Across the 1960s and into the early 1970s, writer-editor-director-producer Hugo Grimaldi's name turned up in some of the oddest places in American cinema -- mostly at the distinctly lower budgeted end of the production spectrum, especially on exploitation films, and also in the unusual field of adapting foreign releases to the US market. Little is known about him beyond his credits -- but to viewers of the postwar baby-boom generation, those credits were enough. He was associated with a string of movies that helped make Saturday afternoons, in theaters or at home watching television, a great deal of fun, including Gigantis, The Fire Monster (aka Godzilla Raids Again, The Phantom Planet, Hercules And The Captive Women, The Human Duplicators, and Mutiny In Outer Space (at least three of which, on that list alone, were later featured on Mystery Science Theatre 3000). But he was also the associate producer of the Cher starring vehicle Chastity (1968).
Grimaldi's earliest known screen credit was for the American adaptation of Toho Studios' Godzilla Raids Again (1955), their rather half-hearted sequel to Gojira, which was issued in the United States as Gigantis, The Fire Monster. The latter, surprisingly, is thought of with some favor, in comparison with the Japanese original, by scholars of the genre. Thus began a long, two-pronged career for Grimaldi, on the one hand adapting foreign-made movies to the American marketplace as an editor, second-unit director, and sometime producer -- most of these were science fiction and fantasy films, including Mill Of the Stone Women, First Spaceship On Venus, and Hercules And The Captive Women (the latter regarded by many as one of the better sword-and-sandal films of its era); and, on the other, writing, directing, and producing movies of his own, again mostly in the fields of science fiction and fantasy. He also worked on low-budget, independent American films by other producers, including Surrender - Hell, and occasionally managed to apply his adaptation talents to non-horror foreign films, such as I Bombed Pearl Harbor (1960). But in the main, across the 1960s, Grimaldi was associated with cinema of the fantastic -- at least in subject matter; few of the movies he got to work with would have earned the term "fantastic" in terms of their quality. Rather, most were cheaply made, if occasionally oddly inventive works, such as The Phantom Planet, The Human Duplicators, and Mutiny In Outer Space. The latter two, in particular, were celebrated (or notorious) within insider industry circles for having been shot literally back-to-back on adjoining sets on the same Italian sound-stage, over a two-week period using overlapping supporting cast members, and all folded into the production budget of The Human Duplicators (which was being made on behalf of an unwitting US corporate investor).
During the later 1960s, as the marketplace for science fiction dried up, he continued a two-pronged approach to his career, but in different directions -- along with working on Chastity, he was the producer of Single Room Furnished, an exploitation movie starring Jayne Mansfield. During the 1970s, Grimaldi's output was still more amorphous, encompassing titles built around "Bigfoot" and martial arts action pictures. In 1976, he also briefly resumed his work in adapting foreign-made movies to the US market with Exit The Dragon, Enter The Tiger, starring Bruce Li. Grimaldi seems to have retired in the years since, and passed away in 1998, at age 85.
