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Posted: |
Sep 27, 2016 - 2:26 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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After directing a series of nudie films in 1961 and 1962, Herschell Gordon Lewis burst upon the horror film scene in 1963 with BLOOD FEAST. The film followed an Egyptian caterer (Mal Arnold) who kills various women in suburban Miami to use their body parts to bring to life a dormant Egyptian goddess, while an inept police detective (Thomas Wood, aka William Kerwin) tries to track him down. Along with his partner David F. Friedman, Lewis made the most of his limited budget (somewhere between $25,000 and $60,000) by doing much of the work himself. In addition to directing, Lewis photographed the film, did the special effects, and wrote the music score. Friedman produced and was the sound man. Friedman also came up with some very effective publicity stunts for BLOOD FEAST, which included giving theater goers vomit bags reading "You may need this when you see 'Blood Feast'" and obtaining an injunction against the film in Sarasota, Florida, in order to generate more interest in the film. It's estimated that the film earned in excess of $4 million during its life, and it was still being shown on drive-in double bills well into the late 1960s. In 1984, Rhino Records released an LP with the score from BLOOD FEAST.
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Posted: |
Sep 27, 2016 - 4:27 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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BLAST-OFF GIRLS follows a sleazy record promotor (Dan Conway) who tries to make it big with a local Chicago garage band and plans to make them famous while keeping the profits for himself. According to director Herschell Gordon Lewis, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Colonel Harland Sanders, whose company supplied Lewis' production company and advertising firm with fried chicken during the filming of this and other movies, insisted on appearing in a cameo at a KFC restaurant located in Wilmette, Illinois. Lewis recalled that Colonel Sanders was very difficult to work with because Sanders made several unreasonable and self-serving demands for, among many things, multiple rehearsals, top-billing, and wanting to direct the scene himself. Sanders does appear in this 1967 film.
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Posted: |
Sep 27, 2016 - 11:14 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In the latter 1960s and early 1970s, Herschell Gordon Lewis continued to crank out films, with titles such as "The Gruesome Twosome," "The Wizard of Gore," and "The Gore-Gore Girls," but to lesser effect. When major film companies began to invade his splatter-turf, Lewis retired from film-making, shifting full time to his "other career"--writing advertising and mailings for marketers worldwide. He became one of a handful of experts to be inducted into the Direct Marketing Association's Hall of Fame. Author of 32 books on marketing, including the classic "On the Art of Writing Copy," Herschell was often called on to lecture on copywriting.
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