Riccardo Freda (24 February 1909 – 20 December 1999) was an Italian film director. He worked in a variety of genres, including sword-and-sandal, horror, giallo and spy films.[2][3]
Freda began directing I Vampiri in 1956.[4] The film became the first Italian sound horror film production.
Biography
Riccardo Freda was born in 1909 in Alexandria, Egypt to Italian parents.[2][5] Freda attended school in Milan where he took art classes at the Centro Sperimantale.[2] After school he took on work as a sculptor and art critic.[2]
Film career
Freda first began working in the film industry in 1937 and directed his first film Don Cesare di Bazan in 1942.[2] Freda began directing I Vampiri.[6][7][8]I Vampiri was the first Italian horror film of the sound era, following the lone silent horror film Il mostro di Frankenstein (1920)[9][10] Despite being the first, a wave of Italian horror productions did not follow until Mario Bava's film Black Sunday was released internationally.[9][11][12]