Rino Di Silvestro

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 Women in Cell Block 7 (1973). He followed that with the sleazy Love Angels (1974) and the nasty Nazisploitation item Deported Women of the SS Special Section (1976). Di Silvestro achieved his greatest enduring cult cinema notoriety, however, with the outrageously trashy and leering soft-core horror schlocker The Legend of the Wolf Woman (1976).

His last two pictures were the typically tawdry Hanna D.: The Girl from Vondel Park (1984) and the crass sexploitation peplum The Erotic Dreams of Cleopatra (1985).

He died of cancer on October 3, 2009.