Riccardo Freda (24 February 1909 – 20 December 1999) was an Italian film director. He worked in a variety of genres, including sword-and-sandal, horror, giallo and spy films. Freda began directing I Vampiri in 1956. The film became the first Italian sound horror film production. Riccardo Freda was born in 1909 in Alexandria, Egypt to Italian parents. Freda attended school in Milan where he took art classes at the Centro Sperimantale. After school he took on work as a sculptor and art critic. Freda first began working in the film industry in 1937 and directed his first film Don Cesare di Bazan in 1942. Freda began directing I Vampiri. I Vampiri was the first Italian horror film of the sound era, following the lone silent horror film Il mostro di Frankenstein (1920) Despite being the first, a wave of Italian horror productions did not follow until Mario Bava's film Black Sunday was released internationally.