- Born: Jun 15, 1926 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Occupation: Director, Writer, Cinematographer
- Active: '60s-'70s
- Major Genres: Horror, Crime
- Career Highlights: Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat, Two Thousand Maniacs!, The Adventures of Lucky Pierre
- First Major Screen Credit: The Prime Time (1960)
Biography
As a filmmaker, Herschell Gordon Lewis was a businessman above all else, and his 12-year movie career was spent either chasing or creating trends. But the one trend that he is directly responsible for -- the splatter film, where Grand Guignol theater is translated to the screen for the sole purpose of allowing the viewer to ogle the dripping viscera of the human body -- has endured, inspiring an entire new genre of film and breaking down the barriers of what is allowable in onscreen violence. All of Lewis' artistic choices were made for strictly mercenary reasons, and retaining a competitive edge over Hollywood was prime consideration. In simply showing more onscreen than other filmmakers would dare, Lewis inadvertently created a monster that still stomps messily among us and influenced American culture (popular and otherwise) forever.After a stint as an English and journalism professor at the University of Mississippi, Lewis made his first forays into the broadcasting field. He was a DJ, advertising salesman, and station manager for various radio stations in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, then accepted an offer to serve as a television director and producer in Oklahoma City. He liked the work but not the salary, so he defected to a Chicago advertising agency to direct television commercials. Soon Lewis had purchased half of the business, which was renamed Lewis and Martin Films. They specialized in commercials and government and industrial films. When money was tight, Lewis wrote advertising copy for a local mail order company, a skill that would figure largely in his later years.
His film career began one day when he was complaining to an associate that the only way to make real money in the business was to shoot features. When the man asked why he just didn't make one, Lewis realized he didn't have an answer, and the seeds for The Prime Time were sown. Lewis produced but did not direct this inaugural project, a mildly sleazy melange of juvenile delinquency and beatnik jive, and his experiences with the film encouraged him to take the reins of further productions. He was dismayed by what he considered to be unnecessary wasting of time and resources while the picture was made, and he was determined to trim every financial corner in hopes of larger profits. He debuted as a director with Living Venus, notable primarily for introducing Harvey Korman in his first feature film role.
Around this time he went into partnership with David F. Friedman, an ex-carny and road show man who had the background and instincts to help exploit Lewis' films to their utmost potential. They wasted no time in jumping into the nudie film business, producing low-budget product for display at striptease clubs. The Adventures of Lucky Pierre cost only 7,500 dollars to make and was a hit, a silly burlesque-style rip-off of Russ Meyer's The Immoral Mr. Teas. The pair then turned to nudist colony films, one of the few ways that filmmakers could legitimately show skin in those stringent times. Their pictures differed little from rival productions, essentially setting up a scenario in which a straight-laced character was introduced to the nudist lifestyle and eventually accepted the concept as wholesome after spending an hour watching naked sunbathers and volleyball teams enjoying freedom from the constraints of clothing. Their films were successful enough, but both Lewis and Friedman were hungry for something that could separate them from the rest of the pack. While watching a gangster film one night on television, Lewis noticed that a character's bullet-riddled body barely bled, and a brainstorming session with Friedman led to a whole new genre of film.
While blood had been shown onscreen before in other non-Hollywood productions, no one had devised a film that would focus directly on the carnage, with scene after scene of graphic, stomach-churning mayhem as the sole point of the show. The gimmick was something that might give the filmmakers an edge over their competition. After wrapping up their nudist colony epic Bell, Bare and Beautiful, the two were inspired by the Egyptian facade of the hotel they were staying at and developed a script on the spot about a sinister caterer who collects body parts for use at a feast designed to raise an ancient Egyptian goddess from the dead. Holding over a portion of the Bell cast and crew (and adding Playboy playmate Connie Mason for some name value), Blood Feast was completed in two days and looked that way. The acting was stiff, the plot numbingly simplistic, but as cheap as the special effects were, they were stunningly grotesque. Animal entrails, sheep's tongues, mannequin pieces, and buckets of fake blood stain every frame. Blood Feast was a hit in 1963, filling drive-ins and outraging decent citizens. Lewis and Friedman had found their cash cow and were determined to milk it, but the next step had to be bigger.
