Biography

Eugenio Martín maintained that the concept behind his film ( The Bounty Killer -released as The Ugly Ones -in the United States), antedated and influenced the Sergio Leone film For a Few Dollars More, worked on by Duccio Tessari - a mutual acquaintance of Martín and his friend and former teacher José G. Maesso.

In 1966 Martín directed The Bounty Killer (released as The Ugly Ones in the United States), the first of many Westerns he was to create. It remains among his better known works; dialogue from the film was sampled in the RZA track, "Ode to Django," which appeared in the credits of the 2012 Quentin Tarentino film Django Unchained.

Martín made several musicals and giallo-type films in the 70's, solidifying his reputation as "an auteur in every genre", per the subtitle of a recent biography.

He was known for the low-budget genre films he made in the 1960s and 1970s, including Bad Man's River, The Bounty Killer, and Horror Express, the latter being particularly notable for its inclusion of the well-known English actors Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, famous for their work with Hammer Films. Though never remarkably successful either at the box office or among critics, Martín's films, particularly Horror Express, have achieved cult status. The popular horror film magazine Fangoria included Horror Express in its book, 101 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen: A Celebration of the World's Most Unheralded Fright Flicks.

Martín was born on 15 May 1925 in Ceuta, an autonomous city of Spain located on the north coast of Africa. He was a child when the Spanish Civil War broke out. Since the uprising first broke out among Nationalist generals in Spanish Africa, the African port city of Ceuta was immediately embroiled in violence. Following the death or arrest of friends and family members, Martín's family fled to Granada on the Spanish mainland.