René Cardona Jr. was a
MexicanThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
filmmaker and
actorAn actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
, son of well-known Mexican director René Cardona, and the father of Rene Cardona III (also an actor/director).
Biography
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
JawsJaws is a 1975 American horror-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach,...
(1975) inspired film
TintoreraTintorera is a 1977 Mexican-British horror directed by René Cardona Jr and starring Susan George, Hugo Stiglitz, Fiona Lewis and Andrés García. It is based on the novel of the same name by oceanographer Ramón Bravo that studied the species of shark known as "tintorera" and discovered the...
(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
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,
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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 as
Guyana: Crime of the CenturyGuyana: Crime of the Century is a 1979 exploitation horror film written and directed by René Cardona Jr.. The film, which was shot in Mexico is very loosely based on the Jonestown Massacre. It stars a number of American actors such as Stuart Whitman and Gene Barry...
(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 StiglitzHugo Stiglitz is a Mexican actor. He was mostly famous in the 1970s and 1980s in Mexico after filming such film horror classics as Tintorera and La Noche de los mil gatos. He also filmed several movies in Hollywood and Italy...
or
Andrés GarcíaAndrés García is a Dominican-born Mexican actor. He is known throughout Latin America and among Hispanics in the United States....
, who both briefly enjoyed some international fame while regulars in Cardona Jr. films.