GUNNAR HANSEN
H. P. LOVECRAFT
HERK HARVEY
HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS
"While he didn’t exactly invent “Grindhouse”, it can truly be said that he perfected it. For those too young , Grindhouse was more an experience, than a movie. Sitting in those darkened theatres, shoes planted in a mysterious goo, eyeing the other patrons - the unconscious wino, the peculiar man with a satchel, the boisterous couple in the back row, the viewer sometimes, literally took one’s own life into one’s hands. All for the sake of viewing some of the rankest, most luridly titled cinema ever made -
2000 Maniacs, Blood Feast, The Wizard of Gore, The Gore Gore Girls, Just for the Hell of It, She Devils on Wheels, Color Me Blood Red, Moonshine Mountain, Monster A Go-Go, Something Weird, Blast-Off Girls, Gruesome Twosome, Scum of the Earth and
This Stuff’ll Kill Ya.
Why were they the best of the bad? Why were they so watchable? For the same reasons that a train wreck is watchable. They were of such banal epic proportions, that you really wanted to see the next one, to see if Lewis could top himself. If Ed Wood was D. W. Griffith, most undoubtedly Lewis was Cecil B. DeMille in this genre.
His creative ways to meet a budget were on a par with Wood, also. His casts were usually local rural townspeople with aspirations of stardom, mixed copiously with Playboy bunnies, strippers or any other female available who would work cheap. When told how much session musicians charged, he simply wrote and played the music himself. And he wasn’t afraid to make the occasional deal with the devil (or fast food magnate), getting Col. Harland Sanders (of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame) to make an appearance for name value (and probably free food for the cast).
He is now one of the biggest names in the mail order business, a spry entrepreneur who hasn’t forsaken cinema. He even has assembled a collection of those jingles he wrote for his films. Considering his age, he seems to have lost none of his drive, and in most interviews I’ve read, he still sounds enthusiastic. And there are always rumors of a return to the director’s chair. But it just wont be the same in a suburban multi-plex, as it was with H G Lewis in the blood-soaked 70s and 80s, in little cheap theaters and big malls everywhere." -
Festered
HIERONYMUS BOSCH
