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Antonio Margheriti - (Anthony M. Dawson)

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During the '70’s, Antonio directed many films, the most common being Comedies to Westerns, Thrillers, Erotic, Fantasy, Horror, Grotesque, Drama and Adventurous, infusing with in all his own personal style. In the middle of the '70’s I myself started to work with Antonio, creating the miniatures for his special effects, things for which he had raised me to do since a very young age. Always giving me presents like model kits and other toys to be constructed or painted. They are infinite the amount of trains which we have blown up, bridges, palaces, airplanes, helicopters, dams or electrical plants (reading these lines it seems that we were terrorists).

Antonio was a magician in shooting sequences with models and miniatures, he had a sense and a technique of placing the camera just where it would make them seem real. In almost twenty years working together, we have realized so many special effects which were at the same level of many American movies , only produced with budgets ten times bigger then ours, or at least we did it up to the advent of the new generations of CGI. At that point we had to surrender, even if a good trick made "directly" it places a veil of imperfection upon the whole film which makes it more real for the eyes, than those aesthetic digital images. And also there is the emotion, we were always puzzled in front of an effect if we felt that was made for real, instead, in front of a screen where a huge battle between two hordes of digital cartoons occurs. We could not feel any emotions, there is no participation. "It’s a lot more exciting to have a mediocre model of a spaceship attached to a wire than an entire city is suspended in the sky if one can feel that it is only a sophisticated cartoon'', and it’s true also for my opinion.

Our models have always functioned, (and you would be surprised to know in how many ordinary scenes we used: like a train crossing by during a sunset, or a helicopter flight over a village, or a car passage at night, so many times they were models and miniatures, because if you see some of those imperfections in several normal scenes, you assume that is real, (because it is not necessary to do a trick for something that costs nothing to shoot it for real), then, after another scene, you see again that same shot which you are used to, and now it’s exploding everything and making you jump in your chair. We could also do that because our models were in a very big scale, bigger then others used more commonly, and this for various reasons: It’s easier to take best care of the little details (because they aren’t so little); you can use carpenters instead of micro modellist, its easier and looks real. The light you use to light up the miniature set, but the first reason is more technical, correlated to the camera speed, the action supposed to be done, the size of flames, or the size of water drops, (all things which are not easy to control). How many times have you seen models of boats on the sea struck by sprays of water that in reality would be big like a truck, or by drops big as soccer’s balls ?. Our models were in scale 1: 6 to the maximum of 1:8, and they stood the comparison with the reality. I have never understood why so many other technicians of special effects used very small models. I remember when we went to the cinema with Antonio to see "Cassandra Crossing", a multi million dollar movie ruined at the end by a very bad trick of a fake train falling from a bridge that was even more fake. (The ones who made that effect should not get offended, surely he can find the way to criticize something between the effects unsatisfactory that we made). 

Antonio, beyond the Special Effects has another passion: the Philippines, positively the country where he has made more films and worked better than anywhere else in the rest of the world. We did make in Manila and in the environment of the town of Pagsanjan, twelve films during a ten year period. There was no better place where Antonio preferred to work. We’ve brought to the Philippines also films which were not supposed to be there as we pretended to shoot scenes of Vietnam, Cambodia, Brazil, Caribbean Island, Laos, South America, and even cheating as though we were in the United States. The first time was in 1980, for a film about the Vietnam war: "The last Hunter" made a few months after Francis Ford Coppola had finished his masterpiece: "Apocalypse Now". Anthony fell in love with those places and the people, simple and serious with their work and always ready to great you with a smile. After we had made a couple of films there a lot of other Italian directors and productions suddenly followed us (this we were used to, also in the States: One goes first, all the others follow) and for a decade, the Philippines was transformed into a sort of Cinecittà studios. There have been made films by Ruggero Deodato, Lucio Fulci, Bruno Mattei, Ignazio Dolce, Dan Edwards (this name sound familiar), and many other directors with their more desperate films. 

