Dante Tomaselli

Dante Tomaselli (born October 29, 1969, in Paterson, New Jersey) is an Italian-American horror screenwriter,director, and score composer from New Jersey.

Dante 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 shortcalled, 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.

Tomaselli has been a lifelong supernatural/horror aficionado and is also the cousin of film director Alfred Sole, whose Communion (1976), made its own mark in the world of Catholic-themed horror films twenty-eight years prior.

His second feature film, Horror (2002), began principle photography January 15, 2001, in Warwick, upstate New York.

Tomaselli then filmed his third feature, Satan's Playground (2005), his first linear film. It stars 70's and early-80's cult-horror icons Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp), Ellen Sandweiss (The Evil Dead), and Edwin Neal (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), as well as Raine Brown and Danny Lopes, both of whom starred in Horror. The film is set, and was filmed in, New Jersey's infamous Pine Barrens Forest.

Dante is now looking ahead towards the creation of a fourth feature, The Ocean (2007), an occult shocker about mysterious and deadly riptides.