Umberto Lenzi

Umberto Lenzi
Umberto Lenzi at the Festival de Cine de Sitges in October 2008.
Born	(1931-06-08) 8 June 1931 (age 85) Massa Marittima, Italy
Occupation	Film director and screenwriter

Umberto Lenzi (born 6 August 1931), is an Italian film director who was very active in Italian international co-production peplums, Eurospy films, spaghetti westerns, Macaroni Combat movies, Poliziotteschi films, cannibal films and giallo murder mysteries (in addition to writing many of the screenplays himself).

Umberto Lenzi was born on June 8, 1931 in the Massa Marittima province of Italy. Lenzi was a film enthusiast as early as grade school. While studying law, Lenzi also created film fan clubs. Lenzi eventually put off studying law and began pursuing the technical arts of filmmaking.

He enrolled in Rome's Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografica in 1956 and made the short I ragazzi di Trastevere as a final exam, a short film influenced by the writings of Pasolini. Lenzi also worked as a journalist for various newspapers and magazines, including Bianco e Nero.

Prior to what his officially first credited film as a director, Queen of the Seas (1961), Lenzi directed a film in Greece in 1958 titled Mia Italida stin Ellada or Vacanze ad Atene which was never released.

Lenzi's films of the 1960s revolved around popular genres of their respective time periods. In the early 1960s, Lenzi directed many adventure films including two features about Robin Hood, Il Torionfo di Robin Hood (1962) and The Invincible Masked Rider (1963) and two films about Sandokan, Sandokan the Great (1963) and Pirates of Malaysia (1964).