Return of the grandad of gore

Herschell Gordon Lewis is a true cinematic pioneer. You may not have seen his films (in fact, I’m sure 99 per cent of you certainly haven’t). You may not have even heard of such "classics" as Blood Feast, Colour Me Blood Red, Two Thousand Maniacs and The Wizard Of Gore, but without them our cinematic culture today would be considerably different. Seriously.

While most tomes that chronicle the history of cinema tend to estimate that explicit violence hit the silver screen somewhere between the bullet-riddled end of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie And Clyde in 1967 and the opening slo-mo carnage of Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch in 1968, the floodgates for gore opened years before that. "It was when I tore that huge tongue out of that girl’s mouth!" says the courtly Mr Lewis avuncularly from his home in Florida, fondly reminiscing about the opening scene of his 1963 film Blood Feast.

It did indeed, and you’d better watch out because the man who has perpetrated more onscreen atrocities than Michael Winner is back with his first film in 30 years and will be in Edinburgh to premiere it this weekend.

The occasion is Dead By Dawn, Edinburgh’s seventh annual horror film festival, now a proud member of the European Fantasy Film Festivals Federation and firmly established as a regular fixture.

This weekend, hundreds of gorehounds (or ketchups as some of them like to be called) will converge on The Filmhouse and The Lumiere for an indulgent orgy of cinematic blood-letting.

Many will have travelled from continental Europe to pay homage to Lewis, the man who challenged the censors and the accepted notions of taste and decency to bring people his crimson-encrusted vision.

Of course, just because Lewis is a cinematic pioneer, doesn’t necessarily mean that his films are much good. All of Lewis’ films were made on a tight - well, penurious - budget. His actors - if that’s not too strong a word - were largely untried and untalented.

On several occasions, hired extras or actors would simply not show up, leaving Lewis to fill the gap as best he could. Just as well all Lewis’ movies are leavened by black humour - he needed it when he was making them.

In short, Lewis specialised in the sort of films that if an actor fainted from starvation when the camera was running, the shot would stay in and he would try to incorporate it into the plot.

"One phrase you would very seldom hear on any of my sets was ‘take two’," chuckles the self-styled Godfather Of Gore. "We would often buy just enough film to finish the movie and if something went awry we would try to figure a way to keep it in."

Once, after editing the footage for The Gruesome Twosome (1967), one of Lewis’ most bizzare films about a wig shop where the products come from scalping customers, Lewis found that the film was ten minutes too short to run as a feature, even in the Southern drive-ins where his movies traditionally played.

Necessity being the mother of invention, Lewis bought another ten minutes’ worth of film stock and filmed two wig stands talking to each other to pad the film out. More creative padding occurred when one of the characters went to a cinema and the audience was treated to a soporific five minutes of the film within a film which consisted entirely of some pal of Lewis drinking beer and eating potato chips. Actually, in a way this prefigured the boredom fests that Andy Warhol’s Factory used to churn out, so perhaps we can credit Lewis with another influence here.

And Herschell’s pioneering spirit didn’t stop there. History will record that he was the first American director to indulge in the now common practice of product placement. While film companies now regularly make deals to include a nice sexy shot of a certain car or a certain shampoo to beef up their marketing budgets, Herschell did it first and for a far more noble reason - hunger.

"Oh yes, we’d do pretty much anything to get fried chicken lunches," laughs Herschell. "Yes, we’ll shoot on your premises; Yes, you can have a part in the movie whether it makes sense or not; Yes, we’ll have them dance round this bucket of chicken for five minutes." Lewis even got to work with that doyen of fried chicken, Colonel Sanders, on the set of his 1967 movie Blast Off Girls (one of five he made that year). It wasn’t one of his happiest collaborations.

"We’d struck the deal with these marketing people - I think their job description was ‘toady’ - to feature Sanders in the movie," explains Herschell. "Sanders was very difficult to work with - the man was already in his dotage and wanted to direct the picture!"

And, like a true autuer, no-one can tell Herschell how to direct a movie. Now a frighteningly energetic 71, Lewis began making exploitation flicks in the early Sixties after working as an advertising copywriter and an English literature lecturer.

"I felt teaching was the only civilized profession open to me," says Herschell, "and - this is an indication of how much society has changed - twice a month a literary society would gather in the evening and I would read the poetry of Robert Browning to them. Now, can you imagine in the year 2002 someone suggesting, let alone atttending, a recitation of Browning poetry?

"Civilised society has degenerated to such an extent that it’s just not feasible any more," sighs the director of the Gore-Gore Girls. "Television was the first dumbing down influence and now we have the world-wide web which has just completed the cycle."

Herschell’s first movies were self-financed (yes, he’s an indie movie pioneer too) and of the genre known as "nudie cuties." But when censorship relaxed Herschell, being a new dad, felt uncomfortable with his chosen genre.

The only way to make money with an ultra-low budget movie in those days was to give the public what Hollywood wouldn’t dare, and since sex was a no-no Herschell logically alighted upon extreme violence.

The Grandad Of Grue may have spent the last 30 years in the cinematic wilderness but he has scarecely been idle. He now runs a fabulously sucessful direct marketing agency, Lewis Associates, from his home in Florida. He travels the world giving lectures on marketing, writes a regular column for Direct magazine and is the author of 26 books - all standard texts - on the intricacies of advertising.

"It’s a completely different kind of reputation and I’m not about to turn my back on it," says Herschell, "whereas in film I guess I’m just known as the ultimate low-budget director."

True but as the man himself admits: "Directing movies is a lot like malaria - you think you’re over it and then it flares up when the moon is full". So when a producer approached Herschell last year with an idea for Blood Feast 2 he jumped at the chance.

"I have no illusions," laughs Herschell. "I’m sure the producers didn’t come to me because they thought I was Cecil B DeMille. They came to me because my name has a certain clout in this niche marketplace. In the field of - I guess you could call them ‘exploitation movies’ - my name does have box-office value."

Herschell filmed Blood Feast 2 - oh, excuse me, Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Blood Feast 2: All You Can Eat - in New Orleans last year. "We had a full crew, which was a real novelty for me," says Herschell.

"I used to be both the director and the cameraman on my early films with an ancient museum- quality Mitchell camera. This time we had a huge Panavison camera and a huge crew! In fact, there were people on that crew that I’m not sure what their function was."

Yes, be afraid, be very afraid. The Grandpa of Grislyness has been bitten by the cinematic bug again and is already planning his new movie, Grim Fairy Tale, about a gore-glutted gameshow.

Even if Herschell never makes another film, his place in the cinematic pantheon is assured. Every time guts are spilled onscreen you will feel his influence, every time a film ad trumpets "Warning: Extreme Battle Horror" you will know Herschell’s career was not in vain.

But how would the direct marketing guru get people to come to his screening and Q&A session this weekend?

Herschell clears his throat and then speaks in the clear, deliberate tones of a born huckster: "The Godfather of Gore is making the only appearance he will ever make in this lifetime in Edinburgh (pronounced rather endearingly Edinburggg) and if you miss this it will be like missing Halley’s Comet - you will never get another chance as long as you live. This is your only chance to get candid answers to candid questions about movies that many people love and many more people hate."

And Blood Feast 2? "I would sell Blood Feast 2 as the most OUTRAGEOUS, UNSETTLING movie anybody ever made at any time since the invention of the cinematograph," chuckles Herschell. "And I would mean that with some sincerity."

Herschell Gordon Lewis. The Lumiere, The Royal Museum, Sunday, 4pm, 4.50