Dante Tomaselli (born October 29, 1969, in Paterson, New Jersey) is an Italian-American horror screenwriter, director, and score composer.
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Dante studied filmmaking at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, then transferred to the New York School of Visual Arts, receiving a B.F.A. degree in Advertising there.[1] His first film was a 23-minute short called, Desecration, which was screened at a variety of horror and mainstream film festivals and venues. Tomaselli later expanded Desecration, which he also wrote, to feature-length. In 1999, the film received its world premiere to a standing-room-only audience at the prestigious Fantafestival in Rome, Italy.[2]
Tomaselli has been a lifelong supernatural/horror aficionado and is also the cousin of film director Alfred Sole, whose Alice, Sweet Alice (1976), made its own mark in the world of Catholic-themed horror films twenty-eight years prior.[3]
His second feature film, Horror (2002), began principal photography January 15, 2001, in Warwick, New York. It was his first commercially successful film, as well as the first to receive a wide DVD release.
Tomaselli then made Satan's Playground (2005), his first linear film (as opposed to the extreme surrealism of his previous features). It starred 70's and early-80's cult-horror icons Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp), Ellen Sandweiss (The Evil Dead), and Edwin Neal (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre). The film is set, and was filmed in, New Jersey's infamous Pine Barrens Forest.[1]
Dante is currently in post-production on his fourth feature, Torture Chamber (2011).[4]