The following year's 2000 Maniacs had a more detailed plot, an actual script, and more elaborate executions, but it didn't make as much money as Blood Feast, though it was by no means a financial disappointment. Adapted from the musical Brigadoon, this story of a blood-thirsty Civil War-era town that rises every 100 years for vengeance was also shot in Florida (in a small city that was eventually bought out and paved over to expand Walt Disney World) and certainly had more substance than its predecessor, though, again, things like acting and pacing were subservient to cheap gore effects. Lewis and Friedman stormed ahead with a new production, Color Me Blood Red, but bad business was brewing for the groundbreaking duo. The film itself was duller than the previous epics, but far worse was what a third partner of the director and producer had in store. Stan Kohlberg had been a financial partner in the pair's films since their nudie Boin-n-g!, and the group had arranged to have all of the profits deposited in a single bank account in order to secure a bank loan. Unfortunately, Kohlberg pulled out of the deal and when Lewis, Friedman, and another investor decided to sue, the account was frozen, keeping the future of Color Me Blood Red in limbo (it was eventually released later in 1964). Instead of following through with the lawsuit, though, Friedman settled independently and relocated to California, where he embarked on a successful solo exploitation career. Lewis, however, was left in the dust and had to start over.
His clout and experience was enough to begin his next feature, a colorful cornpone film called Moonshine Mountain. Like all of his films, it made money, and Lewis proceeded to the next stage of his filmmaking career, operating without partners except when hired by outside interests to deliver a finished feature. These mercenary efforts are illustrated by two children's films, Jimmy, the Boy Wonder and The Magic Land of Mother Goose, as well as the soft-core sex feature Alley Tramp. Lewis also wasn't above purchasing unfinished pictures, shooting extra footage and releasing them under pseudonyms, as he did with Monster a Go-Go! and Sin, Suffer and Repent. These efforts were undertaken mainly to provide second features for his own films, guaranteeing him accurate box office counts in the days when double features were still the norm.
Lewis explored a number of exploitation subjects in the latter half of the 1960s, usually following proven trends in an effort to strike while the iron was hot. She-Devils on Wheels arrived early in the popular surge of motorcycle action dramas, while Blast Off Girls was a belated attempt to exploit rock & roll (it also featured celebrity pitchman Col. Harlan Sanders in a cameo thanks to Lewis' advertising connections). Suburban Roulette was an uncharacteristically tame story of wife swapping (a subject that was very interesting to the media at the time) and Something Weird's plot included LSD use along with witchcraft and extra sensory perception. While Lewis generally gave the audience more grungy thrills than his competitors, his genre-chasing films often betray a lack of inspiration that the juicier gore pictures don't. While all of Lewis' work suffers from indifferent acting, sluggish editing, and threadbare production values, his tenancy to overdo the violence (to often ridiculous, surreal extremes) in his horror films invests them with a vulgar creativity that, even if one deplores such an enterprise, must be noted.
While Lewis may have been playing the field, he hadn't given up on the gore genre completely. The bizarre horror comedy The Gruesome Twosome arrived in 1967, as did his lengthy vampire epic A Taste of Blood. But his final two horror features helped cement his legacy as the creator of gore films with an enthusiastic exclamation point. 1970's The Wizard of Gore is a surrealistic, confounding tale of a mysterious magician who uses sleight of hand and mind control to physically tear his victims limb from limb. Much of the film's unique psychological subtext is completely inadvertent -- a planned climax featuring an extremely gory dismemberment had to be canceled due to a fire where the scene was to be shot, but the resulting tacked-on ending is far more bizarre and suitable to the film's tone. Even if accidental, it offers a disturbing comment on the power of the very type of entertainment that the film itself was providing. Even more grotesque, though, was The Gore Gore Girls (1972), a jaw-droppingly tasteless nudie-horror-comedy that found Lewis outdoing every outrage he had ever perpetrated on the audience. While the effects remained as cheap as ever, the audacious brutality and mutilations (set against corny humor and an inappropriately jolly musical score) earned The Gore Gore Girls the first X rating given solely for violence. It's also notable for veteran funnyman Henny Youngman's supporting appearance, an association the comedian refused to discuss until his dying day.
The film turned out to be the voluntary end of Lewis' movie career. He had kept his advertising agency throughout his filmmaking years and it was flourishing, as was his expertise with copywriting. Finding it harder to outdo his fellow exploiteers as well as the more liberal Hollywood features of the time, he gave up the grind and went on to a very successful career in direct mail marketing and copywriting; indeed, the instructional tomes he's produced on the subjects are considered essential reading for many professionals. Lewis ended up losing the rights to his films after putting them up as collateral for a car rental business venture that failed. He didn't mourn, thinking that they weren't worth much, but when home video exploded in the 1980s, Blood Feast found a whole new bloodthirsty audience, and as the years have progressed, Lewis' films are more popular than ever. After years of musing over returning to the slasher genre he created, Lewis finally began production for Blood Feast 2 in 2001.
Herschell Gordon Lewis has never regarded himself as a great filmmaker, and it isn't false modesty on his part that prevents him from making such a claim. His interest in a motion picture career was predicated solely on making money, something that he has always cheerfully admitted. Whether or not he succeeded to the extent that he desired is only for him to decide, but one thing is for certain, his work opened up avenues for a legion of hucksters and con artists to make millions off the cruel desires and tasteless urges of audiences. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide
