René Cardona Jr

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Rene Cardona Jr. (1939-2003) was a Mexican filmmaker and actor, son of well-known Mexican director Rene Cardona, and the father of Rene Cardona III (also an actor/director). Cardona Jr. began by acting in his father's films and then took over his father's craft in the mid-60s, directing, writing, and producing over a hundred films over the years. He enjoyed some notoriety and success particularly in the late 1970s as a result of his Jaws (1975) inspired film Tintorera (1977) which became a cult classic.

He was able to capitalize on the spirit of cooperation between the Mexican, Spanish, and Italian film industries of the late-70s and was able to make a spate of comparatively large-budget exploitation films with professional international casts and crews. He also was able to hire several once-popular American actors during this period, such as Joseph Cotten, John Huston, Gene Barry, Stuart Whitman, John Ireland, Arthur Kennedy, and Lionel Stander to help boost international ticket sales. Most of these actors were fresh from similar guest appearances in Italian films of the same period. He dabbled in a variety of genres touching everything from disaster movies (Cyclone [1978]) to sensational dramas of historic events (Guyana: Cult of the Damned [1979]).

This brief period of international success waned in the mid-80s and he went back to Spanish-language Mexican "B-films" for the next few decades up to his death. He commonly worked with either Mexican leading man Hugo Stiglitz or Andrés García, who both briefly enjoyed some international fame while regulars in Cardona Jr. films.