{"id":3455,"date":"2014-07-28T20:54:53","date_gmt":"2014-07-28T20:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3455"},"modified":"2015-07-27T12:31:22","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T12:31:22","slug":"walter-brandi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/performers-directors\/walter-brandi\/","title":{"rendered":"Walter Brandi"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Walter<\/a>
Walter Brandi plays the hero in BLOODY PIT OF HORROR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just who was Walter Brandi?\u00a0 Well, to some people he’s best known as an Italian b-movie star of the early sixties, a solid if not particularly inspiring presence in numerous gothic horror films and historical adventures.\u00a0 But in the Italian film industry he’s probably better known as the producer, often using the pseudonym Walter Bigari, who was behind numerous\u00a0successful, low budget releases throughout the 1970s and 80s.\u00a0 Zombie Creeping Flesh<\/strong>?\u00a0 That’s one of his.\u00a0 Scalps<\/strong>?\u00a0 That one too.\u00a0 Also Aenigma<\/span><\/strong>, Getting Even<\/strong>, Miami Cops<\/strong> and many, many others.\u00a0 Most of these were solid video shelf fillers, some of them took off an were worldwide hits.\u00a0 Just about all of them are of interest to cult film fanatics. His film career began with a couple of uncredited roles in big budget peplums, Carmine Gallone’s Messalina\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>(51) and Mario Camerini’s Ulysses\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>(54).\u00a0 He appeared in another half dozen films throughout the 1950s, with the size of his roles gradually increasing.\u00a0 More importantly, he made contacts: Sergio Bergonzelli was an uncredited actor on Messalina<\/strong>, Roberto Mauri the star of Retaggio di sangue<\/strong>\u00a0(56), Erno Crisa and Amedeo Trilli, both of whom would work repeatedly with Brandi, were his co-stars in Due selvaggi in corte<\/strong>\u00a0(59).<\/p>\n

\"Walter<\/a>
Mmmm, a large ham! Walter Brandi in THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By this time, he’d fallen in with a group of actors and directors who would often appear in each others films, almost like a cinematic workshop: Mauri, Luigi Batzella, Alfredo Rizzo, Giuseppe Vari, Renato Polselli.\u00a0 In the early sixties, Brandi became their leading man of choice, despite – in all honesty – not really having the screen charisma to justify such a lofty position.\u00a0 It’s not that he was a bad actor, he was passable if not particularly talented, but he’s often a somewhat heavy presence in these films, without much in the way of warmth of likability.\u00a0 sometimes this works, sometimes not. Anyway, during the early part of the decade he made numerous films in varying genres.\u00a0 He starred in a couple of early crime films, Mauri’s I mafiosi\u00a0<\/strong>(59) and Edoardo Mulargia’s Le due legge\u00a0<\/strong>(62), both of which co-starred Erno Crisa. \u00a0Le due legge<\/strong> is particularly interesting, a proto-spaghetti western filmed in Sicily with a largely unprofessional cast, in which he plays a vengeance crazed farmer out to track down and kill the man (Crisa) who killed his brother.<\/p>\n

