Bruno Mattei was born in 1931 in Rome, Italy, where his father owned a small film editing studio. At age 20, Mattei started working odd jobs at his father's company as his assistant and later worked for other small spots. He wanted to follow in his father's footsteps as a film editor and soon found himself working as an editor for a number of directors, including Roberto Bianchi Montero and Nick Nostro.
Mattei claimed to have edited over 100 films in the 1960s and early 1970s. After working with renowned Spanish director Jess Franco, Mattei made his debut as a director with the drama Armida, il dramma di una sposa (1970) under the alias "Jordon B. Matthews".
He eventually had more pseudonyms than any working director in the world. Mattei returned to editing before making another comeback in 1976 with two low-budget Nazi exploitation films, Women's Camp 119 (1977) and Casa privata per le SS (1977).
Mattei followed these taboo-breaking films with excursions into porno films and mondo "shockumentaries", all directed under his many pseudonyms, concentrating on "shock value" with films such as Mondo erotico (1973),Libiodomania, and Libidomania 2.
Always on the lookout for new exploitation avenues, Mattei followed with "nunsploitation", with the softcore sex film The True Story of the Nun of Monza (1980) and the violent sex thriller The Other Hell (1981). Both films involved a partnership with writer/director Claudio Fragasso, who helped him write and direct the back-to-back productions.
Using yet another alias, "Vincent Dawn", Mattei directed Hell of the Living Dead (1980) (aka "Night of the Zombies"),a low-budget zombie picture inspired by other zombie cannibal movies such as Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979).
Mattei then moved to directing sword-and-sorcery flicks, starting with The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (1983). Both Mattei and Fragasso collaborated on the sci-fi/horror flick Rats: Night of Terror (1984),inspired by the futuristic movies of the early 1980s.
Mattei continued making films throughout the 1980s, directing a pair of "spaghetti westerns", some action flicks, and about half of Zombie 3 (1988) after Lucio Fulci was taken off the production, though Mattei was not credited with it.
In the early 1990s Mattei directed a series of erotic thrillers and a made-for-TV movie, Cruel Jaws (1995),which was inspired by Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975). Mattei continued making films, with more than 50 to his credit by the 2000s.
In early 2007, Mattei's health began to decline rapidly after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Despite his doctor's warnings, he went through with a surgical operation to have the tumor removed in May of that year. After the surgery he fell into a coma from complications, and died a few days later on May 21, 2007, at age 75.
Though some people consider his films to be cheap, insipid, and technically inept due in large part to their low budgets and poor production values, Bruno Mattei remains an influential cult film director around the world for his radical filmmaking and willingness to direct pretty much anything with a taboo-breaking topic.
