Dante Tomaselli, an American Film Director and Electronic Music Composer, studied filmmaking at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute before transferring to the New York School of Visual Arts.
After earning his B.F.A., he released his first film, 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. 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 which was likely inspired by his cousin, Film Director Alfred Sole, whose Alice Sweet Alice (1976), made its own mark in the world of Catholic-themed horror films 40 years ago.
Tomaselli’s second feature film, Horror (2003), began with principal photography on January 15, 2001 in Warwick, New York. The final cost of production and post production was $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.
Dante Tomaselli then went on to direct 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).
Torture Chamber (2013), the fourth installment in Tomaselli’s 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.
The Director/Composer's first audio CD of electronic horror music, Scream in the Dark (2014) was released by Elite Entertainment & MVD Audio 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 just months later on April 15, 2014. Tomaselli's third dark ambient album, Nightmare (2015) was distributed by the same label January 13, 2015. TuneCore released his fourth dark electronic album, Witches (2017) March 24, 2017. Rue Morgue Magazine awarded Witches five 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...Dante Tomaselli releases his fourth album of spooky soundtrack inspired instrumental music." Videoscope Magazine's music critic, Tim Ferrante stated, “All of Witches 13 tracks are praiseworthy...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’s Album of the Year in 2017.
On July 4th, 2019, TuneCore released Tomaselli's highly anticipated fifth album of sensory electronic music, Out-of-Body Experience (2019).
"Maestro of the macabre, Dante Tomaselli returns with another full on sensory experience designed to transport your consciousness beyond the veil of reality...The spell he weaves at his sinister synths is every bit as full of arcane ambience as his monstrous motion pictures...Out-of-Body Experience has more of a melodic approach and tells a semi-autobiographical story of Tomaselli’s childhood (circa the years 1979 – 1982) in the video game saturated suburbia many of us called home in our youth...I can't recommend Out-of-Body Experience enough; this is a dark journey into a realm of nostalgia. 5 SKULLS."
--Horrorfuel.com
"Carpenter-esque keyboards...There’s definitely the intent to conjure up the mood of late seventies/early eighties genre film scores here, and it's done very effectively."
--Rock! Shock! Pop!
"A deeply absorbing and fascinating listen...Highly recommended."
--Tim Ferrante, Videoscope magazine
"The multi-talented Dante Tomaselli is a director, writer, producer and score-composer of all things horror and with his latest CD release of electronica titled, Out-of-Body Experience, he detaches your conscious mind from reality and sends it spiraling into an alternate state of scary-sensory ambiance. Fasten your seat belts!"
--Standing Room Only
"A truly spectacular electronic tour-de-force."
--SIYS Radio
"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."
--Chris Alexander, Editor-in-Chief, Delirium magazine