RIP Maurizio Pradeaux

 DAG SPIA

July 2, 2022

Another of the little masters of our genre cinema has left, Maurizio Pradeaux, 91 years old from Rome, author of stracult films such as the western "Ramon the Mexican" with Robert Hundar, the spy "28 minutes for 3 million dollars" with Richard Harrison, the macaroni war movie "Churchill's Leopards" with Klaus Kinski and Richard Harrison, the thrillers "Dance Carries a Cane" and "Death Steps in the Dark", produced by the legendary Grandfather Ugo Rossetti of homonymous furniture factory. He even made a dog movie, "The Son of White Fang" and the hard thriller "Thrilling Love" in 1989. Like many filmmakers he started from the bottom. We find him as an assistant production secretary on "Canzone d'amore", production assistant on "La Pica sul Pacifico" of 1959, but also on masterpieces of the time produced and directed by Emimmo Salvi as "Vulcano, Son of Jupiter", and " The Rebel of Castelmonte ”,“ A Story of the Night ”by Luigi Petrini.

His real debut as a genre director is the western “Ramon the Mexican” with Robert Hundar aka Claudio Undari, one of the first stars of the genre. It is a very poor film with Mexico reconstructed all close to Rome. Maurizio Pradeaux himself (to Gabriel Di Nunzio for TV Trash blog) said: "I had finished making a film called" I 4 cantoni "(the 4 cantons of Via Veneto, in Rome, between Via Ludovisi and Via Boncompagni) , and the producer, who was from Bologna, Marino Carpano, had cast a great cast There was Leroy, Scilla Gaber… but the producer lost all the money, and I told him that if he wanted to make a commercial film, he had to do a western. And I had the subject ready, and I said to the producer: I'll also direct you! We had estimated a cost of 100 million lire”.

According to Oberdan Trojani, director of photography “Maurizio Pradeaux he was someone who chauffeured with Emimmo Salvi, a production manager, when we were making mythological films. Salvi wrote this subject [which however appears as from Pradeaux, ed] and found a financier from Bologna. And then he always wanted to do twenty-eight minutes with Pradeaux for three million dollars, a movie of the 007 type, and he lost it, because it was not a film that could be made on a budget. The only way to make western films economically was to always go with the flow, never try to put something new in it".

Pradeaux describes the process as follows: "the interiors at De Paolis, the exteriors in Colle Pardo, near Alatri - Frosinone - and in Manziana, in the Manziana wood (near Bracciano) the scenes with horses, and in Monte Gelato near Mazzano, at the river Treia, with waterfalls cascades; I chose the location by going fishing, there was a path of those for grazing goats, walking inside I found myself in front of a spectacle of nature, but I was the first to inaugurate that location; many others they went to shoot at the Treia waterfalls and still today many scenes are shot there". The film also went pretty well. A few years later he will write another Italian-Spanish co-production western for Roberto Bianchi Montero, “I senza Dio” with Antonio Sabato. The war "Churchill's Leopards" with Klaus Kinski and Richard Harrison works well, and even better his first thriller, also an Italian-Spanish co-production, "Dance Steps on a Razor Blade", released in 1973 with Robert Hoffman Susan Scott aka Nieves Navarro, Anuska Borova, Simon Andreu, shot in the Barcelona of the Balcazar brothers, also co-producers with George Martin, who has a small role.

To the point that he will immediately shoot another one with the same title, "Death Steps Lost in the Dark", 1976, with Robert Webber, Leonard Mann, Vera Krouska, Barbara Seidel, this one produced by Ugo Rossetti, better known as Nonno Ugo for Salaria Film. In fact, it was in the warehouses of Nonno Ugo sulla Salaria that I found a lot of cassettes of the film, which must have been a considerable effort for Nonno Ugo. The latest film, released in 1989, should be the erotic thriller “Thrilling Love - Betrayals in Capri” with Tony Kendall aka Luciano Stella and porn star Sharon Kane. Released in soft and hard versions. There is also one of the girls from Cacao Meravigliao, Thel Montenegro, particularly in action. In recent years, Pradeaux has written novels without ever returning to the cinema.

 

PRADEAUX, Maurizio

Born: 4/16/1931, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Died: 7/2/2022, Rome, Lazio, Italy

 

Maurizio Pradeaux’s westerns – writer, director:

Ramon the Mexican – 1966 [director, writer]

Thunder Over El Paso – 1972 [writer]