[1] His father was Renato Massaccesi, who after an incident on a ship had been declared a war invalid and had started to work at the Istituto Luce in Rome first as electrician, fixing power generators left by the United States army at Cinecittà, and then as chief photographic technician.

[9] D'Amato also assisted in the dubbing of Italian film productions[11] and designed title and end credits with Eugenio Bava, cutting the letters out by hand.

[13] In the 1960s, D'Amato eventually moved on to work as a camera operator on numerous films including Mario Bava's Hercules in the Haunted World.

[11][12] In 1969, Piero Livi's Pelle di bandito and Silvio Amadio's No Man's Island (Italian: L'Isola delle Svedesi) were D'Amato's first films as cinematographer.

[12][11] In the next few years, D'Amato continued to work as cinematographer on Italian productions such as Umberto Lenzi's A Quiet Place to Kill, Massimo Dallamano's What Have You Done to Solange?

Trinity Has Arrived in Eldorado and A Bounty Killer in Trinity) and decamerotici (More Sexy Canterbury Tales and Novelle licenziose di vergini vogliose) which he partly directed, partly co-directed[15] before going on to direct the gothic horror film Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973) and the war film Heroes in Hell (1974), both starring Klaus Kinski.

[16] D'Amato briefly relinquished directing and reverted to cinematography in films such as Luigi Batzella's The Devil's Wedding Night,[17] Steve Carver's The Arena[18] and five films directed by Alberto De Martino: Crime Boss, The Killer Is on the Phone, Counselor at Crime, The Antichrist, and – two years later – Strange Shadows in an Empty Room.

[25] Eva nera was the exotic erotic drama which D'Amato directed starring Gemser as topless snake dancer alongside Jack Palance and Gabriele Tinti – her future husband.

[26] The film was produced by Harry Alan Towers and Lucio Fulcisano and shot both on location in Hong Kong and at the Elios Studios near Rome.

)[28] Although the main character's name in the Black Emanuelle series alluded to the original French Emmanuelle, it was spelled slightly differently in order to avoid a plagiarism lawsuit.

[37] From late June to early July 1979, D'Amato went to South Tyrol to shoot and direct the horror film Buio Omega starring Kieran Canter and Cinzia Monreale, a remake of Mino Guerrini's The Third Eye[43][40][44] produced by Dario Rossetti and Ermanno Donati with music by Goblin.

[45] Immediately afterwards, D'Amato went back to Santo Domingo[46] to film Paradiso blu, an Italian counterpart to The Blue Lagoon starring Anna Bergman and Lucia Ramirez,[34] and the voodoo-themed Orgasmo nero (Sex and Black Magic) starring Ramirez, Susan Scott and Richard Harrison, before directing two films combining hardcore pornography and horror – Porno Holocaust and Le notti erotiche dei morti viventi (Erotic Nights of the Living Dead) – as well as three adult thrillers: Hard Sensation, Porno Esotic Love and Sesso Nero.

[55] One notable exception was Porno video (1981; sometimes: Pornovideo), which was directed entirely by Giuliana Gamba (under the pseudonym Therese Dunn);[56] it was the first film D'Amato produced for another director – a practice he would start expanding six years later in his Filmirage period.

[68] According to an interview D'Amato gave in 1990, hardcore, as opposed to softcore, had only been profitable the first four years in the late 1970s and early 1980s while the novelty and controversy lasted.

[12] D'Amato began this hardcore-free period by directing four softcore dramas set during fascism in Italy and starring Lilli Carati and Laura Gemser: L'alcova (The Alcove), Il piacere (The Pleasure), Lussuria (A Lustful Mind), and Voglia di guardare (Midnight Gigolo).

[67] First, he went to New Orleans to produce and shoot two films starring Jessica Moore as the novelist Sarah Asproon: 11 Days, 11 Nights (1987) and Top Model (1988).

