Italian producer Fulvio Lucisano, who shepherded a slew of cult B-movies such as “Planet of the Vampires” and “What Have You Done to Solange?” and had a close rapport with Roger Corman, has died. He was 98.
His daughter Paola confirmed Lucisano’s death on Tuesday in a statement sent to Italian news agency ANSA, writing: “Rest in peace, Dad.”
Over seven decades in the film business, Lucisano mounted more than 150 projects in a panoply of genres, ranging from Mario Bava’s pulpy classic “Planet of the Vampires” to Franco Zeffirelli’s “The Young Toscanini,” starring Elizabeth Taylor as a primadonna soprano, as well as Buster Keaton-starrer “War, Italian Style.”
Lucisano’s genre purview included sci-fi, horror, Italian comedies and soft porn, but also highbrow works by some of Italy’s most revered auteurs like Liliana Cavani, Marco Ferreri, Lina Wertmuller and European arthouse greats like Carlos Saura, whose 1999 work “Goya in Bordeaux” Lucisano was particularly proud of.
“Genres don’t exist,” Lucisano said in a 2008 interview with Variety. “The only thing I care about is the moviegoers. They are our judge.”
In the interview, Lucisano said he had always paid heed to the advice Keaton gave him in 1966 on the Rome set of “War, Italian Style,” in which Keaton played a hapless German general, one of his last roles.
“He told me: ‘Any kind of movie you make, look at what happens in the first reel, and make sure that, if it’s a comedy, there’s a laugh early on; if it’s a drama or an action movie, then something surprising has to happen in the first 10 minutes,’” Lucisano said.
The Rome-born Lucisano started out in production in 1949, assisting an American company making a Catholic documentary shot inside the Vatican and St. Peter’s to commemorate the coming year’s Holy Year Jubilee. A lawyer’s son who had a degree in law himself, Lucisano personally drafted his own contracts for most of his career.
He set up Italian Intl. Film (IIF) in 1958 and soon started collaborating with Los Angeles-based American Intl. Pictures, James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff’s low-budget Hollywood studio that spawned Corman’s films, which were distributed in Italy by Lucisano’s Italian Intl. Film.
Their collaboration started with 1962’s “Warriors Five,” a WWII drama starring Jack Palance; followed by “Sexy magico,” a faux docu about sexual rites around the world; and in 1964 came campy Jane Mansfield-starrer “Primitive Love,” a mondo sex farce in a similar vein.
in 1965, Lucisano proudly shepherded Bava’s “Planet of the Vampires,” his first picture shot in Cinecitta’s legendary Studio 5, later to become Federico Fellini’s second home. “Planet of the Vampires,” considered a major influence on Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” was a co-production with American Intl. Pictures.
“What Have You Done to Solange?” is one of Lucisano’s relatively early productions that he liked to reminisce about. It’s a now-classic 1972 England-set giallo and a favorite of Quentin Tarantino, helmed by Massimo Dallamano with a typically atmospheric Ennio Morricone score.
In 2005, the Venice Film Festival celebrated Lucisano with a special Fulvio Lucisano Day as part of its Tarantino-presented “Secret History of Italian Cinema” retrospective, during which restored copies of both “Vampires” and “Solange” screened.
But besides Italian B-movies, Lucisano also shepherded a slew of artier titles.
In 1975, just three years after “Solange,” Lucisano made Mauro Bolognini’s “Per le antiche scale” (“Down the Ancient Staircase”), a dark drama starring Marcello Mastroianni as a psychologist trying to isolate an “insanity virus” in a Fascist-era asylum. It won the Locarno Film Festival’s Special Jury nod.
He produced Liliana Cavani’s Nazi-era “The Berlin Affair,” Luigi Comencini’s “A Boy From Calabria” and Francesca Archibugi’s 1993 foreign-language Oscar-nommed debut “Il grande cocomero” (“The Great Pumpkin”), just to name a few of his forays into auteur territory.
As a distributor, IIF has released hundreds of pics, including “Thelma and Louise,” thanks to a strong relationship he had with MGM; Andrei Konchalowski’s “Maria’s Lovers,” as part of a longstanding deal in those days with Menahem Golan’s Cannon; and “Four Weddings and a Funeral” through his tie at the time with Polygram.
Lucisano served as president of Italy’s motion picture association ANICA from 1998 to 2001.
During his illustrious career, Lucisano was honored with five David di Donatello awards, including a lifetime achievement honor in 2009, as well as four Nastri d’Argento Silver Ribbon awards.
Lucisano is survived by his daughters, Federica and Paola, who run his now publicly traded company called Lucisano Media Group.
