Lenzi, Umberto

(1931-)

   Screenwriter and director. A cult director working mostly in genre films (and under a number of aliases, Humphrey Humbert, Harry Kirkpatrick, and Hank Milestone among them), Lenzi abandoned legal studies at university in order to train in film at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. Having worked as assistant director on Domenico Paolella's pirate fantasy, Il terrore dei mari (Guns of the Black Witch, 1961), Lenzi directed his own female pirate adventure, Le avventure di Mary Read (Queen of the Seas, 1961), which was followed by a host of other swashbuckling adventure fantasies such as Sandokan, la tigre della Mompracem (Sandokan, the Great, 1963) and Ipirati della malesia (The Pirates of Malaysia, 1964). After Attentato ai tre grandi (Desert Commandos, 1967), a desert war drama portraying an attempt by German commandos to assassinate Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at their meeting in Casablanca, several spy films, and a number of spaghetti Westerns, Lenzi made the first of his erotic psychological thrillers, Orgasmo (Orgasm, but released in the United States as Paranoia, 1968), followed by Cost dolce... cost perversa (So Sweet... So Perverse, 1969). In the 1970s he became particularly renowned for his mastery of the police-crime thriller genre while also achieving international cult status with Il paese del sesso selvaggio (Sacrifice! 1972), the film that launched the cannibal horror cycle in Italy, to which Lenzi would contribute several classics of the genre, including Mangiati vivi (Eaten Alive, 1980) and the notorious Cannibal ferox (Make Them Die Slowly, 1981), advertised as "the most violent film ever made!"

   In the 1980s he continued to dabble in most of the major genres but came back to prominence with the voodoo horror Demoni 3 (Black Demons, 1991). His last film was the police thriller Hornsby and Rodriguez—sfida criminale (Mean Tricks, 1992).

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira