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Ovidio G. Assonitis | |
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| Born | Ovidio Gabriel Assonitis January 18, 1943 |
| Nationality | Greco-Italian |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1969–present |
| Website | www.ovidioassonitis.com |
Ovidio Gabriel Assonitis (born January 18, 1943) is an Egyptian-born Greco-Italian [1] [2] entertainment executive, film producer, screenwriter, and director best known for his numerous B-horror films including Beyond the Door, Tentacles, The Visitor , and Piranha II: The Spawning.
In the mid-1960s, Assonitis began an extensive distribution network company in the Far East and in the 10-year period distributed more than 900 films [3] from offices in Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, and Indonesia. His former partners and associates include HRH Prince Anusom Yukol (brother of the King of Thailand), John Litton (President of Mever Films, theater owner and former President of the Philippines Film Festival), the Shaw Brothers, Alexander Tedja, and Kong Cho Yee (of Edko Films).
By the late 1960s, Assonitis began producing films himself with the documentary The Labyrinth of Sex and the giallo thriller Who Saw Her Die? which was released at the height of the giallo genre. [4] The same year as Who Saw Her Die? , Assonitis released one of his early successes, Man from the Deep River . The film and its title were mainly inspired by A Man Called Horse , [5] which also featured a white man who is incorporated into a tribe that originally held him captive. The film is the first of the subgenre of Italian Cannibal movies that were made in the late 70s and early 80s [6] [7] [8] [9]
The following year, Assonitis produced The Last Snows of Spring . The film obtained a great commercial success, particularly in the United Kingdom and launched the career of child actor Renato Cestiè. [10] Assonitis then tried, unsuccessfully, to purchase the screen rights to William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. [3] Assonitis then hired a succession of writers to create an original possession story, which ultimately became Beyond the Door . The film marked Assonitis' directorial debut, under his oft used pseudonym, Oliver Hellman. The film was originally set to be released by American International Pictures, Assonitis' long-term American partners; the film was picked up and released by Edward L. Montoro and his company Film Ventures International, [11] it was a huge commercial success in the United States, where it earned $15 million at the US box office and grossing in excess of $40 million world-wide. Warner Bros. promptly filed a lawsuit, claiming copyright infringement due to similarities to The Exorcist. [11]
He returned to producing with Laure , an original film based on the experiences of Emmanuelle Arsan, who wrote the original story for the film. The film was originally set to star Linda Lovelace, but due to her personal problems at the time, she was recast in the secondary role of Natalie Morgan, before being dropped from the film completely. [12] [3] The same year, he produced Take All of Me directed by Luigi Cozzi. [13] [14] and co-written by Assonitis' wife, Sonia Molteni, based on her original idea.
Assonitis' sophomore directing effort came after the tremendous box office success of Jaws, when he and American International Pictures produced Tentacles. The film included a star-studded cast including John Huston, Shelley Winters, Bo Hopkins and Henry Fonda. The film grossed $3,000,000 on a budget of just $750,000. [15]
In 1979, Assonitis produced The Visitor. The film was directed by Giulio Paradisi and featured another all-star cast, including John Huston, Shelley Winters, Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford and Sam Peckinpah with a cameo appearance by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and an uncredited Franco Nero in the prologue. The film was originally a more straight forward story with a script by Lou Comici, where a child in Atlanta is possessed by a demon and a visiting exorcist from Poland is required to free the child. However, Paradisi rewrote the script to include more science fiction elements to avoid any associations with The Exorcist. [16] The film was a commercial success in Europe upon release, but US distributor American International Pictures chose to recut the film, removing all of Franco Nero's speaking scenes and rearrange the order of some scenes, and the film was not a success. However, in 2013, independent distributor Drafthouse Films acquired the film. [17] and re-released the remastered European cut in the United States. In the years since, the film has undergone a critical re-evaluation and now holds an approval rating of 78%, based on 18 reviews, and an average rating of 6.4/10 on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. [18] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "generally positive reviews". [19]
Assonitis returned to directing in 1981 with Madhouse , however the film featured unknown actors and found itself alongside Assonitis' 1972 film, Man from the Deep River, on the infamous video nasty list, a list of horror and exploitation films banned in the United Kingdom by the BBFC in the 1980s for violence and obscenity [20] and as a result, the film never saw a theatrical release in the United Kingdom. The same year, Assonitis was brought in by Warner Bros. to executive produce Piranha II: The Spawning, replacing Jeff Schechtman. [3] [21] Miller Drake, who had been hired by Schechtman to co-write the film with Charles H. Eglee and to direct the film, however Assonitis removed Miller from the project and hired Rob Bottin to direct. [22] Bottin had already been hired to do the special effects of the film, but soon left to work on The Thing. James Cameron was then hired and rewrote the script with Eglee and Assonitis under the pseudonym H.A Milton. After the first week of shooting, the set harmony was disturbed by some discussions about the work between the director and the producers (Assonitis, asked to verify the day-to-day activities, arguing with most of Cameron's choices), so while Cameron was only responsible for the shooting, most of the decisions were under Assonitis' authority. [3] [22] The film was released through Saturn International Pictures domestically and by Columbia Pictures internationally and was a box office bomb. [22]
Assonitis continued to produce throughout the 1980s with the films, Choke Canyon an action film starring Stephen Collins, Janet Julian, Bo Svenson and Lance Henriksen about a scientist trying to develop an alternative energy source while being pursued by an evil corporation; and the Miles O'Keeffe sword and sorcery film Iron Warrior distributed by Orion Pictures.
