R.I.P. Paolo Solvay

News just filtering through that Paolo Solvay, one of the iconic directors of Italian z-grade films of the sixties and seventies, had died.

Solvay had been an actor, appearing in several low budget features (such as Roberto Mauri’s Slaughter of the Vampires (62)) before moving behind the cameras with the obscure 1966 film Tre franchi di pietà. His heyday, though, was the seventies, when he churned out films in a variety of genres: spaghetti westerns (Even Django Has His Price (71)), war films (When the Bell Tolls (70)), nunsploitation (Confessioni segrete di un convento di clausura, 72) and crime (Blackmail (74)). As the decade progressed, his work became increasingly sleazy, culminating in the notorious The Beast in Heat, in which a depraved doctor in a Nazi death camp creates a sex-addicted, dwarf monster with a tatse for pubic hair. After that particular pinnacle, though, he only made a couple more films, two of which – Proibito erotico and Gymkata Killer – there is some doubt as to his actual level of involvement.

Solvay was one of a group of filmmakers – along with the aforementioned Roberto Mauri and Alfredo Rizzo – who often appeared in each others productions. The films may not have been any good, but they have a kind of compulsive fascination.

About Matt Blake 890 Articles
The WildEye is a blog dedicated to the wild world of Italian cinema (and, ok, sometimes I digress into discussing films from other countries as well). Peplums, comedies, dramas, spaghetti westerns... they're all covered here.

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