Dario Argento

Dario Argento, born in Rome on 7 September 1940, is an Italian filmmaker whose work in the horror and giallo genres during the 1970s and 1980s earned him the nicknames Master of the Thrill and Master of Horror. The son of the film producer Salvatore Argento, he left school early, spent a year in Paris and from 1957 worked as a film critic for magazines and the Rome newspaper Paese Sera before turning to screenwriting, notably as co-author of the story of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. He made his directing debut with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage in 1970 and followed it with the rest of his Animal Trilogy, then with Deep Red in 1975 and Suspiria in 1977, the first part of his Three Mothers trilogy completed by Inferno and The Mother of Tears. He also co-produced George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead and founded the production company SEDA Spettacoli with his father.