In 1987, Assonitis signed a multi-picture deal with Trans World Entertainment, then run by Moshe Diamant and Eduard Sarlui. The first of the films to be produced was The Farm, released as The Curse, a science-fiction horror film starring Wil Wheaton and Claude Akins, based on H. P. Lovecraft's short story The Colour Out of Space [23] The film earned $1,169,922 from its opening weekend, and finished with a gross of $1,930,001 at the box office.The film also sold considerably well on home video. [24] Over the next two years, Assonitis produced three more pictures under the deal, Sonny Boy, starring Paul L. Smith, David Carradine and Brad Dourif; The Bite and Amok Train. The Bite and Amok Train were later retitled as Curse II: The Bite and Beyond the Door III respectively to capitalise on the success of the previous films. [25]
In 1989, he became chairman the newly relaunched Cannon Pictures Inc. [26] Assonitis was hired by Italian financier Giancarlo Parretti after the departure of former chairman Menahem Golan and the restructuring of The Cannon Group, then renamed Pathé Communications. Assonitis then green-lit several projects; Lambada, Midnight Ride, No Place to Hide, Fifty/Fifty, Out of Control (which he also directed, his final directing credit to date) as well as the sequels American Ninja 4: The Annihilation and Little Ninja Man, later retitled American Ninja 5. [27] He also developed a project Wings with announced with Michael Dudikoff, but the film was never made. Due to financial issues at the company, Assonitis' contract was terminated in 1990, before many of his projects had been released. Assonitis sued Pathé Communications for wrongful termination of his contract. He won his suit in 1998 and was awarded $2.9 million in compensation. [27]
After his termination from Cannon Pictures Inc., Assonitis took the rights to Scent of a Woman to Universal Pictures. Universal acquired the rights and remade the film as Scent of a Woman starring Al Pacino and directed by Martin Brest. Released worldwide in 1993, the film earned US$63,095,253 in the US and $71 million internationally, totaling $134,095,253 worldwide. [28] [29] [30] The film was nominated for four Academy Award including Best Picture with Pacino winning for Best Actor.
In the mid 90s, Assonitis worked as a consultant to Ibrahim Moussa's Stone Canyon Investments. [31] In 1998, Paul Guez bought into the company and soon after a deal was announced with MGM Animation to produce three films, beginning with Tom Sawyer and Night at the Opera, [32] however only Tom Sawyer was produced before MGM Animation folded. [33] [34] The company entered into a first look deal with director Reginald Hudlin and his company Hudlin Bros. [35] However no films were produced from this deal and Stone Canyon Investments closed soon after.
After producing Sabrina Goes to Rome for Paramount Domestic Television and ABC in 1998, Assonitis produced the 2003 Italian slasher film Red Riding Hood directed by Giacomo Cimini.
