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.

Riccardo Freda was born in 1909 in Alexandria, Egypt to Italian parents.

[2][5] Freda attended school in Milan where he took art classes at the Centro Sperimantale.

[6][7][8] I Vampiri was the first Italian horror film of the sound era, following the lone silent horror film Il mostro di Frankenstein (1920)[9][10] A wave of Italian horror productions did not follow until Mario Bava's film Black Sunday was released internationally.