Lenzi, Umberto

Early years

Umberto Lenzi was born in the Tuscan city of Massa Marittima , in the province of Grosseto , on August 6, 1931. He graduated from the Experimental Center of Cinematography (Italian National Film School) in 1956. His graduation work was a short film titled “Guys from Trastavere”, a Pasolini (Pasoliniana) tale about a group of young people from the well-known district of Rome . Later, Lenzi collaborated with cinema magazines such as Black and White ( Bianco e Nero ), before debuting as an assistant director Domenico Paolella in Fear of the Seas (Il Terrore dei mari).

First works

As a director, Lenzi put his first signature on the film " The Adventures of Mary Reed " in 1961, shot in the genre of cloak and sword. Later, he devoted himself to rethinking the Salgra classics and created the following films on this basis: “ Sandokan, Tiger of the Southern Seas ” (1963), in which Steve Reeves played, “ Pirates of Malaysia ” (1964), during the filming of which the director found the apogee of civil war Separation of Singapore from Malaysia. Following the wave of new trends in cinema, Lenzi occasionally uses the phenomenon of the moment in the cinema. And this is in the wake of the success of a series of two films about James Bond 007 , shot in two years, among which were “ A 008, Operation Sterminio ” (1965) and “ Super Seven Calls to Cairo ” (1965). In 1968, he directed the young scriptwriter and director Dario Argento with the help of the Titanus film company; The film was released under the title " Legion of the Damned " in 1969, which was a kind of rethinking of the film " Guns of Navaron Island " (1961). He also continues to create in the so-called military genre - one of his favorites - along with the film “ Attentato ai tre grandi ” of 1967, in 1978 he was shooting the film “The Great Battle ” in the United States, in which Henry Fonda, Helmut Berger and John Houston. In 1979, under the pseudonym of Hank Milstone, he shot " From Hell to Victory ", a film of Italian-French-Spanish co-production with George Peppard and Horst Buchholz starring.

Jallo

Subsequently, Lenzi began to specialize in the Italian jallo , creating his own direction - the so-called “erotic jallo”, which he later called the “thrillers of high society”. In this genre, he shot a trilogy consisting of: Orgasmo (1969), one of the highest-grossing films in the United States at the time, “ So tender ... So depraved ” (1969) and Paranoia (1970). In the trilogy, Hollywood star Carroll Baker performed the main roles. All three films combine eroticism, psychology and intrigue from the world of nobles.

In the early seventies, after rethinking the Argentinean thriller, Lenzi decides to join the work in this direction and takes five pictures: "The perfect place to kill " (1971), " Seven bloody orchids " (1972), " Knife for chopping ice " (1972), Spasm (1974) and Look Into Both (1975). All films more or less adhere to the Argentine model, in contrast to Spasm, which carries more introspection and psychology than others.

At the same time, Lenzi dared to try himself in a unique genre - the so-called "cannibalico", which he established in the world of cinema with his film " A Man from a Deep River " (1972).

Poliziotteschi

Due to the birth of such a genre as “ poliziottesco ” in Italian, and later in European cinema, after the release of the film directed by Steno ’s Penitentiary Department (1972), Lenzi finds himself as a director and becomes the most prolific director of this trend in cinema. He makes several films that were highly appreciated by both the public and film critics: “ Almost a Man ” (1974), a brutal and atypical film about the criminal career of a petty criminal, played by Thomas Milian . Two more paintings by Umberto Lenzi, shot in 1976 in this genre - “ Rome is full of violence ”, starring Thomas Milian and Maurizio Merli , and “ Violence in Naples ”, which collected a cash record of 60 million lire in the first weekend rental.

In particular, Lenzi has a long-term and fruitful partnership with Cuban actor Milian that has contributed to the success of many director films, including The Sadistic Syndicate (1975). Together with Milian, in addition, the director creates the character Monnets , a handsome and cunning thief from a Roman suburb, who appears in the films Maniac and the Cool Policeman (1976) and Gang of the Hunchback (1978).

Lentsi also contributed to the great success of the actor Maurizio Merli, who played the commissioner in the films "Violence in Naples" (1976) and " Cynical, mean, brutal " (1977).

The films of Umberto Lenzi made in the genre of “poliziottesco” are very harsh and cruel, but they are also not alien to the irony characteristic of Lenzi’s style.

Horror and cannibalici

In the early eighties, the director decides to follow in the footsteps of the most famous Italian filmmakers, such as Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento , seeking success in the horror and horror genre. The first work in this genre, especially the revered Quentin Tarantino - " City of Zombies " (1980) - shows people infected with radiation, which turn into unbreakable killer cannibals. “They are not zombies!” Lenzi himself repeatedly emphasized. This film was obviously inspired by Giorgio Romero's The Dawn of the Dead (1978), but it undoubtedly has its own originality, which Lenzi repeatedly refers to in his future works in the horror genre.

