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Joy N. Houck, Jr., was a writer, producer, and director specializing in B-pictures. The son of Joy Newton Houck, Sr., the founder of Howco International -- distributor of such fare as Blades of the Musketeers (1953) and Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Jail Bait (1954) -- he came to the field of B pictures virtually as a birthright. The younger Houck began his career in his late twenties as a writer/director on the movies Women and Bloody Terror and Night of Bloody Horror (both 1969), both starring a young Gerald McRaney. He went on to make at least one film with a lingering cult following, The Creature from Black Lake (1976), which was quite possibly the first feature film ever to play off of the "Bigfoot" legend, co-starring screen veterans Jack Elam and Dub Taylor. Houck also did occasional acting work in pictures ranging from the 1964 remake of The Shepherd of the Hills to the Clint Eastwood psychological thriller Tight Rope, and also worked with Dennis Hopper in the HBO movie Double-Crossed. He also appeared in episodes of Hill Street Blues and Highway to Heaven. Houck died of a heart attack in 2003, at age 61.