Mario Bava

Mario Bava was an Italian filmmaker who worked variously as a director, cinematographer, special effects artist and screenwriter. His low-budget genre films, known for their distinctive visual flair and stylish technical ingenuity, feature recurring themes and imagery concerning the conflict between illusion and reality, as well as the destructive capacity of human nature. Widely regarded as a pioneer of Italian genre cinema and one of the most influential and greatest filmmakers of all time, he is popularly referred to as the "Master of Italian Horror" and the "Master of the Macabre".