RIP Tonino Ricci

 

 
Tonino Ricci died in Rome at 86 years of age, the director general. In the seventies he worked with Klaus Kinski , George Hilton and Alan Steel
 
The Centre of Italian cinema has been revitalized with the recent Oscar and the great beauty, the popular Italian cinema has lost another of its Kings of B's. It is Anthony Richmond, namely Teodoro "Tonino" Ricci who died yesterday in Rome, where he was born in 1927, director of a dozen films, including the early 1970s to the late 1990s, all strictly gender films, from western to Kung Fu to Bermuda, from macaroni to the post-atomic war movies with takeoffs of Conan and White Fang. Ricci, who had lived at Cinecitta was displaced just after the war, he was raised in the Roman cinema and popular film that conveyed the sympathy and intelligence. In the 1960s, he was assistant to Mario Bonnard on The Robbers, Charles Campogalliani for Alboin and Rosamond, Mario Bava, then passed into the spaghetti westerns, always as an assistant in the film quite marginal as God Made Them ... I Kill Them and the parody Ciccio Forgives ... I Don’t  and The Nephews of Zorro with Franco and Ciccio. Working in the second unit with Lucio Fulci for the saga of White Fang which had great success in the early 1970s.
 
In fact, Tonino Ricci had already made ​​his directorial debut with a curious macaroni war movie, Il dito nella piaga, with George Hilton and Klaus Kinski in 1969, where Kinski is an unusually good role and not the usual Nazi sadist. From a screenplay by Rafael Azcona was born on his next film, A Perfect Murder in the Law, in 1971, a giallo. Ricci does a bit 'of everything, never finding his true gender. His are average products, consumables, without great genius, but always with some commercial success. They range from a late spaghetti western Monta in sella figlio di… with Mark Damon and Stelvio Rosi, commercially a big hit. He specializes in co-productions and in early mesch of genres, as evidenced by the subsequent history of Karate, Fists and Beans, with the “communist” singer Dean Reed, worshiped in Moscow, the big Spanish actor Chris Huerta as a sub-Bud Spencer and Japanese actor Iwao Yoshioka, in addition to the master of the stunt our own Sal Borgese, and The Story of Arrows, Fists and Black Eyes, a sort of Robin Hood character with the old national strongman, Alan Steel, aka Sergio Ciani, in the role of the archer of Sherwood Forest, with Chris Huerta as friar Tuck.
 
But also notable is Kid Terror of the West with Andrea Balestri, television’s Pinocchio, a sort of spaghetti westerns for kids, with the big Remo Capitani, the legendary Metzcal, or White Fang to the Rescue with Maurizio Merli, Henry Silva , Gisela Hahn and a very bad Luciano Rossi, acting as a nasty character actor of our cinema encore. Also makes a sexy melodrama in Spain, Pasion, with Maria José Cantudo and Macha Meril, before moving on to new genres, such as the Bermuda Bermuda Movie: the Cursed Pit with Andres Garcia, Janet Agren and Arthur Kennedy, perhaps his most rich and successful film. But it also touches on science fiction, with Meetings with the Humanoids, 1979, with Andres Garcia and Gianni Garko, or Baktērion, with David Warbeck and Janet Agren, then moves on to the sub Thor Conan the Conqueror. He continues to turn in everything, even when the genders are now running out. His latest films are related to the dog Buck produced by Curti, Buck at the Edge of Heaven with John Savage and David Hess and Buck and the Magic Bracelet with Matt McCoy. But we are already at the end of the 1990s and this type of film does not exist anymore.
 
 
RICCI, Tonino (Teodoro Ricci)
Born: 10/23/1927, Rome, Lazio, Italy
Died: 3/9/2014, Rome, Lazio, Italy
 
Tonino Ricci’s westerns – director, assistant director, screenwriter:
$10,000 for a Massacre – 1967 [assistant director]
Ciccio Forgives… I Don’t – 1968 [assistant director]
The Nephews of Zorro – 1968 [assistant director]
Showdown for a Badman – 1971 [screenwriter]
The Great Treasure Hunt - 1972  [director, screenwriter]
Bad Kids of the West - 1973 [director]
Karate, Fists and Beans – 1973 [director]
White Fang – 1973 [assistant director]          
White Fang to the Rescue – 1974 [director]
Buck at the Edge of Heaven - 1991 [director, screenwriter]
Buck and the Magic Bracelet - 1997 [director]