Juraj Herz (4 September 1934 – 8 April 2018) was a Slovak film director, actor, and scene designer, associated with the Czechoslovak New Wave movement of the 1960s.

[3] His first experience working on films was as second-unit director under Zbyněk Brynych (Transport from Paradise; 1962) and Ján Kadár (The Shop on Main Street; 1965).

[3] Because he had attended DAMU rather than its sister film school, FAMU, Herz was initially not part of the core group of directors who would form the Czechoslovak New Wave.

[3] His 1965 short film The Junk Shop was excluded from the group's manifesto anthology Pearls of the Deep (1966) due to its running time.

[3] Herz made his breakthrough with his 1969 film, The Cremator,[5] based on a novel by Ladislav Fuks, starring Czech actor Rudolf Hrušínský as a demented crematorium manager who collaborates with the Nazis during World War II.

Immediately banned by Communist censors after its premiere,[3] The Cremator was not seen again in Czechoslovakia until after the Velvet Revolution in 1989,[2] but achieved wide international acclaim and cult status.

[3] His other horror works included 1972 murder drama Morgiana and a gothic re-interpretation of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast (Czech: Panna a Netvor) in 1978.