Joseph Zito

Joseph Zito is an American film director and producer, born in New York City, best known for directing several cult and genre films throughout the 1980s. The titles most often associated with him include Missing in Action, Invasion U.S.A., Red Scorpion, The Prowler and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. In 1985 and 1986 he spent a year in pre-production on the Cannon Films version of Spider-Man, a project that eventually fell through; Zito left the production because of budgetary constraints. His career is a representative case of the low-budget action and horror cinema of the 1980s, in which a director's reputation rested on genre pictures that found their audience on the strength of their subject matter.