Lamberto Bava

Lamberto Bava is the son of filmmaker Mario Bava and the grandson of Eugenio Bava, a cameraman during the Italian silent film era. Lamberto Bava worked closely with his father as his personal assistant in the 1960s, while also assisting his mentor, Italian horror legend, Dario Argento. Bava made his directorial debut in the 1974 crime thriller "A Man and a Boy" before directing alongside his father in 1979, with made-for-TV movie "La Venere d'Ille." It wasn't until 1980 that Bava made his first influential mark on the Italian horror genre. "Macabre," a film which Bava also helped write, continued the legacy of gore and gruesome horror that his father and mentor had previously set forth. It was also in 1980 that Bava gained assistant director credit on Ruggero Deodato's extremely controversial gore-fest "Cannibal Holocaust." The death and rape scenes in the film were depicted so vividly that director Deodato was forced to prove, in court, that the film was in fact not real, and that no actors were harmed during filming. Although never producing such controversial films as "Cannibal Holocaust," Bava did write, direct, and produce some of the most disturbing and unsettling horror films to come out of Italy during the 1980s, including the critically acclaimed "Demons," "Midnight Killer," and "Black Sunday." Bava continued to write and direct horror films throughout the 1990s and 2000s, along with a more accessible, family friendly, made-for-TV movie series "Fantaghiro" of which there are five installments.