Mario Bava’s Secret Filmography PERSEO L’INVINCIBILE
The Medusa Against the Son of Hercules
I
N THE AUTUMN of 1962, between the main shooting schedule of La ragazza che sapeva troppo and the reshoots
that followed in the winter, Mario Bava agreed to assist his friend Italo Zingarelli on his next production, Perseo l’invincibile, which he and co-producer Emo Bistolfi were about to make in tandem with Copercines of Madrid. The Italian-Spanish co-production would reunite Richard Harrison and Leo Anchóriz, the stars of the successful Il gladiatore invincibile. Mario’s father Eugenio was also recruited to serve as a technical advisor, Perseo being one
of very few films on which he accepted screen billing.
Although the main titles list five screen- writers—Mario Guerra, Alberto De Martino, Ernesto Gastaldi, Luciano Martino, and José Mallorqui Figueroa, and a sixth individual credited with having the idea (Edoardo Giorgio Conti)—the author of the original treatment was Gastaldi, a 28-year-old screenwriter who had authored the first commercially successful Italian horror film: Piero Regnoli’s L’amante del vampiro/The Vampire and the Ballerina (1960).