[72] 11 Days, 11 Nights was inspired by Adrian Lyne's film 9½ Weeks but reversed the roles with the woman being the dissolute character;[73] it was a commercial success.

[74] In 1989, D'Amato's main actress was Valentine Demy with whom he produced and directed Afternoon and Dirty Love, the latter reminiscent of another of Adrian Lyne's films, Flashdance.

[76] Beyond producing his own softcore films, D'Amato also used Filmirage to produce other directors' films:[57] Michele Soavi's debut Stage Fright (which was also the debut of D'Amato's son Daniele Massaccesi as assistant cameraman), Deran Serafian's Interzone, Umberto Lenzi's Ghosthouse (La casa 3) and Hitcher In The Dark, Fabrizio Laurenti's Witchery (La casa 4) and The Crawlers (Troll 3), George Eastman's Metamorphosis, Claudio Fragasso's Troll 2 and Beyond Darkness (La casa 5), Franco Molé's The Room of Words, and Lucio Fulci's Door to Silence.

[81] With Rose as protagonist, D'Amato also directed Passion's Flower, a remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice, before shooting two softcore films starring Carmen di Pietro in 1991, both with a more violent angle than the preceding ones: Devil in the Flesh follows a group of mercenaries who encounter some nurses at an isolated hospital, and Dangerous Obsession tells of a woman who turns the tables on her assailant.

[87] In order to return to adult filmmaking more easily, D'Amato initially teamed up with Luca Damiano, with whom he shot roughly 20 films before continuing on his own.

[90] The crew on an early 35mm shoot such as Juliet & Romeo had been much larger, including lighting staff, camera assistants, make-up artists, and set decorators; dubbing was done in post-production.

[91] Among D'Amato's best known films from this late hardcore period are his collaborations with Rocco Siffredi (Tarzan X – Shame of Jane, Marco Polo, Marquis de Sade, Torero) and Kelly Trump (Messalina, Kamasutra, Lolita), his pornographic versions of Shakespearean drama (Juliet & Romeo, Anthony and Cleopatra, Othello 2000), westerns (Outlaws, Calamity Jane), swashbucklers (Raiders), the Bible (Sodom & Gamorra), Greco-Roman mythology (Olympus, Amor & Psyche, Ulysses, Hercules – A Sex Adventure), Roman emperors (Nero – Orgy of Fire, Caligula – The Deviant Emperor) and other famous people (Robin Hood, Goya, Amadeus Mozart, Thief of Love – Giacomo Casanova, Rudy – Valentino's story, Scarface).

[11] In 1991, D'Amato stated he had discovered the name in some calendar and chosen to use it because it sounded promising: in its mixture of American and Italian, it was similar to those of Brian de Palma and Martin Scorsese.

For I racconti della camera rossa he used Robert Yip as director, Lim Seng Yee as scenarist and Boy Tan Bien as cinematographer.

[89] For Chinese kamasutra he signed with the pseudonyms Chang Lee Sun (director), Fu Shen (scenarist) and Hsu Hsien (cinematographer).

[131] And for Il labirinto dei sensi, he signed his scenario with Leslie Wong while using Joe D'Amato and Federico Slonsiko for the directorial and cinematographic credits respectively.

[37] In 1993 and 1994, D'Amato briefly reactivated this name as directorial credit for a small number of adult films starring Luana Borgia which he directed while transitioning from softcore to hardcore again.

[143] In 1995, Joe D'Amato was a special guest at the London film festival "Eurofest" which took place at the Everyman Cinema, Hampstead, where he gave an onstage interview to Mark Ashworth inbetween screenings of Stage Fright, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals and Frankenstein 2000, followed by a signing session.

[150] The "Hofbauer Kongress", which takes place at least once every year since 2010 at the Komm Kino in Nuremberg, Germany, has repeatedly screened D'Amato's films mostly from 35 mm prints, with the 15th and 16th edition of the festival being especially devoted to the filmmaker.