique St Clair [Dominique Charon], Pauline Teutscher and Sabrina Mastrolorenzi [other credits on Italian print]: Joseph Fine, Mica Lin Yu, Alex Eu Sebi and Petit Loup

BABYSITTER
aka Il Nano erotico [The Erotic Dwarf], Being Captured – Essere tenuto, Petites Fesses juveniles, Petites Fesses juvéniles pour membres bienfaiteurs
director: Baron Corvo [Alberto Cavallone]
cast: Serwan A Yoshar, Mika Barthel, Franco Coltorti, Dominique St Clair [Dominique Charon], Pauline Teutscher and Sabrina Mastrolorenzi

1983
IL PADRONE DEL MONDO
aka Master of the World, Conqueror of the World, Los Forjadores del mundo
director, script and screenplay: Alberto Cavallone
cast: Sven Kruger, Sacha D’Arc, Viviana M Rispoli [Maria Viviana Rispoli], Vittoria M Garlanda [Maria Vittoria Ghirlanda] and Aldo Sambrell

DENTRO E FUORI LA CLASSE (five part documentary for Rai 1)
 
1984
I RACCONTI DELLA NONNA (telefilm: three episodes for Rai 1)
 
1986-1993
TELEFONO GIALLO
note: Cavallone provided material (exterior shooting, footage, adaptations and journalistic investigations) for several editions of this popular Rai 3  program
 
1991-1996
CHI L�HA VISTO
note: Cavallone provided material (exterior shooting, footage, adaptations and journalistic investigations) for several editions of this popular Rai 3  program

1994-1995
ULTIMO MINUTO
note: exterior shooting and scripts for Rai 3
 
1996-1997
FORMAT
note: three part film special for Rai 3

[OTHER WORKS]
1967
PER AMORE… PER MAGIA [For love… for magic]
director: Duccio Tessari
writing credits: Alberto Cavallone, Ennio De Concini, Franco Migliacci and Duccio Tessari
cast: Gianni Morandi, Rosemary Dexter, Mischa Auer, Daniele Vargas and Harold Bradley

1967
LA LUNGA SFIDA
directors: Mohamed Tazi and Nino Zanchin
writing credits: Alberto Cavallone, Fernando Di Leo and Nino Zanchin
starring: George Ardisson, Sieghardt Rupp, Luigi Pistilli, Katrin Schaake and Lisa Halvorsen

1983
LA GUERRA DEL FERRO – IRONMASTER [Ironmaster]
director: Umberto Lenzi
writing credits: Luciano Martino, Alberto Cavallone, Lea Martino, Dardano Sacchetti, Garbriel Rossini and Umberto Lenzi
starring: Sam Pasco, Elvire Audray, George Eastman [Luigi Montefiori], Pamela Prati, Jacques Herlin, Brian Redford [Danilo Mattei] and William Berger

Filmography by Jay Slater and Roberto Curti
Many thanks to Roberto Curti and Nocturno

v.1.1
8 February 2007
 
 
 
 
 

[Stephen Grimes]

Great article Jay,nice to see an English language piece on this director.
Many thanks mate.

[Jonny]

Nice one Jay, thanks for posting the article  :'(

[Stephen Grimes]

I decided to watch SPELL(L'uomo, la donna e la bestia) after reading Jay's cool article earlier today,never managed to get through it before but was glad i did this time.Be warned though the ending is strong stuff and might not appeal to all tastes.

[CJ]

Yes, Jay's in depth overview of Cavallone's career was a great read in The Dark Side. Nice to see it posted here too - good to know that some writers are still unafraid to share their work with the fan community. Nice one, Jay.

I was pretty much totally unaware of Cavallone and his work, so Jay's article was both interesting and informative. That's why I love sites like this - where you can both contribute and learn at the same time. 

[LANZETTA]

What's everyones favorite Eurocult books and magazines?
Bloodbuster's 220 page Italian crime review book CINICI INFAMI E VIOLENTI is amazing and has yet to be beaten,Italian language only but an essential reference guide.
CINE 70 is also Italian language but is filled with reviews of the most obscure Italian b-movies from the 70's and some great interviews and posterart,currently on #10 which features an Agostina Belli(Revolver,Night of the Devils etc)interview.
There's also the Midnight Media publications including their regular review guide IS IT UNCUT and their specials like BLAZING MAGNUMS and the GIALLO SCRAPBOOK,great.

That BLAZING MAGNUM magazine looks very tempting but we no longer appear to have the link to purchase this on the new forum?

[Jonny]

That BLAZING MAGNUM magazine looks very tempting but we no longer appear to have the link to purchase this on the new forum?

You can buy it from the link below... 

Blazing Magnums LINK HERE

[LANZETTA]

Thanks 

That was all part of the home page link etc to the old forum.All that stuff about polizios on dvd or only on vhs is really useful so i trust that resource is permanent?

[Jonny]

All that stuff about polizios on dvd or only on vhs is really useful so i trust that resource is permanent?

Yes, it's not going anywhere, could do with updating mind. I don't think I've added anything new to it for about a year now. 

[Kevin Coed]

From what I remember, the giallo section is a bit out of date too. Would you like a hand updating?

[Jonny]

From what I remember, the giallo section is a bit out of date too. Would you like a hand updating?

Sure thing! Supply me with the info and I'll get it put on the site  :'(

[IL COMMISSARIO]

Does anyone know how long it normally takes to receive books from FabPress? I ordered the massive NIGHTMARE USA and the LUCIANO ROSSI books a week ago and I assumed as much as I paid for shipping they would have been sent by now. This was my first time ordering from Britain. The other FabPress books I have I got from sellers in America but these two seemingly won't be in stock until later this year.

[Kevin Coed]

They usually send things out within a week from my experience. Can you check on their site for your status?

[Jonny]

Does anyone know how long it normally takes to receive books from FabPress? I ordered the massive NIGHTMARE USA and the LUCIANO ROSSI books a week ago and I assumed as much as I paid for shipping they would have been sent by now. This was my first time ordering from Britain. The other FabPress books I have I got from sellers in America but these two seemingly won't be in stock until later this year.

As far as I know you can track your order via the website. Books usually take under a week for me, I'm in the UK. No idea about how long it takes to get to the US though, that 'Nightmare USA' book is huge though, I reckon it might take at least 10 days maybe 2 weeks... It'll be worth the wait though as it's an amzing book, the Rossi book is really good aswell.