Jose Luis Merino (10 June 1927 – 2 July 2019) was a Spanish film writer and director who developed a cult following among horror film fans.

He was born in 1927 in Madrid, Spain, as José Luis Merino Boves, and went on to direct around 30 films during his long and varied career as director and writer (1958–1990), most of them action/adventure films, crime dramas , spaghetti westerns, war movies and costume dramas involving Robin Hood, pirates, Zorro etc. He is known to horror film fans for the two horror movies he directed in the early 1970s: Orgy of the Dead ( aka The Hanging Woman ) and Scream of the Demon Lover (aka Ivanna ), which have both become cult classics over the years. Merino never considered himself a horror film director, he chose rather to favor his many action/adventure films. He died on July 2, 2019, at age 92.