Since 2003, Assonitis has concentrated on commercial and film distribution projects in South East Asia and Malaysia. In 2021, Assonitis was awarded the German Independence Honorary Award from Oldenburg International Film Festival. The festival opened with a theatrical screening of Tentacles and also conducted a retrospective of his films including Who Saw Her Die?, Beyond the Door, The Visitor, Madhouse and Piranha II: The Spawning. [36] He later announced a sequel to Beyond the Door entitled Embryo would be released in 2023 and Juliet Mills would return to star. [37]
| Year | Title | Functioned as | Director | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Director | Writer | Producer | ||||
| 1969 | Nel labirinto del sesso (Psichidion) | No | No | Yes | Alfonso Brescia | a.k.a. The Labyrinth of Sex |
| 1972 | Who Saw Her Die? | No | No | Associate | Aldo Lado | Starring George Lazenby |
| Man from the Deep River | No | No | Yes | Umberto Lenzi | a.k.a. Sacrifice! (original title: Il paese del sesso selvaggio) | |
| 1973 | Un amore cosi fragile, cosi violento | No | No | Executive | Leros Pittoni | |
| The Last Snows of Spring | No | No | Yes | Raimondo Del Balzo | (original title: L'ultima neve di primavera) | |
| 1974 | Super Stooges vs the Wonder Women | No | No | Executive | Alfonso Brescia | (original title: Superuomini, superdonne, superbotte) |
| Beyond the Door | Yes | Yes | Yes | Ovidio Assonitis and Roberto Piazzoli | a.k.a. The Devil Within Her (original title: Chi Sei?) | |
| 1975 | Abicinema | No | No | Yes | Giuseppe Bertolucci | documentary |
| 1976 | Laure | No | Yes | Yes | Emmanuelle Arsan (credited as Anonymous) | a.k.a. Forever Emmanuelle. Shadow directed by Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane and Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli |
| Take All of Me | No | No | Yes | Luigi Cozzi | co-written by Sonia Molteni | |
| Bertolucci secondo il cinema | No | No | Yes | Gianni Amelio | documentary | |
| 1977 | Tentacles | Yes | No | Executive | Ovidio Assonitis (as Oliver Hellman) | Starring John Huston, Shelley Winters, Claude Akins and Henry Fonda |
| 1978 | Last Touch of Love | No | No | Executive | Filippo Ottoni | co-written by Sonia Molteni |
| 1979 | The Visitor | No | Story | Yes | Giulio Paradisi | (original title: Stridulum) |
| 1981 | Madhouse | Yes | Yes | Yes | Ovidio Assonitis (as Oliver Hellman) | a.k.a. There Was a Little Girl |
| Steigler and Steigler | Yes | No | Yes | Ovidio Assonitis (as Oliver Hellman) | a.k.a. Desperate Moves | |
| Piranha II: The Spawning | Yes | Yes | Executive | James Cameron and Ovidio G. Assonitis | a.k.a. Piranha 2: Flying Killers | |
| 1986 | Choke Canyon | No | Yes | Yes | Charles Bail (as Chuck Bail) | a.k.a. On Dangerous Ground |
| Lone Runner | No | No | Yes | Ruggero Deodato | a.k.a. Fistful of Diamonds and Flash Fighter | |
| 1987 | Iron Warrior | No | No | Yes | Alfonso Brescia | uncredited |
| The Curse | No | No | Yes | David Keith | associate producer Lucio Fulci | |
| 1989 | Sonny Boy | No | No | Yes | Robert Martin Carroll | starring Paul L. Smith, David Carradine and Brad Dourif |
| Curse II: The Bite | No | No | Executive | Frederico Prosperi | a.k.a. The Bite | |
| Beyond the Door III | No | No | Executive | Jeff Kwitney | a.k.a Amok Train, starring Bo Svenson | |
| 1990 | Midnight Ride | No | No | Yes | Bob Bralver | produced by Cannon Pictures Inc. |
| American Ninja 4: The Annihilation | No | No | Yes | Cedric Sundstrom | produced by Cannon Pictures Inc. | |
| Lambada | No | No | Executive | Joel Silberg | produced by Cannon Pictures Inc. | |
| 1992 | Scent of a Woman | No | No | Executive | Martin Brest | nominated for Best Picture at the 65th Academy Awards |
| 1993 | No Place to Hide | No | No | Yes | Richard Danus | produced by Cannon Pictures Inc. |
| Out of Control | Yes | No | Yes | Ovidio Assonitis and Roberto Piazzoli | produced by International Movie Service s.r.l. | |
| American Ninja V | No | No | Yes | Bob Bralver (as Bobby Gene Leonard) | produced by International Movie Service s.r.l. | |
| 2003 | Red Riding Hood | No | Yes | Executive | Giacomo Cimini | based on Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault and by Brothers Grimm |
| 2023 | Embryo | No | Yes | Yes | To Be Announced | sequel to Beyond the Door |
In Italian cinema, giallo is a genre of murder mystery fiction that often contains slasher, thriller, psychological horror, sexploitation, and, less frequently, supernatural horror elements.
Piranha II: The Spawning is a 1982 horror film directed by James Cameron from a screenplay by Charles H. Eglee and Cameron. The film stars Tricia O'Neil and Lance Henriksen, who would both later appear in Cameron's productions. It is the second installment in the Piranha film series and the sequel to Piranha (1978).
Roberto D’Ettorre Piazzoli is an Italian film producer and cinematographer who has worked frequently with Ovidio G. Assonitis.