\"Walter<\/a>
Walter Brandi in THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There were also numerous historical adventures.\u00a0 Il segno del vendicatore\u00a0<\/strong>(62) was a Zorro film in which he had a small supporting role, Flag of Death<\/strong>\u00a0(63) an entertaining enough pirate movie in which he was the foil to star Richard Harrison, Zorikan the Barbarian<\/strong>\u00a0(64) a Saracen movie starring Dan Vadis and Three Swords from Rome<\/strong>\u00a0(64) an Ancient Roman adventure with Roger Browne and Mimmo Palmara.\u00a0 All of these were directed by Roberto Mauri, a director who was expert in eking out decent product from limited budgets.\u00a0 His films might not be masterpieces, but they’re more than serviceable, and he was certainly a more talented filmmaker than either Angelo Dorigo or Piero Regnoli, with whom Brandi made a couple more swashbucklers, La grande vallata<\/strong>\u00a0(61) and The Hawk of the Caribbean<\/strong>\u00a0(62). More often than not he was relegated to supporting roles in these films, giving\u00a0center\u00a0stage to more athletic performers such as Johnny Desmond, Harrison or Browne and playing villains of one type or another. Brandi is undoubtedly best known, however, for the performances he gave in the six horror films he made between 1960 and 1965, making him something of the Italian equivalent of a Christopher Lee… or maybe Anton Diffring… or maybe Mike Raven.\u00a0 The first of them, The Vampire and the Ballerina<\/strong>\u00a0(60) was directed by cult filmmaker Renato Polselli and established the template for many of the low budget horror films that were to follow: a group of sexy dancers and their slightly comic manager end up in an isolated village near an ornate but run down castle where they come across an ageing countess (Maria Luisa Ronaldo) and her dubious servant (Brandi), both of whom are vampires.\u00a0 Needless to say, much blood-sucking and low-key eroticism ensues.\u00a0 Polselli\u2019s films were always made with limited means, but this is one of his best and looks pretty good for its restricted means.\u00a0 But that\u00a0didn’t\u00a0prevent it from experiencing distribution problems and it\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0released until 1962.\u00a0 In the meantime, Brandi starred in Piero Regnoli\u2019s The Playgirls and the Vampire <\/strong>(60), which featured \u2013 stop me if\u00a0you’ve\u00a0heard this before \u2013 a group of sexy dancers and their slightly comic manager ending up in an isolated, ornate but run down castle, where they come across a strange Count (Brandi) who might or might not be a vampire.\u00a0\u00a0 Then there was another film for Roberto Mauri, The Slaughter of the Vampires <\/strong>(62), in which Brandi and Graziella Granata play a pair of newlyweds who fall under the spell of a sinister stranger (Dieter Eppler), who might or might not be a vampire and another Renato Polselli film The Vampire of the Opera <\/strong>(64), in which a group of sexy actresses end up in an ornate but run down theatre where they come across a strange aristocrat who\u2019s definitely a vampire.<\/p>\n

\"Walter<\/a>
Walter Brandi in THE PLAYGIRLS AND THE VAMPIRE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If all of these films seem similar, well\u2026 they are.\u00a0 But Brandi\u2019s final two horror films were slightly different.\u00a0 Terror Creatures from Beyond the Grave <\/strong>is an extremely enjoyable slice of gothic horror from Massimo Pupillo, in which Brandi plays a lawyer paying a visit to a country village after being summoned to draw up a will for a doctor who lives there.\u00a0 Only trouble is that the doctor\u2019s been dead for a year, people are dying all over the place and apparently some ghosts of evil sorcerers are terrorizing everyone who is still alive.\u00a0 He re-teamed with Pupillo for the Bloody Pit of Horror<\/strong>, which returned to more familiar lines by featuring a group of sexy models and their slightly comical manager who end up in an ornate and run down castle where they come across a reclusive actor (Mickey Hargitay) who might or might not be a crazed muscleman dressed in a Zorro mask and with a personalized torture chamber who is known as \u2018the Crimson Executioner\u2019.\u00a0 Ok, so the plots pretty much the same as Brandi\u2019s earlier film, but this is crazy stuff, hugely enjoyable, and Brandi wears a nice cardigan while playing the hero. There were two final films before Brandi gave up his acting career.\u00a0 Island of the Lost Girls <\/strong>(69) saw him play the \u2018secret\u2019 head of a white slave ring in a late entry in the successful Kommissar X series of films starring Tony Kendall and Brad Harris and there was a small role in Bruno Mattei\u2019s Private House of the SS <\/strong>(77).\u00a0 But by this time he was concentrating his efforts behind the camera.\u00a0 In fact, he\u2019d been producing films since 1964, when he worked behind the scenes on Zorikan the Barbarian<\/strong>.\u00a0 Before long, he was working on films he\u00a0didn’t\u00a0also star in, although many of them were directed by previous collaborators: A… come assassino<\/strong> (66) and Un colpo da re<\/strong> (67) for Angelo Dorigo; Eva, la Venere selvaggia<\/strong> (68), Wanted Sabata<\/strong> (70) for Roberto Mauri. It was in the 1980s that he became better known as a producer, partially because most of the makers of low budget, populist entertainment \u2013 people like Fortunato Misiano \u2013 had fled the industry.\u00a0 Using the pseudonym Walter Bigari and often under his A.M. Trading International company, he was one of the few producers who was still prolific enough to become a familiar name, along with the likes of Joe D\u2019Amato and Fabrizio De Angelis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just who was Walter Brandi? Well, to some people he’s best known as an Italian b-movie star of the early sixties, a solid if not particularly inspiring presence in numerous gothic horror films and historical adventures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[324,7],"tags":[1096,1095],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3455"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3455"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3843,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3455\/revisions\/3843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}