Welcome back, and it's time for our yearly tradition in which every Father's Day we celebrate by taking a look at Father-and-Son (or Daughter) horror directors, just like the post we did the past four years on the subject.
Luis and Juan Luis Buñuel-
So, there's not much to say about this grouping but there's enough to mention them quickly. The elder Luis is regarded as the father of French Surrealism with his relationship with Salvador Dali which started his career off with the early genre effort An Andalusian Dog/un chien andalou which showed the two collaborating on a series of bizarre, stark surrealist images for one of the first French genre pictures ever. While this is the only effort in his storied career that touches on the genre, his son Juan Luis has a bit more to do with the genre with his efforts in Expulsion of the Devil and Leonor, as well as several episodes of the Fantomas series in the mid-80s. Despite also touching on similar material as his dad, that he has these several entries gives him enough to be worth a mention here.
As well, just to avoid a repeat of the Mario/Lamberto/Fabrizio situation, Juan Luis also has a son Diego who has a few credits on documentaries but nothing in the genre. Still, before we move on it’s worth bringing up just to close out the family.
Kinji and Kenta Fukusaku-
An important name in the explosion of Yakuza movies in the 1960s and 70s, Kinji Fukusaku provided the genre with undisputed classics Battles without Honor and Humanity, Street Mobster, and Doberman Gang among others like Cops vs. Thugs, Police Tactics, and Hiroshima Death Match. On top of that, fringe genre efforts like Virus, Tora! Tora! Tora! and Message from Space also appear so his contribution to Exploitation cinema is already well-established before taking into account a few genuine titles. Starting with The Green Slime as a brief respite from the Yakuza Action films he was doing, the next closest effort would be Samurai Reincarnation before attempting a Yotsuya Kaidan adaptation with Crest of Betrayal in the mid-90s. Ironically, his last contributions to the genre would be Battle Royale 1 and 2, with part 2 actually needing assistance from his son in order to complete due to failing health. Shortly afterward, Kenta started offering a few decent direct-to-video Action films before turning in his only genuine solo genre effort with Black Rat which would be followed by several other non-genre projects before fading away without directing again going on a decade at the time of this post. Still, their work together is enough to get them on here.
Roberto Bianchi Montero and Mario Bianchi-
A true journeyman of Italian exploitation and cult fare, Roberto Bianchi Montero started his career doing anything and everything that was popular at the time, from dramas, comedies, musicals, westerns, and even documentaries with the early Mondo fare Africa Sexy and Mondo Infame. Once the various filone started up, he turned his hand to these kinds of films providing Peplums, Spaghetti Westerns, Politzioteschi, and Sex Comedies in that order. To generate his only genre credit, he produced the extraordinarily sleazy giallo So Sweet, So Dead which mixed together genre thrills and plenty of sleaze into a solid B-tier genre effort, finishing up his career with several hardcore sex films before his death.
Mario offered up a similar career path as he started off at the tail-end of his dad’s career in the mid-70s providing a few Spaghetti Westerns and Sex Comedies, including the Giallo/Spaghetti Western hybrid Kill the Poker Player before returning to the other genres he was providing at the time. By the 80s, he’d switched to hardcore porn which would be his main trade for the rest of the decade and into the early 2000s with two noticeable exceptions in the sleazy Satan’s Baby Doll and The Murder Secret, a late-era cult film that is mostly known as being part of Lucio Fulci’s A Cat in the Brain. In a nice bit of irony, some sources have also claimed Bianchi as being a co-director for Fulci on his effort Sodoma’s Ghosts so it’s a nice bit between the two to carry out the connection.
Mark and Anthony Polonia-
One of the heroes of the shot-on-video explosion in the mid-to-late 1980s, Mark and his twin brother Jon Polonia became one of the main faces in the scene and produced many notable classics together or in conjunction with other filmmakers including Splatter Farm, Hallucinations, and the Feeders films among many others. After Jon’s death in the late 2000s, Mark took a while to come back to the scene but has since become one of the hallmarks of the current indie scene providing at least several films a year ranging from titles like Bigfoot vs. Zombies, Land Shark, Camp Murder and a delayed sequel called Return to Splatter Farm and is still going strong to this day. As for Anthony, he’s just getting into his own by working numerous roles on his father’s stuff, performing numerous technical and on-camera work for a variety of films during his current explosion of films before taking the directorial reigns on his first feature in Zillafoot, a send-up of kaiju films. In terms of true genre fare, he’s only provided co-director credits on work with his father including Sister Krampus and House Squatch which seems to show a willingness to try it at the very least.
Lalo and Ryan Schifrin-
So, we’ll end this celebration with a pairing that, technically is outside the bounds of the usual entries for the retrospective but still has worthy merit to be mentioned. Composer Lalo Schifrin is one of the biggest names in the scene, composing the scores for numerous efforts over the years in and out of the genre, with his notable genre credits including Amityville Horror 1 and 2, The Manitou and Day of the Animals in addition to several others here and there but remaining much in demand over the years. That also includes his son Ryan’s debut genre effort in Abominable, one of the finest killer Bigfoot films in the genre, and hinted that a prosperous career was before him although his sporadic output has only provided a segment in Tales of Halloween as his only other genre output.
And with that, we find ourselves at the end of this list for now. Join us again next year for another celebration of these duos as we honor Father's Day with this special series of articles. To those out there reading this, have a happy Father's Day and we'll see you all next time.
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