Writer/director Jonas Middleton started out as an actor. Jonas studied acting with
Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City and drove a taxi before landing a role as a heroic cowboy in a low-budget Western movie. Middleton's experience acting in this film in turn encouraged him to make a short. Jonas wrote and directed his first adult feature
Cherry Blossom (1972) in the early 1970's. Middleton wrote and directed two more adult films as well as wrote the original story for and served as an associate producer on the backwoods slasher opus
Just Before Dawn (1981).