Joe D'Amato.


Anyone seen and appreciated any films over here by this notorious late (he died at the early part of January 1999) Italian exploitation/horror/erotic cinema etc filmmaker and what are your favourite films of his?

I recently watched "Images in a Convent" (1979), amazing film, one of his top 5 and it is a surreal, at times disturbing, highly sexually explicit slice of late 70s Italian nunsploitation horror that has an interesting comment on religion and on human nature, namely how - it maybe even MORE difficult to fight and combat enemies on the OUTSIDE if you cannot in any way get rid of your own INNER demons. I've also seen several other works of his, some I found great, some good, some decent, some nothing special and on similar level of mediocrity, but I recommend his other late 70s necrophilia-themed horror flick "Beyond Darkness" (1979) too, disturbing indeed, but if flicks like the German "Nekromantik" (1987) by Jorg Buttgereit fascinated you, give that one a look as well.

By the way does anyone know, is Tarantino a fan of any of his work? I wouldn't put it past him though, cause he sure HAS seen many Italian horror and exploitation films and is a fan of works by the likes of Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava and Dario Argento. So I would imagine he has seen and appreciated at least a couple of d'Amato's flicks too.

What do you think, thanks.

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I saw:
Images in a Convent
Caligula the Untold Story
Absurd
Papaya-Love Goddess of the Cannibals
Anthropophagus

Anthropophagus was a perfect Italian/Horror/Sleaze flick (a really chilling little number featuring infanticide, cannibalism and a murder spree)
Its been said before but bears repeating...Italians did horror better than most, and for a long time...60s-80s!

D'Amato was no Bava, Fulci or Argento though...seems he directed under various aliases and wound up in porn full time by the 90s...he was cool though

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We miss your long questi............actually we don't.

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[deleted]

I miss him
The Man18 was fun

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He's teaching philosophy at Oxford.

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I seen Antropophagus, Always remembered the VHS cover for that one and Emmanuel in Bangkok I saw on German TV in the early 90s.

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Cool thread.

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2 years later, I still love the Italian slasher/giallo horrors, that was their territory👍

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For sure! Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977) is one of my favorite D’Amato films! He made a ton of movies in his day! Oh, and what about 2020 Texas Gladiators (1983) or The Arena (1974) starring Pam Grier?

I would love to know how many genres he’s been involved in.

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I saw The Arena about a year ago
I didn't realize it was co-directed by D'Amato until I read your post, cool!
It was fine trashy fun👍

Pam Grier man...what can a guy say?!?

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So I'm looking over his filmography just now and he directed 197 projects, quite a lot of them softcore or straight up porn...I suppose this is how he kept the lights on but the guy was prolific and talented in mainstream genres

He directed drama, romance, horror, thriller, nunsploitation, sci-fi, sword and sandals, giallo, gigantic deadly animals, mystery, war, pirates, westerns...Joe was a Jack Of All Trades!

He operated under a number of aliases, I'm not sure why, maybe for tax purposes or some Mob situation, The Italian film industry was pretty shady back then

Interesting career, I'd read his biography if somebody wrote it

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Great info! Thanks for digging that up. 👍👍

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My pleasure, anytime

I like the oddball film and director discussions maybe best of all

We should consider doing these more often👍

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I would love to have these types of discussions in their proper forum so that all the information is not lost. I wonder if, say for example Joe D’Amato, we could post a link in general but have the discussion under his heading. It’s just a thought. There are so many cool conversations I wish I could go back and read again.

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That's a good thought. This made me imagine, what if this forum had some sort of streamlined crossreferencing feature, where mentions of a movie/actor/director/etc anywhere in GD or otherwise were automatically added to some kind of user friendly references catalog with links on their dedicated board... I don't think I've seen anything like that on a forum before. Maybe there's a good reason why, but it seems like a worthwhile design challenge to me. Meanwhile of course I don't expect to ever see anything like it implemented here, but we could start manually crosslinking GD convos like this, as a kind of archival endeavor. Maybe we come up with some kind of label for a crosspost like that, and let it be known/officially agree to understand it as part of the board culture? So when people see it they get that the thread is a crosslink before clicking on it?

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Thinking about this some more, what if one of us made a dedicated account for archiving/crosslinking... call it MCArchivist or something, and that way it would be obvious what's going on, and perhaps a few of us could have the password.

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What might be nice is if this MCArchivist user could say go to the D,Amato page and start a thread with nothing but links to other threads about him, as you said. But also, somehow have the ability to make that thread a sticky so it shows at the top of the page. If several users had access to that username they could update at any time.

Of course, users with access would only contribute to areas they have interest in. I think it’s a great idea and I would participate if something like this ever came to life.

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