Amando de Ossorio
| Amando de Ossorio | |
|---|---|
| Born |
April 6, 1918 Coruña, Galicia, Spain |
| Died | January 13, 2001 (aged 82) Madrid, Spain |
| Occupation | film director, artist and writer |
Amando de Ossorio (April 6, 1918 – January 13, 2001) was one of the foremost Spanish horror film directors during the European horror film surge in the 1970s, known especially for his "Blind Dead" tetralogy.
De Ossorio directed a short political film in 1956 called The Black Flag, then spent the next few years doing documentaries and commercials. He was also a talented painter and artist. In 1964, he was hired to direct a few innocuous westerns and comedies, then he moved into horror in 1969 where he made his mark.
Amando de Ossorio complained in interviews that right from the start of his directing career, his producers were always tampering with his projects. His first horror film, Malenka, The Vampire's Niece (1969), was written to be a psychological thriller about a young woman who inherits a castle in Europe and is summarily driven crazy by her uncle who tries to convince her that he and she are both vampires. At the end of the film, the uncle's scheme is revealed and explained by her boyfriend to be a hoax. However, after de Ossorio finished the film, the producers decided to make the uncle an actual vampire in the English language version, and added a low-budget disintegration scene to the finale of the English-dubbed prints that completely contradicted the plot.
In 1971, de Ossorio came up with the concept of The Blind Dead, a cult of blind, undead Templar Knights who sucked human blood, rode skeletal ghost-horses and were attracted to their victims by the sound of their heartbeat. The first film, Tombs of the Blind Dead, was so successful, he immediately embarked on a career as a Euro-horror film director. Three more "Blind Dead" films followed in quick succession.
His 1975 Demon Witch Child (one of the many European Exorcist clones) is today regarded as an underrated must-see horror classic by most of his fans. In the late 70s, de Ossorio's name strangely wound up on a couple of x-rated adult films. (The Spanish horror film industry petered out after 1975 and, unlike the Italian film industry which rebounded with gory zombie & cannibal films in 1980, the Spanish film market never recovered.)
He started to direct a cannibal film called Man Hunter (aka Devil Hunter) in 1980, but Spanish director Jesus Franco was given the project by the producer, and de Ossorio gracefully bowed out. Strangely, many of the actors who regularly appeared in Franco's films also worked for de Ossorio, such as Jack Taylor, Monserrat Prous, Paul Muller, Fernando Bilbao, Luis Barboo, Rosanna Yanni & Kali Hansa.
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