Laurette Marcia Gemser is an Indonesian-Dutch retired actress, model and costume designer. She is primarily known for her work in Italian erotic cinema, most notably the Emanuelle series. Many of her films were collaborations with directors Joe D'Amato and Bruno Mattei.
Aristide Massaccesi, known professionally as Joe D'Amato, was an Italian film director, producer, cinematographer, and screenwriter who worked in many genres but is best known for his horror, erotic and adult films.
George Eastman is an Italian actor and screenwriter well known for his frequent collaborations with notorious director Joe D'Amato. He is most famous for his role as the insane, cannibalistic serial killer Klaus Wortmann in the gory 1980 horror film Antropophagus. He also played a similar role in its 1981 follow-up, Absurd. Both films were directed by D'Amato and written by Eastman.
Bruno Mattei was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and editor who directed exploitation films in many genres, including women in prison, nunsploitation, zombie, mondo, cannibal, and Nazisploitation films. Mattei's films often followed popular genre trends of the era. Mattei continued work as a director primarily in the Philippines until his death in 2007, just before he was to enter production on his fifth Zombie film.
Female Vampire is a French-Belgian horror film written, directed, and co-edited by Jesús Franco. It was produced in 1973, but was only theatrically distributed in 1975. The film is set in Madeira and stars actress Lina Romay as Irina von Karlstein, a vampire who has sex with both male and female victims. In an unusual variation of the vampire myth, Karlstein performs oral sex on her victims until they die, draining them of their sexual fluids.
Ajita Wilson was an American transgender actress who starred in European exploitation and hardcore films in the 1970s and 1980s.
Hell of the Living Dead is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Bruno Mattei. The film is set in a laboratory in Papua New Guinea that releases a dangerous chemical, turning the technicians and locals into zombies. A French news reporter and her crew land on the island to investigate.
Burial Ground is an Italian grindhouse zombie movie directed by Andrea Bianchi. It is one of several films released under the alternative title of Zombie 3.
City of the Living Dead is a 1980 Italian supernatural horror film co-written and directed by Lucio Fulci. It stars Christopher George, Catriona MacColl, Carlo de Mejo, Antonella Interlenghi, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, and Janet Agren. The film follows a priest whose suicide opens a gateway to hell that releases the undead. A psychic and a reporter team up to close it before All Saints' Day.
She Killed in Ecstasy is a 1971 West German-Spanish erotic thriller film directed by Jesús Franco. The film's plot borrows elements from previous Franco films Miss Muerte and Venus in Furs. The film's productions staff includes many cast members and nearly the same crew as his previous film Vampyros Lesbos.
Nightmare City is a 1980 science-fiction horror film directed by Umberto Lenzi. The film stars Hugo Stiglitz as a television news reporter who witnesses the collapse of order in a city overrun by irradiated blood-drinking ghouls. Victims of the ghouls rise from the dead to join the host, adding to the chaos.
Beyond the Darkness is a 1979 Italian exploitation horror film directed by Joe D'Amato. It follows Francesco Koch, an orphaned taxidermist who inherits a house in the woods where he lives with his housekeeper Iris, who is determined to become the new owner. After Iris kills his girlfriend Anna with a voodoo curse, Francesco steals her corpse from the local cemetery. He then commits murders connected to his enduring passion for her. A local undertaker investigates and meets Teodora, Anna's twin sister.
Vengeance of the Zombies is a 1972 Spanish horror film directed by León Klimovsky and starring Paul Naschy, Mirta Miller, Vic Winner and Aurora de Alba. The film was shot in July 1972, but was only theatrically released in Spain in June 1973. It was shown in Italy as La Vendetta dei Morti Viventi. The film was shown in Germany over the years under three different titles....Rebellion of the Living Dead, Invocation of the Devil and Blood Lust of the Zombies.
Zombie Holocaust is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Marino Girolami. The film is about a team of scientists who follow a trail of corpses in New York to a remote Indonesian island where they meet a mad doctor who performs experiments on both the living and dead in his laboratory. The team face both zombies and cannibals in an attempt to stop the doctor. The film was re-edited and released theatrically in the United States in 1982 under the title Doctor Butcher M.D.
A Virgin Among the Living Dead is a 1973 European erotic horror film directed by Jesús Franco. Franco shot the film in 1971, but it was only released in 1973 after some additional erotic footage was added to the film without Franco's involvement. It was later re-cut with some extra zombie footage and redistributed to theaters again in 1981 as a zombie film. It has since been restored on DVD to Franco's original director's cut.
Porno Holocaust is a 1981 Italian sexploitation horror film directed and lensed by Joe D'Amato and written by Tito Carpi under the pseudonym "Tom Salina". The assistant director was Donatella Donati. Shot in and around Santo Domingo, it was one of the first cinematically released Italian films containing hardcore pornography. The title has been seen as a "riff" on Cannibal Holocaust.
Follie di notte is an Italian erotic-documentary film directed by Joe D'Amato and released in 1978.
Eleven Days, Eleven Nights is a 1987 Italian softcore erotic drama film produced, directed and lensed by Joe D'Amato and starring Jessica Moore, Joshua McDonald, and Mary Sellers set and shot in New Orleans.
Mark Shannon, sometimes also billed as Mark Shanon or Mark Channon, was an Italian pornographic actor active mainly from 1979 to 1988 and cast - often as protagonist - in more than 30 Italian adult films, many of which were produced, lensed and directed by Joe D'Amato. He was the first Italian male protagonist in Italian cinema performing non-simulated sex on screen and has been called the first Italian "pornodivo".
Zombie pornography is a subgenre of pornography involving zombies, a type of undead being with uncontrollable appetites but no personal desire. Films in the subgenre emerged during a surge in the 1980s Italian sexploitation industry and saw minor release in the United States the next decade, but their use of zombie sex was primarily to shock the viewer. Film-maker Bruce LaBruce released Otto; or, Up with Dead People (2008) and L.A. Zombie (2010), two prominent gay zombie porn films seen by scholars as subverting homophobic tropes about gay life; in the films, zombification is physically similar to AIDS, a disease typically associated with gay men. While zombie porn may be appealing to some because it breaks taboos related to necrophilia, and plays with male viewers' fear of castration, zombies are also ferocious creatures that can destroy their sexual partners. As a result, the genre has remained largely unappealing.