But, like Lucio Fulci said once, it was Antonio Margheriti who was the only "Emperor of the Philippines". In the last ten years we cannot make other films there, because the international market was full of films all made in the same locations, with the same actors and the same crew names. They seemed to be also the same movies. Antonio became very sorry about it.

The films directed by Antonio Margheriti are many, around sixty, but almost the same number are the films he wanted to make without success. In 1977 he was in America for a film which had just finished: "Killer Fish" entirely shot in Brazil, and he went to a cinema to watch "Star Wars" by George Lucas. When he came back to Rome he decided to try a return to his origins of directing a Science Fiction film. He wrote together with the American screenwriter Kit Carson, (The husband of Karen Black which he met during Killer Fish), an extraordinary script inspired by, in a futuristic version, "Stage Coach" the masterful western by John Ford. A story that fitted perfectly to the pioneering world set in a distant future, where human colonists traveled on a sort of space wagon between the various planets of the new colonies. So the idea was born for "Space Coach", where the Indians were alien, outcast from their territories and persecuted by the new colonists that invaded almost all of Space. Antonio passed over the project after a year preparing this for Promer Film, doing also a long pre-production with drawings of the decors, constructions and costumes, and also a lot of sketches of the various spaceships. A lot of miniatures were constructed to realize a show reel of special effects, but it was useless. The project was abandoned.

He tried many other times to make this story, but always with negative results, maybe because this was a film too beautiful and a story too innovative for the Italian productions, that is now only working on projects entirely financed from television networks. Other films unmade by my father, that made him suffer great hurt were: "Lions in Evening" a very handsome adventure film, located in Africa during the First World War , and "Cayenne" a film like “Papillon”; as well as the film transposition of "Corto Maltese" by Hugo Pratt, which didn't succeed to being made due to the many oppositions of the author. Antonio, was also a lover of comics books, once releasing the following interview: "Personally I was always a lover of comic books, I live my whole life with the comics books. I’ve grown up with Flash Gordon by Alex Raymond, with the Adventurous, Cino and Franco, and Mandrake.” he loved so much the comics that for his house in the country he decide to build a pool, with the shape of Snoopy, the "Snoopy pool" as he liked to call it. He tried to realize a film for "Mandrake" the famous magician, thinking of Marcello Mastroianni to be the lead player. Then it was a punch in his stomach when Dino De Laurentis produced the film of "Flash Gordon". One of the last comics that he want to make into a film was "The Mercenary", from a famous Spanish comic artist. A fantasy world where knights in armor ride upon enormous flying dragons. 

The films not made are dozens, beyond those mentioned already, there was: "The Ghost of Pirate Barbariccia" another film based upon the style of Disney. A film about the adventures of "Sinbad the sailor", his version of "The Baron of Munchausen," a remake of "The Lost World," before it was done by Spielberg. The third remake of “Castle of Blood” but this was later realized in the future, and on a spaceship, "Spacy" a kind of ET, where a terrestrial child is saved from aliens. The TV series from the novels of Wilbur Smith "The seventh scroll" that was made (I was even the Line Producer) but with Kevin Connors. His last project, and this was bad for him not to be able to make was "The Time Warriors" the first part of a fantasy trilogy which I had written, and narrated the adventures of a young boy, a master of videogames who becomes projected into a parallel world. He is propelled into the land of his preferred game, fighting against his virtual enemies in a surreal world, defending his own life and out to save a kingdom in danger.

Antonio Margheriti spent his complete life in working and trying to work, always active and in search of new projects, of new effects, new techniques. Each new film he made or sought to make, to enjoy and to undertake so as to remain alive. 

I would like to think that my father now is finally back together with his old good friends: Sergio Leone, Mario Bava, Sergio Corbucci, Riccardo Pallottini, Otello Colangeli, and with their preferred actors. Sat together in a film maker’s heaven, all continuing to enjoy doing their film work, in their own very special and individual way.

Edoardo Margheriti