Technique and Methods
D'Amato is renowned for having produced and directed many "knockoff" films - a common practice in the Italian film industry at the time - which D'Amato took to extremes, e.g. in the following cases:
- The idea of shooting a Black Emanuelle film as director featuring cannibalism came with the success of Ultimo mondo cannibale (aka Jungle Holocaust or Last Cannibal World) by Ruggero Deodato. Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (Emanuelle e gli ultimi cannibali) was released in 1977, the same year as Deodato's film, which was set in the Philippines, while D'Amato's plot unfolded in the Amazon Rainforest (the movie was actually shot in the Pontine Marshes). Deodato's 1980 film Cannibal Holocaust, then, is the Amazon Rainforest as well, implying a certain reciprocity of "inspiration".
- Images in a Convent (Immagini di un convento) (1979) followed Walerian Borowczyk's Interno di un convento (Behind Convent Walls) (1977).
- In 1981, D'Amato released Caligula 2, which he marketed as the sequel to 1979's Caligula, even using similar poster art.
- Only months after the release of Conan the Barbarian in 1982, D'Amato wrote, directed, and released Ator the Invincible about a Scandinavian barbarian who goes on an epic quest against fantasy monsters to save his beloved. Two years later, when Conan the Destroyer was released, D'Amato quickly filmed and released Ator the Blademaster, which, while closely resembling Conan, also contained several clips of other movies which D'Amato had stolen and inserted, among them Where Eagles Dare. When it was announced shortly thereafter that there would be no more Conan films, D'Amato announced there would be no more Ator films. Joe D'Amato wrote and directed three of the four Ator movies. One of the movies, Blademaster, was featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 retitled "Cave Dwellers". The third film in the series Iron Warrior was written and directed by Alfonso Brescia, not Joe D'Amato.
- Undici giorni, undici notti (Eleven Days, Eleven Nights) was released in 1986, just a few months after Adrian Lyne's 9½ Weeks.
- Following the success of Sex and Zen, D'Amato directed a series of films in the Philippines, disguised as Hong Kong productions in the period of 1993-1994. The film named China and Sex, D'Amato credited as "Robert Yip" is particularly significant. He later displayed the expertise he gained in shooting "Chinese films" with Marco Polo: La storia mai raccontata (1995), a pornographic film starring Rocco Siffredi and Tabatha Cash.
- He produced and directed several porn films that were rip offs of major Hollywood films.
- D'Amato also often bought stock shots, sometimes taken from other films, to insert them into his own as part of the narrative.
Read more about this topic: Joe D'Amato
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