Biography for
Bruno Mattei More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

30 July 1931, Rome, Italy

Date of Death

21 May 2007, Ostia, Rome, Italy (brain tumor)

Mini Biography

Born in 1931, Bruno Mattei grew up in Rome, Italy where his father owned a small film editing studio. At age 20, Mattei started working odd jobs at his father's company as his assistant, then on to other small spots. Mattei wanted to follow in his father's footsteps as a film editor. Mattei found himself working as an editor for a number of directors whom included Roberto Bianchi Montero and Nick Nostro. Mattei claimed to have edited over 100 films in the 1960s and early 1970s.

After working with famed Spanish director Jess Franco, Mattei made his debut as a director with the drama, Armida, il dramma di una sposa (1970) under the alias Jordon B. Matthews. Mattei eventually had more pseudonyms than any working director in the world. He returned to editing before making another comeback in 1976 with two Nazi World War II exploitation films, Womens Camp 119 and SS Girls, both low-budget action dramas. Mattei followed this taboo-transgressing films with excursions into porno films and mondo "shockumentaries" all directed under his many pseudos. Concentrating on "shock value" with Mondo Erotico (1977), Libiodomania (1979) and Libidomania 2 (1980) to name a few. Always on the lookout for new exploitation, Mattei followed with "nunexploitation", with The True Story of the Nun of Monza (1980) a soft-core sex film, and The Other Hell (1980) a violent-sex thriller. Both of them involved a partnership with writer/director Claudio Fragasso who helped Mattei write and direct the back-to-back productions.

Starting under yet another alias, Vincent Dawn, Mattei directed _Virus (1981)_ (Hell of the Living Dead), a low-budged zombie horror picture inspired by other zombie cannibal movies such as Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979) which was filmed in Spain with used jungle footage from New Guinea and a patch soundtrack from Goblins' Dawn of the Dead music, which was a minor hit in Italy and abroad.

After directing two women's prison films, starring Laura Gemser, Mattei moved to directing sword-and-sorcery flicks starting with _Seven Magnificent Gladiators, The (1983)_. Both Mattei and Fragasso collaborated on the sci-fi/horror flick Rats - Notte di terrore (1984), inspired from the futuristic movies of the early 1980s which Mattei considers his best work despite working still with a low-budget. Mattei worked relentlessly through the 1980s with directing a pair of Spaghetti Westerns, some action flicks, and about half of Zombi 3 (1988) after Lucio Fulci was taken off production, though Mattei was not credited with directing it.

In the early 1990s, Mattei directed a series of erotic thrillers and a made-for-TV movie Cruel Jaws (1995) (TV) which was inspired by Steven Spielberg's own 1975 hit, 'Jaws'. Mattei continued to direct with more than 50 Italian films to his credit in to the 2000s. In early 2007, Mattei's health becan to decline rapidly after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Despite his doctor's warnings, he went through with a surgical operation to have the tumor removed in May of that year. After the surgery, he fell into a coma from complications, and died a few days later on May 21, 2007 at age 75.

Though some people consider his films to be cheap, insipid, and technically inept from their low budgets and poor production values, the late Bruno Mattei remains an influential cult film director around the world for his radical filmmaking and willingness to direct anything new with any new taboo-breaking topic.

IMDb Mini Biography By: matt-282

Trivia

He is referred to in some circles as "The Italian Ed Wood" due to his constant usage of stock footage, soundtrack borrowing, bad acting and silly dialog within his productions.

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