René Cardona Zacarías (11 May 1939 – 5 February 2003) was a Mexican film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. He was the son of actor and filmmaker René Cardona. Internationally, he is known for his various B movies and exploitation films produced during the 70's and 80's.
Contents
Life and career
The son of actor/director René Cardona and Julieta Zacarías (the sister of director Miguel Zacarías), Cardona began by acting in his father's films and then took over his father's craft in the mid-1960s, directing, writing, and producing over a 100 films over the years. He enjoyed some notoriety and success, particularly in the late 1970s, as a result of his Jaws-inspired film Tintorera (1977), which became a cult classic.
He capitalized on the spirit of cooperation between the Mexican, Spanish, and Italian film industries prevalent in the late 1970s and was able to make a spate of comparatively large-budget exploitation films with professional international casts and crews. He also managed 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.
