contined
After wild accusations of rape and torture were finally thorwn out of a court in Naples, Rosso again vanished from the public eye, this time for five years. He died as he had lived: creating horrific entertainment. A sudden and massive heart attack struck him down as he was putting the final touches to a script tentatively titled The White Feast*. This was to be another comeback film - his long hoped-for masterpiece, but sadly, Angelo Rosso never got to film a single scene.
Any of the usual hints and whispers of his death being the result of unwelcome occult research for the film should be discounted as inaccurate nonsense; Rosso's end was indeed unexpected, but its cause was purely natural. It is by now a matter of common knowledge that the scene he was writing when the coronary hit involved a middle-aged documentary film maker (the film's protagonist) suffering massive heart seizures brought on by supernatural means. This, of course, is pure coincidence, and any serious consideration of Rosso's work must dismiss it as such.
Potentially, Rosso was an important filmmaker within his chosen genre. It is a sad epitaph to his short life and even shorter career that the world never got a chance to see what he was truly capable of. But what remains is the unique legacy of a man living continually on the edge; a genuine visionary who was confronted by tragedy, indifference and a perplexing lack of faith at every turn his bizarre life took.
Angelo Rosso: 1940 - 1989
Filmography:
Beast Boy (1977)
Grim urban fairytale about a boy raised by wolves who eventually goes on citywide rampage.
Any Few Will Do (1979)
Demented giallo love story about a psychotic bisexual hermaphrodite dwarf.
The Dreams of Captain Cairo (1982)
Surreal, baffling and allegedly allegorical gorefest regarding a lycanthropic drug-taking ship's captain on a journey of self-discovery (his vessel is called The Moreau).
Zombie Meat Feast (1983)
Cheap and disgusting Dawn of the Dead rip-off set in an airport terminal at Heathrow. Still banned in the UK, where it was filmed (Manchester standing in for London).
Dead House (1984)
Rosso's finest hour. A sombre, lyrical and atmospheric ghost story concerning the reanimated corpse of a classical music composer and his attempts to reconcile his estranged family. Compared with the very best of Mario Bava by genre critics.
* At the time of his death, Rosso was concentrating on preproduction for his latest project, an ambitious piece called The White Feast, loosely based on the writings of the Welsh writer and spiritualist Arthur Machen.
Further reading:
Unsung Heroes of European Horror
By Christopher Hook
(Moon Hex Books - 1995)
Dead Houses: the life and films of Angelo Rosso
By Gary McMahon
(SeeEye Publications - 2005)
