Ruggero Deodato, the Italian director behind the ugly and controversial 1980 movie Cannibal Holocaust, died Thursday in Rome, the Il Messaggero newspaper reported. He was 83.

Made within the fashion of a documentary and shot in Colombia, Cannibal Holocaust starred Robert Kerman and employed purported “discovered footage” taken by a sadistic American movie crew throughout an expedition into the Amazon jungle to find indigenous tribes.

It depicted homicide, mutilation, torture, gang rape and animal slaughter and was banned in a number of nations together with Deodato’s personal, with Italian authorities seizing his movie and destroying prints shortly after it hit theaters.

Deodato was placed on trial for murdering actors and confronted 30 years in jail, however he produced the supposedly useless males in courtroom, and the fees have been dropped (the actors had signed contracts to vanish for a 12 months). He was fined for obscenity, nevertheless.

Deodato stated he made Cannibal Holocaust in response to sensational information stories about terrorism seen on Italian tv on the time. And in a 2011 interview with The Guardian, he defended the scenes of animal cruelty.

“In my youth, rising up, I spent loads of time within the nation near animals and due to this fact usually seeing the second of their demise,” he stated. “The demise of the animals, though insufferable — particularly in a present-day city mindset — at all times occurred as a way to feed the movie’s characters or the crew, each within the story and in actuality.”

He informed The Telegraph in November that “all of the animals have been eaten. They didn’t simply die for the movie.”

Deodato obtained a cameo as a cannibal in Eli Roth’s Hostel Half II (2007), and the American horrormeister used Cannibal Holocaust as inspiration for his personal cannibal movie, The Inexperienced Inferno (2013).

Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone have additionally cited him as an affect.

Born on Could 7, 1939, in Potenza, Italy, Deodato labored as an assistant director for Roberto Rossellini on Il Generale Della Rovere (1959) and Escape by Night time (1960) and for Sergio Corbucci on the spaghetti Westerns Django and Ringo and His Golden Pistol, each launched in 1966.

He made his directorial debut on Hercules, Prisoner of Evil (1964).

His résumé additionally included Stay Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976), Jungle Holocaust (1977), The Home on the Fringe of the Park (1980), Physique Depend (1986), The Barbarians (1987), The Washing Machine (1993) and Deathcember (2019).