Rino Di Silvestro(1932-2009)

Rino Di Silvestro was an Italian writer/director who specialized in extremely raw, graphic and, in the opinion of many critics, offensive low-budget exploitation fare. He was born in 1932 and hailed from a family of Sicilian landowners. He established his own avant-garde theatre company and produced the risqué comedy play "Op Bop Pop Nip" in the 1960s. In addition, Di Silvestro was a ghostwriter who penned over 200 screenplays. He made his directorial debut with the supremely scuzzy chicks-in-chains outing La vie sexuelle dans une prison de femmes (1973). He followed that with the sleazy Dossier rose de la prostitution (1974) and the nasty Nazisploitation item Les Déportées de la section spéciale SS (1976). Di Silvestro achieved his greatest enduring cult cinema notoriety, however, with the outrageously trashy and leering soft-core horror schlocker La louve se déchaîne (1976).

His last two pictures were the typically tawdry À 16 ans dans l'enfer d'Amsterdam (1984) and the crass sexploitation peplum Les nuits chaudes de Cléopâtre (1985).

He died of cancer on October 3, 2009.