Dagmar Lassander

Dagmar Lassander — Biography

German actress Dagmar Lassander turned up again and again in Italian genre cinema of the 1970s and 1980s, above all in thrillers, horror and erotic films. Born in Prague to a French father and a mother of Chilean-German descent, she built most of her career in Italy and kept acting on screen through Tommaso in 2016.

She began as a costume designer at the Berlin Opera. Her first film role came in 1966 in Will Tremper's Sperrbezirk, and from 1969 she worked regularly. Her first non-erotic film, Hatchet for the Honeymoon, was a difficult experience: she spoke only German and little English on set, and she later sued the producer Manuel Caño for not keeping his promise that she would be top-billed, and won. She then appeared in thrillers such as The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (1971) and Reflections in Black (1975); Counselor at Crime (1973) and Basta con la guerra... facciamo l'amore (1974) belong to the same period. In 1976 she appeared in five films.

She acted in two Lucio Fulci horror films, The Black Cat and The House by the Cemetery (both 1981). In the 1980s she also took part in Italian television series and in the French-German film S.A.S. à San Salvador. A character in a 2015 Italian horror film was named after her, a sign of her mark on genre cinema.