Giovanni Grimaldi

Writer/director Giovanni Grimaldi is best known for his spaghetti Westerns, though he has also worked on B-horror films, usually collaborating internationally with their production. Two of his better known Westerns are "In a Colt's Shadow" and "Johnny Colt" (originally called "Starblack"); Grimaldi wrote and directed both. There is no plot connection between the two similarly named films. The first is about the adventures of two gunfighters in a Mexican town, and the second focuses on a character named Johnny Colt who has a superhero-like gunfighter alter ego named Starblack. Robert Woods had the starring role as Johnny Colt/Starblack and worked with Grimaldi in several of his films, including another Western, "Four Dollars for Vengeance," for which Grimaldi wrote the script but did not direct. Here Woods played a captain of the U.S. Cavalry who seeks to expose a gang of bandits who robbed him but landed Woods's character in jail for the crime. One of Grimaldi's bigger script projects was the horror film "Web of the Spider," in which German actor and frequent Werner Herzog collaborator Klaus Kinski played Edgar Allan Poe. Grimaldi also wrote the script of a film his son, Aldo Grimaldi, directed, "The World's Gold," a romantic musical very different from the genres Giovanni Grimaldi usually worked in.