Page 133 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

It is well known that you are not that keen on your horror roles.
I have to say that I don't really like that kind of movie. That's why when people ask me if I think
Deodato's House at the Edge of the Park was based on the Wes Craven movie [Last House on the Left],
1 sav, 'I don't think anything because I didn't see it.'
Have you seen your movies?
Not all of them.
Has your family seen your movies?
My mother died when I was very young. My poor father, who has now died, back in the early
1980s he said, 'I want to see your movie, the first one', and I said 'no daddy please, you have a bad
heart and they are really shit - don't go! Its not worthwhile', but he did and he said, 'look, I am so
sorry but after a while I walked out', and he didn't like the fact that I was in these movies because he
knew theatre was my great passion.
How do the differing mediums of film and theatre affect your performance technique?
With film, you have to know and understand what's going on with the camera. In theatre it's the
whole body, I trained as a dancer and use the animal technique, zoomorphia, studying animals to
work in characters. You are face body hands legs, in the space. In film you have to have a relationship
with the camera, you need to know if it's a close-up or long-shot. And the director is everything. On
stage you are in control. In movies you read the screenplay but it is the director who retains control.
What about the relationship with the audience — in film you have a very immanent relationship with
the audience?
Some directors shoot very still, with others the camera moves with the actors. With that kind of
director stage expetience is very important. It's a dance you do with the camera.
The extraordinary things about your role in this genre is the masochistic positioning of your body and
what happens to it in almost every film. Although masochism is clinically a male neurosis, I still think it
is a rare spectacle to see repetitive male suffering in horror film that isn't simply a punishment for moral
indiscretion. Also the audience are seduced into suffering with you and pleasurably so. Ls there something
about you that made directors say, 'it is delicious to watch Giovanni suffer'?
You shouldn't forget that all the horror movies I was in were not written with me in mind. This
means that the hurt and the sufferings dedicated to a male body pre-existed in the mind of directors
or screenwriters. There can be many reasons for these fantasies, but from a psychological point of view
I can say that most probably they are a vehicle for some hidden homosexual longing and this leads,
in a way, to one of the reasons I might be cast for those roles. I never hid the fact that I was (and am)
bisexual and I have to say that constantly in my life I received the attentions of straight men. Without
being effeminate, I had (much more than now) something very frail and delicate that inspired both
protection and sadistic instincts.
That's fascinating. So one could claim it is actually the director with sadistic intent that makes both you
and the audience suffer against their will, but in a way where we obviously enjoy it! Why didn't Michele
kill you off in such graphic on-screen ways? Although you die in all three films, we don't see you suffer in any
except at your own hand in The Sect.
A reason could be that Michele loved (and loves) me very much and didn't want to
dismember me, but I don't think that's the point. Basically Michele is much better than the

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