Dante Tomaselli

Dante Tomaselli, an American Film Director and Electronic Music Composer, studied filmmaking at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, then transferred to the New York School of Visual Arts, receiving a B.F.A. degree there. 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 expanded Desecration, which he also wrote, to feature length. And in 1999, the film received its world premiere to a standing-room-only audience at the Fantafestival in Rome. The release of Desecration (1999) on VHS and DVD by Image Entertainment resulted in laudatory notices unique for an independent horror production. Made on the minuscule budget of $150,000, Desecration received instantaneous acclaim for its nightmarish visuals. The supernatural chiller quickly established itself as a modern horror cult favorite. Tomaselli has been a lifelong supernatural/horror aficionado and is also the cousin of film director/production designer Alfred Sole, whose Alice Sweet Alice (1976), made its own mark in the world of Catholic-themed horror films 40 years ago.

His second feature film, Horror (2003), began principle photography January 15, 2001, in Warwick, upstate New York. Final cost of production and post production: $250,000. Horror, a visually arresting chiller, had a group of runaway teens escape from a drug rehab and encounter demonic forces in a rural farmhouse. In a bizarre casting stunt, the film starred celebrity mentalist/magician, Kreskin. Dante Tomaselli's Horror was released on DVD in the United States and Canada by Elite Entertainment. "Gothic surrealism...Can't help but impress with its lush, unsettling textural confidence, rich in atmosphere...distinctly ominous..." --Variety magazine

Tomaselli then directed his third feature, Satan's Playground (2006). Distributed by Anchor Bay Entertainment, Satan's Playground starred 70s & early 80s cult-horror icons Ellen Sandweiss (The Evil Dead), Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp) and Edwin Neal (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). "Richly atmospheric exercise in surreal horror...The director achieves impressive overall results...complex music/ambient audio design...beautifully menacing photography...Tomaselli creates a hyper-real atmosphere of striking primal-fear images, cackling lunacy, impending doom and grotesque humor...Belying very modest means, Tomaselli has delivered a design and tech package that's first-rate." --Variety magazine

Torture Chamber (2013), the fourth installment in his nightmarish journey exploring the imaginations of Hell and damnation, made its World Premiere at Sitges 2012 Festival in Spain. Torture Chamber was released by Cinedigm on January 28, 2014. "A deep drop into an audio-visual rabbit hole...Traps its audience in an environment and won't let them go...Meticulously designed...Dedicated and unrelenting with just enough set up to hook you...Those who like to get lost in cinema and allow themselves to take a trip will find this film unforgettable." --Fangoria

The director/composer's first audio CD of electronic horror music, ''Scream in the Dark'' (2014) was released by Elite Entertainment & MVD Audio on January 14, 2014. Its follow-up, ''The Doll'' (2014) described as "a ghoulish experiment in fear," was released on CD and Digital download by Elite Entertainment & MVD Audio on April 15, 2014. Tomaselli's third dark ambient album, "Nightmare" (2015) was distributed by the same label on January 13, 2015. TuneCore released his fourth album, "Witches" (2017) on March 24, 2017. Rue Morgue Magazine awarded Witches 5 Skulls, "A meticulously crafted work...Tomaselli takes us on his most lurid sonic journey to date." Rock! Shock! Pop! added, "Pulsing John Carpenter-esque keyboard work...spooky soundtrack inspired instrumental music." Videoscope Magazine's music critic, Tim Ferrante stated, "Each cut ignites theater-of-the-mind wonderment, fear and the spiritual world by deeply boring into the psyche...Tomaselli has produced a fiendish and furtive album for fans of 'mood music' of a different kind." Dante Tomaselli's Witches was nominated for Rue Morgue magazine 2017 album of the year.

On August 7, 2018 Code Red and Kino Lorber released his debut film, "Desecration" on Blu-ray. As a bonus, the disc included his fourth musical album, "Witches." Author Maitland McDonagh reviewed the horror movie in Film Comment magazine. "Eerie...painterly...Desecration is a low budget masterpiece of dream logic."

On July 4th, 2019 TuneCore released his fifth album of sensory electronic music, "Out-of-Body Experience" (2019). Rue Morgue magazine said, "Dante Tomaselli's album stays within the composer/filmmaker's realm of deeply immersive audio experiences...Each cue marks a turn or descending stairwell that reverberates with techno beats, melting synth chords and benthic drones that perpetually shape-shift and swirl across the stereo image...5 Skulls." Chris Alexander, Editor-in-Chief, Delirium magazine proclaimed, "For nearly two decades, New Jersey-born horror multi-hyphenate Dante Tomaselli has been steadily creating a series of surreal, expressionist horror films that favor bizarre imagery and all-encompassing sound designs over traditional narrative structure and logic. That's what makes them so special: pictures like Horror, Desecration and Torture Chamber. And when Tomaselli isn't making movies, he's releasing movies-for-your-mind with his unique conceptual aural-horror CD's like The Doll, Witches, Nightmare and Out-of-Body Experience."

Arrow Video released a Blu-ray of his cousin, Alfred Sole's "Alice, Sweet Alice" on August 6, 2019. The disc contains an 11-minute Tomaselli interview conducted by Michael Gingold titled, "Sweet Memories: Dante Tomaselli on Alice, Sweet Alice."

On July 29, 2021 BearManor Media released author Troy Howarth's book on the making of his cousin's cult horror classic film, titled: "Unholy Communion: Alice, Sweet Alice from Script to Screen." Dante Tomaselli wrote the foreword.