Article by Joseph A. Ziemba

Believe it or not, there was a time in genre film history when not everyone was an authority on everything. In the days before DVD commentaries and the Internet, you had to fight for knowledge. Names like Herschell Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman were covered in black cloaks of mystery, spoken of in hushed voices with fervent delight.

In 1988, the curtain rose. Fantaco Enterprises, an Albany, New York based publisher, reissued paperback novelizations of Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs!, both of which were originally written by H.G. Lewis in the mid 1960s. The books were terrific artifacts, embellished with behind the scenes color photos and an unexpected slapstick tone that was vastly different from their filmed counterparts. But that's not all. Brief introductions, newly penned by Lewis, set the imagination on fire. Here was the story. The real story. Straight from the set.

No matter how much you study or dissect the gore films of Friedman and Lewis, the cracked hooks never waver. Herschell's introductions remain the only autobiographical reminisces the filmmaker has ever put to print regarding his work, aside from his foreward to Daniel Krogh's 1983 biography The Amazing Herschell Gordon Lewis. Sadly, these rare books have since lapsed into limbo, robbing a new generation of a perfectly charmed experience. Weep no more.

With Herschell Gordon Lewis's permission, Bleeding Skull presents part one of a two-part feature which "reprints" both prologues for your enjoyment. Although the actual content might be readily available elsewhere (Lewis and Friedman's excellent series of DVD commentaries from Something Weird, for one), nothing beats revisiting that old feeling of inspired discovery. Or rediscovery.

HOW BLOOD FEAST CAME TO BE
by Herschell Gordon Lewis

If I’d been living in Florida then, as I am now, Blood Feast never would have been the founding parent of the happily ghoulish family of gore films. My own bizarre place in film history wouldn’t exist. That’s because the principal motivator to make this movie was — it was cold in Chicago.

Dave Friedman and I had formed a happy-go-lucky partnership, making harmless “cutie” movies for ourselves and others. We had an edge over most production companies: Except for laboratory processing, we were totally self-contained.

Dave functioned as producer and ran the sound-recorder; I was the director and operated the giant Mitchell camera. All the gear was mine. I had an ancient Volkswagen van, crammed with 35mm cameras, venerable sound recorders, lighting equipment, and as much heavy-duty cable as the creaking machine would carry. We could shoot anywhere, any time, without having to rent anything — including crew.

We had a couple of people we’d always use. Principal among these was Bill Kerwin, whom I first had met when he auditioned for a role in an earlier picture, Living Venus. Bill (who now calls himself “Rooney Kerwin”) had a boyish charm and good looks that came across well on camera. He wound up playing the lead in Living Venus, and afterward he constantly dropped into my office, asking what the next project would be.

Bill was street smart and film-knowledgeable. I thought then, as I think now: What a wonderful combination of traits for somebody on a film crew! Bill became part of our “repertory company,” and often he’d be an actor and production manager on the same picture.

“It’s cold. Let’s find somebody who will send us to Florida.” Sure enough, Dave responded to my complaint by making a deal with two burlesque theatre operators to shoot a nudist-camp picture in Miami. Great! Ego wasn’t involved because I never used my own name on these for-hire pictures anyway. Off we went to Miami.

It turned out the no-budget picture we were shooting wouldn’t require more than four or five shooting days...not enough time away from the snow and wind. So we decided to put the money these fellows were paying us into a film of our own, which we’d shoot back-to-back.

That’s how Blood Feast was born.

Every now and then somebody asks me if I still have a copy of the original Blood Feast script. If I did, it might surprise collectors of memorabilia, because part of it would be of notebook paper, part on napkins from the Suez Motel in Miami Beach, and part on what—in individuals other than those in the film business—we’d call brain tissue.

About half the cast of Blood Feast were pickups from the other movie. Talent? Maybe they had some. It was inconsequential because to us, as we battled for theatrical playing time against major company productions, showmanship and exploitation values were paramount. Acting talent ran a poor third. (Second: the capability of the film to run through the projectors.) My intention was to shock theatre-goers out of their pants. I didn’t really know how well we accomplished this peculiar goal until I had a conversation with a grizzled, battle-scarred showman who owned a theatre in a ghetto section. His comment is worthy of immortilization into permanent film history:

"These yahoos are laughin' and scratchin' and slashin' the seats and shootin’ bullet-holes in the screen. Then up comes that tongue scene. All you see is a bunch of white eyeballs!"

Read THE STORY BEHIND TWO THOUSAND MANIACS!: From The Desk Of H.G. Lewis!

SPECIAL THANKS to Herschell Gordon Lewis for his permission to reprint “How Blood Feast Came To Be” © Herschell Gordon Lewis 1987. First published by Fantaco Enterprises, Inc., June 1988.