Luigi Cozzi

Luigi Cozzi
Luigi Cozzi in 2011
Born	(1947-09-07) September 7, 1947 (age 69) Busto Arsizio, Italy
Occupation	Film director, screenwriter

Luigi Cozzi (born September 7, 1947) is an Italian movie director and screenwriter who directed mainly science fiction and horror films in the mid-1970s and throughout the 1980s. He was born in 1947 in Busto Arsizio, Italy. He sometimes lists himself in film credits by his Anglicized name Lewis Coates. Cozzi also worked as an assistant director and co-screenwriter on a number of Dario Argento's most famous movies.

Cozzi has been interested in film making since his teen years, producing a low budget science fiction film at age 21 called The Tunnel Under the World. (His mother has stated that he loved watching movies as a child and, to her, it has always seemed that a career in the film industry was his destiny.) Tunnel brought him to the attention of renowned Italian producer Dario Argento. Cozzi worked as an assistant director and screenwriter on a number of Argento's most famous movies, and directed a made-for-TV movie called The Neighbor for the Door into Darkness television series produced by Argento in 1973.

Cozzi's first professional film was the 1975 giallo, The Killer Must Kill Again, after which he was hired to direct a number of bigger budget science fiction and fantasy films, such as Contamination, Starcrash, Hercules and Hercules 2, all of which later became cult films.

Cozzi worked with a lot of well-known genre actors such as Caroline Munro, Sybil Danning, Lou Ferrigno, Joe Spinnell, Klaus Kinski, Daria Nicolodi, Asia Argento, David Hassellhoff, George Hilton and Brett Halsey.