Mad Butcher Director Guido Zurli Dies
Posted by Harris Lentz in OBITS by Harris Lentz, III on November 7th, 2009
Italian film director and screenwriter Guido Zurli helmed the 1971 black comedy/horror film The Mad Butcher (aka Lo Strangolatore di Vienna and Meat Is Meat). Over-sized actor Victor Buono starred in the title role of Otto, a butcher in Vienna, who turns his wife and others into sausages.
Zurli was born at Foiano della Chiana, Arezzo, Italy, on January 9, 1929, and began working in films in the 1950s. He served as an assistant director from the early 1960s on such films as Valley of the Doomed (1960), The Last of the Vikings (1961) which he also scripted, Goliath and the Vampires (1961), and Duel of the Titans (1961). He also directed the crime thriller Mister Zehn Prozent – Miezen und Moneten (aka The Psychopath) (1968), the spaghetti westerns A Man Called Amen (1968) and Zorro the Fox (1968).
Zurli died in Italy on October 23, 2009, at age 88.
Written by Harris Lentz III
