Luigi Cozzi

1980s to present Cozzi began working at writing novels, writing thrillers including Killer Instinct and Fear Hotel and the science fiction novel Time Parallels and the horror novel Cthulu Night. He was later offered by Menahem Golan to do an updated version of the story of Hercules on the condition that he could re-write the script in three weeks. Cozzi accepted and developed Hercules, which drew inspiration from Clash of the Titans. Cozzi's film includes large amounts of stop-motion animation. Cozzi worked on a sequel that had actor Lou Ferrigno reprise his role, but found the actor only available for three weeks which led to Cozzi padding the film with footage from the first film.

Cozzi continued working with Argento, working on the special effects scenes in his film Phenomena. He created the scene involving the insects attacking a school by filming smashed coffee grounds in a water tank. He followed this work with television series Giallo working again with Argento and Lamberto Bava. Cozzi was offered to direct the film Witchery, which the initial director Claudio Lattanzi left during pre-production. Cozzi entered and left two weeks into pre-production, finding the story "too predictable and banal". Cozzi had co-owned and managed the store "Profondo Rosso" in Italy. Other later work included directing and writing Paganini Horror. The film stars Donald Pleasence and is based on the legend of a famous violinist being in league with the devil. Cozzi also wrote the script for Sinbad of the Seven Seas which was directed by Enzo G. Castellari, but completed by Cozzi. Among his later work is The Black Cat starring Caroline Munro, who is visited by a witch. Cozzi played himself in the film Sick-o-pathics and also developed documentaries on Dario Argento. Cozzi later made two documentaries on the films of Dario Argento, and for years co-owned and managed Argento's retail movie memorabilia store in Italy, Profondo Rosso.

A new film made by Cozzi titled Blood on Méliès' Moon was announced at the Italian Horror Fest in Nettuno in July 2014. Cozzi explained his return to film making was due to modern technology making it easier to make a film. Cozzi stated that it was similar to when he "decided to become a publisher, until then, to publish a book you had to print at least one or two thousand copies. That meant a lot of money and often your storehouses were full of unsold copies. After the advent of digital, you could print even only thirty copies of a book and so I decided to start publishing books and novels."

Style Most of Cozzi's films become "increasingly silly and strange" as their plot goes on.

Filmography