Claudio Argento

Claudio Argento the second born son of famed Italian producer Salvatore Argento was born in 1943 and after finishing grade school and college studies in the late 1960s started his film career as an employee with a few Italian film distribution companies Within a short time he was made chief of the Press and Publicity department of the CIC Cinema International Corporation a USA company on whose behalf he organized the release of films such as Love Story 1970 and The Godfather 1972 in Italy Claudio first worked with his older brother Dario Argento and their father Salvatore Argento on the film The Five Days 1973 as an executive producer which turned out to be a box office flop The next films Deep Red 1975 aka Deep Red Suspiria 1977 and Inferno 1980 required a huge effort to achieve their success Both Claudio and Dario tracked down American director George A Romero and offered to finance and produce a sequel to the famed Night of the Living Dead 1968 movie as well as working on the screenplay editing and producing the soundtrack for the film and financing the bulk of the 2 million budget The film Dawn of the Dead 1978 first released in Italy and then in the USA seven months later was a worldwide success and brought much recognition to both Claudio and Dario In the 1980s Claudio continued producing films such as Little Flames 1985 and the lowbudget thriller Distant Lights 1987 Claudios production masterpiece was the crime thriller Santa Sangre 1989 which was shot in Mexico City under troublesome circumstances He currently produces for mostly television productions as well as occasional cinema movies