The Visitor is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Giulio Paradisi and based on a story by Egyptian-born Italian writer and producer Ovidio G. Assonitis. It features a cast of well-established stars including John Huston, Shelley Winters, Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford and Sam Peckinpah with supporting appearances by Neal Boortz and Steve Somers. It was filmed on location in Atlanta, Georgia and at Cinecittà Studios in Rome. It has garnered a cult following over the years.
Beyond the Door is a 1974 supernatural horror film directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis and Roberto Piazzoli, and starring Juliet Mills, Gabriele Lavia, and Richard Johnson. The plot follows a San Francisco housewife who becomes demonically possessed in the midst of a pregnancy. The film was a co-production between the United States and Italy. It was released in the United Kingdom in an extended cut under the title Devil Within Her.
Film Ventures International (FVI) was an independent film production and distribution company originally located in Atlanta, Georgia, during the 1970s. FVI garnered a notorious reputation within the industry for producing films that were highly derivative of many blockbusters of the era. The company mainly specialized in producing and distributing B movies and horror fare.
Piranha is a horror film series that consists of five films. The original film is a parody of the 1975 film Jaws.
Tentacles is a 1977 horror-thriller film directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis and starring John Huston, Shelley Winters, Bo Hopkins, Cesare Danova, Delia Boccardo and Henry Fonda.
Iron Warrior is 1987 film directed by Alfonso Brescia.
Shock is a 1977 Italian supernatural horror film directed by Mario Bava and starring Daria Nicolodi, John Steiner, and David Colin, Jr. Its plot focuses on a woman who moves into the home she shared with her deceased former husband, where she finds herself tormented by supernatural occurrences. It was Bava's last theatrical feature before he died of a heart attack in 1980.
Madhouse is a 1981 Italian slasher film directed and co-written by Ovidio G. Assonitis, and starring Trish Everly, Dennis Robertson, Allison Biggers, and Michael Macrae. The plot follows a schoolteacher in Savannah, Georgia being stalked by her psychopathic twin sister in the days leading up to their birthday. The film's original title takes its name from a poem called There Was a Little Girl by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Beyond the Door III is a 1989 Italian horror film directed by Jeff Kwitny. It is the final film in the Beyond the Door trilogy, a series of unrelated films linked by a common title for marketing purposes. It was released twelve years after the second film in the trilogy, Beyond the Door II.
The Exorcist is an American horror media franchise that originated with William Peter Blatty's 1971 horror novel of the same name and most prominently featured in a 1973 film adaptation of the novel, and many subsequent prequels and sequels. All of these installments focus on fictional accounts of people possessed by Pazuzu, the main antagonist of the series, and the efforts of religious authorities to counter this possession.
Laure is a 1976 Italian erotic film directed by Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane and Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli, even though the film was advertised as directed by Emmanuelle Arsan.
Super Stooges vs. the Wonder Women is a 1974 superhero comedy film directed by Alfonso Brescia.
Curse II: The Bite is a 1989 horror film directed by Frederico Prosperi, credited as Fred Goodwin. It is the second entry in the Curse tetralogy, a rebranding of unrelated films for marketing purposes.
Giant Pictures is an American independent film distribution company founded by Nick Savva and Jeff Stabenau with offices in New York City and Los Angeles. The company releases feature films, documentaries and series on streaming platforms, with an emphasis on flexibility and customization for filmmakers. Giant Pictures owns and operates specialty theatrical label, Drafthouse Films. Giant is the distribution and technology partner of the Tribeca Festival.
Beyond the Door is a horror film series that consists of three originally unconnected films that were retitled to be part of a supernatural franchise for the American and English speaking markets, and one direct sequel to the 1974 original. Several loose connections between the first three films are that all three were Italian productions, Ovidio G. Assonitis produced parts I and III, child actor David Colin Jr. starred in Parts I and II.
The Curse pentalogy is a horror series of five originally unconnected films that were retitled to be part of a supernatural franchise for the American home video market. The series started in 1987 with The Curse. 1993's Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice is notable due to the fact the fourth film was originally made in 1988, predating the third film Curse III: Blood Sacrifice which was released in 1991. The only loose connections between the films are the first two are Italian productions produced by Ovidio G. Assonitis, otherwise the films are completely unrelated.
Over the Line is a 1993 American thriller film directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis and Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli. It stars Lesley-Anne Down as Elaine Patterson, a college professor who works in prison as a literary teacher for experiment and becomes the obsession for seductive inmate. It also starred John Enos III as inmate and rap performer Lady B Pearl as his ex-girlfriend who also sang number of songs in film.
A Greek national born in Alexandria, ...
Unfortunately for him, working with Italian producer Ovidio G. Assonitis proved to be hellish, ...
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