The following year, after Ada Cannibals (1980), Ruggero Deodato , Lenzi shoots Hell Cannibals 2 , which gained great fame abroad and pushed the director to create the final film of the Cannibals trilogy (1981). However, Umberto Lentsi’s cannibal trilogy shows very low rentals ($ 400,000 in the first week in New York), and is one of the most censored film series in the world because of scenes of real violence against exotic animals. During an interview that the director gave to the Roman television channel T9, he expresses several important considerations regarding the creation of Cannibals (1981). In particular, he says: “This is a film that I always despised, I did it, because I literally had nothing to eat; it was a stagnant year - a very rare situation for my career (...), and I was left without a job. ”

At the end of the decade, he returned to the thriller / horror genre with the film “ Welcome to the holidays ” (1989), which was filmed jointly with the American film company. This film is often called the twin of another film of Lenzi, which was written and filmed jointly with Vittorio Rambaldi - “The Fury of the Beast ” (1988). In the future, he shoots a few more horror films, including the Haunted House (1988), followed by an apocryphal series of films - Sam Raimi's Evil Dead , produced by Joe d'Amato, and fully filmed in the US "Fear of Nights ”(1989), as well as the low-budget film“ Gates to the Underworld ”(1989), in which the actor Giacomo Rossi Stewart played his last role. In the same year, he began working with ReteItalia, which ordered a couple of television films for him (two more were ordered from Lucio Fulci). As a result, despite the ridiculous budget and the unimpressive play of the actors, the films turned out to be nevertheless worthy: “The Enchanted House ” (1989) and “The House of Lost Souls ” (1989), in which Lichia Colo acts as a journalist. These two films are the only example of Lenzi working on television.

Other works

In addition, in the eighties, Lenzi shoots many films in other genres, including the comedy with Donatela Rettore. The Fat Woman (1982) is a film from the so-called Pierino series (meaning the movie Pierino Takes Rematch of 1982 with a Tuscan comedian Giorgio Ariani in the title role). The following works by Lenzi are already in the adventure action genre - The Lord of Iron (1983), modeled on the picture of Conan the Barbarian (1982), and The Five of the Condor (1985) by American director John Milius. In the second half of the eighties, he directed the filming of two detective stories about the war: “ Bridge to Hell ” (1986) and “ Time of War ” (1987), both filmed in Yugoslavia.

Recent Work

At the end of his career, Umberto Lenzi made more films for export, for example, such restrained paintings as “ Policeman under the gun ” (1989), “The Hunt for the Golden Scorpion ” (1991) and “ Black Demons ” (1991), the third unofficial chapter horror series launched by Lamberto Bava . Lenzi’s latest film, Hornsby and Rodriguez, The Criminal Gang (1992), was partly filmed in the United States and starring Charles Napier with Charles Napier. Leaving the "world of spectacle" with his wife Olga Pehar, his secretary, producer and actress of some of his films, Lenzi decides to publish some of his detective novels that have won great success with readers. He later collaborated with the Italian cinema magazine Nocturno , where he led his own column.

In 2016, he published his first biography, which mainly tells about the political, social and professional life of the director. This book traced Lenzi’s life from the 1950s, when he appeared in the cultural world, founded and ran a cinematic club in his city, where he managed to attract artists like Vasco Pratolini , Pietro Jermi , Federico Rossellini , who chose Mass -Maritimo to showcase his first paintings, for example "The Machinist " (1956) by Pietro Dzhermi. In his youth, Lenzi met Carlo Cassola and Luciano Bianchardi, with whom he later collaborated in the creation of other cinematic clubs, participated in writing etudes, and especially in protest after the massacre in the Ribolli mine. Then Umberto Lenzi went to Rome, to the Experimental Center of Cinematography, which in many respects predetermined the fate of Lenzi as a director. All this can be found in the book “Una vita per il cinema. L'avventurosa storia di Umberto Lenzi regista »Silvia Trovato and Tiziano Arrigoni.

Umberto Lenzi was hospitalized at the Grassi di Ostia hospital in Rome, died on October 19, 2017 at the age of 86.

Umberto Lenzi invented the literary figure of Bruno Astolfi, a private anti-fascist detective who is in the world of the cinema of white phones to investigate complex crimes. In Lenzi’s novels, the reader can literally feel what it is like to breathe in the heavy air of the early 40s, marked by the severe tragedies of war, while the profession and knowledge of the author’s glossy cinema world show the reader an accurate reconstruction of historical events and a spectacular description of the lives of directors, actors and extras. .

• Interview with Umberto Lenzi Interview on 'Cultfilms en Kutfilms' (April 4th 2008)
• https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Lenzi