The Incredibly Strange Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis

Movies have always been a huge part of who I am. My parents are both film buffs and my grandfather's substitute for human interaction when I was a kid was putting on a film from his humongous collection of VHS tapes. I jockeyed a counter at both an independent movie theater and an independent video store in my first two part-time jobs. I've seen more movies than nearly anyone else I know across the full spectrum of genres, eras, countries and styles. I say this not as any sort of brag but because the filmmaker I'm about to fete in this post is a place you reach only after you trudge down all of the well-worn paths. He's an alley that you notice while you're on your way to some more respectable destination; a garbage-strewn, malodorous alley. Something impels you to investigate despite the smell - or because of it.

Having somehow seen eight of Herschell Gordon Lewis' films, I feel like I'm ready to respond. I found him in the most innocuous of ways: a fan-made list of horror films on the internet. I'd already done all the usual 1980s slasher fare, so I was digging deeper, and the title of Lewis' first and most well-known film jumped off the screen at me: Blood Feast.

Fuad Ramses, Blood Feast

Blood Feast (1963) is a good place to begin the HGL experience. All the elements of his best splatter flicks are here: buckets of blood and gore, bold color photography which stands out amid often shocking technical improficiency, and bad acting by a collection of "actors" who look like, and probably were, scum willing to work for next to nothing. 

This is a movie that knows that it needs to function only on a very crude level to be effective, like a stone axe fashioned by an early hominid. Inspired by the cheap faux ancient Egyptian decor of the fleabag Miami hotel Lewis had been staying in while working on a nudie film, Blood Feast had no script. That's not a humorous exaggeration to illustrate how bad the script was: it literally had no script and was freestyled by cast and crew on a daily basis. I won't go into a long exposition of the plot, which you can find elsewhere. I'll just say that despite transparently existing solely to set up the gore, the plot is actually fairly engaging.

Notice what I just did? This is something that begins happening to you when you repeatedly subject yourself to some of the worst-made films of all time: you begin apologizing for deficiencies and emphasizing dubious merits. Your perceptions and standards begin to warp as you gaze into the abyss, for the abyss gazes back. You're not here for the highest quality cinematic experience you can get. You're here because despite their obvious shortcomings, these movies are surprising. Lewis' films are made in ways that run counter to nearly every reasonable expectation.

Firstly, the gore scenes in Blood Feast are some of the more revolting Lewis ever put on screen. It's all pig guts, blood and meat from a butcher shop, but that makes it no less effective. This isn't a Hollywood horror film, where you nearly always sense a certain embarrassment on the part of the filmmaker where gore is employed. The blood is fleeting; blink and you'll miss it most of the time. Lewis has exactly the opposite tendency. His camera sits there, static and unflinching, producing something reminiscent of crime scene or autopsy footage. Hands reach into the frame, play with the gore, and slowly withdraw. It's near-pornographic, it's crudely done, but that doesn't stop it from being viscerally disgusting and strangely compelling.

Connie Mason, Playboy Magazine's Miss June 1963, ladies and gentlemen

Blood Feast was a smash hit, to the great surprise of everyone involved. Galvanized by success, Lewis set out to do something special for his second film, Two Thousand Maniacs (1964) - always a dangerous goal for a filmmaker. This more self-conscious work isn't as effective as Blood Feast. Think Brigadoon, only with murderous, deranged hillbilly Confederates intent on avenging the Civil War. Maniacs unwittingly pioneered the scary hillbilly trope that reached its apex with Deliverance almost a decade later. Regrettably, the bold primaries of Blood Feast's claustrophobic gore-splattered interiors have given way to a lot of mundane, washed-out looking exterior shots. The camera doesn't linger over Lewis' travesties nearly long enough to achieve the desired effect.

Maniacs is where you begin to notice one of Lewis' calling cards: everything seems to go on more than a couple beats too long. Enter the unforgettably torturous bluegrass theme song, written by Lewis himself, played by a band at the beginning of the film in its entirety. In fact, like John Carpenter later, Lewis composed all of the music for all of his films, and it's generally strange stuff. But where Carpenter's spartan and effective synth scores show real talent, Lewis' are alarming. They generally sound like what they are: a non-musician's half-baked notion of what a score should sound like. They're weird, ad hoc facsimiles, copies of copies. Yet somehow these god awful scores only add to his films' pervasive oddness.

The Man-Eaters get down with their studs, She-Devils on Wheels

After spending most of the 1960s churning out cheap entries in nearly every genre imaginable, including a children's musical, Lewis made two very interesting films: She-Devils on Wheels (1968) and The Wizard of Gore (1970). In She-Devils, we have Lewis, a director responsible for all manner of crass, on-screen exploitation of women, helming a feminist biker film with a screenplay written by a woman - his frequent co-conspirator, Allison Louise Downe. Biker films of the late 1960s are as a genre notorious for their sexual violence, but this biker gang is all women - the Man-Eaters - who consciously devalue and sexually objectify men. The Man-Eaters hold a race among themselves to determine who gets the first pick from their stable of kept men - their "stud farm" - which is populated by a collection of scuzzy miscreants repulsive even by the standards of a Lewis film.  Lewis brings his signature bloody touch as well, including a truly glorious decapitation. Is there at times shockingly bad camera work? You bet. Crap acting? Absolutely. Still a remarkably fun film to watch and a clever upending of classic biker cinema.

Montag the Magnificent, The Wizard of Gore himself

The Wizard of Gore (1970), made very near the end of Lewis' film making career, is his most ambitious splatter film. It opens with an (unsurprisingly) overlong harangue by the wizard himself, Montag the Magnificent, on the nature of fantasy and reality. The gore is indoors, rank, and brutal and the prosthetics are hilarious - the scenes of hypnotic murder are a lot of fun to watch, as always.

What sets this film apart among Lewis' other gore films, however, is the surprisingly engaging plot, which is trying to do much more than simply set the stage for the blood and guts. Without giving anything away, the film brings Philip K. Dick's reality-bending novels to mind. The off-kilter nature of Lewis' films is on full display from the moment this one begins. If Lewis should be remembered for any single film among his strange oeuvre, this is it.