The Shockmeisters of Genre Cinema

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Earlier this week, Herschell Gordon Lewis, cinema’s “Godfather of Gore,” died at 90. From RogerEbert.com’s obituary on the Blood Feast filmmaker:

Lewis and his business partner David Friedman might have been the first to perfect the formula for selling films that showcased gore for gore’s sake, a dubious but incredibly durable triumph. Where Alfred Hitchcock sold suspense and ‘shock’ in his campaign for Psycho and kept onscreen blood to a minimum (and painted it black, courtesy of black-and-white film, which abstracted the nastiness), Lewis and Friedman sold blood, blood and more blood, in glorious color.

While Lewis was using real animal organs for his movies’ cringeworthy special effects, other directors were creating shock waves with movies that pushed the limits of good taste and featured gore galore. Here are just a few of genre cinema’s shockmeisters.

Herschell Gordon Lewis

“I see filmmaking as a business and pity anyone who regards it as an art form.”

Nicknamed the “Godfather of Gore.”

Watch (if you dare): Blood Feast Two Thousand Maniacs! The Wizard of Gore

Ruggero Deodato

“I make films that people call ‘horror’ because I want to make films about real things that happen in the world, and most real things aren’t very nice.”

Audiences thought Cannibal Holocaust was a real snuff film. Deodato was taken to court. The filmmaker was forced to reveal how the movie’s special effects were created to prove his own innocence.

Watch (if you dare): Cannibal Holocaust The House on the Edge of the Park Jungle Holocaust

Meir Zarchi

“When I was finishing the movie [I Spit on Your Grave], I thought a more appropriate title would be Day of the Woman. I was trying to sell this movie and nobody wanted to buy it in the United States. It was a very strange movie, to them. Nobody wanted to pick it up, independent or major companies.”

Zarchi was inspired to create Day of the Woman after witnessing the aftermath of a young woman’s rape in New York City and helping her to safety.

Watch (if you dare): I Spit on Your Grave/Day of the Woman

Joe D’Amato

D’Amato made several “Black Emanuelle” movies inspired by Just Jaeckin’s French softcore classic, Emmanuelle, casting Indonesian-Dutch actress Laura Gemser in the role of the globe-trotting hedonist.

Watch (if you dare): Anthropophagus Buio Omega Emanuelle Around the World

William Lustig

Maniac might be a little extreme, but it wasn’t that much more extreme than Friedkin’s Cruising. People were making movies that were kind of out there. It was not a conservative period as far as filmmakers were concerned. In the public there was the rise in conservatism, but not in the industry.”

Lustig founded label Blue Underground, which restores and releases genre/exploitation films.

Watch (if you dare): Maniac Vigilante Maniac Cop

Jörg Buttgereit

“The film was never planned to be seen outside of my circuit. It was done mainly for this punk-rock-spirit audience inside Berlin. We were in this walled city so I didn’t even dare to take the movie and drive out of the city with it because there was the wall and they would have searched you, so it would have been impossible to screen outside of Berlin. With my short films I did stuff like this. But with Nekromantik I didn’t dare until the wall came down, which was two years later.”

Nekromanik was banned in several countries for its graphic content.

Watch (if you dare): Nekromantik Nekromantik 2 Der Todesking

George A. Romero

“My zombie films have been so far apart that I’ve been able to reflect the socio-political climates of the different decades. I have this conceit that they’re a little bit of a chronicle, a cinematic diary of what’s going on.”

Dawn of the Dead‘s budget was only $1.5 million, but the film raked in $55 million gross at the box office worldwide upon its release.

Watch (if you dare): Dawn of the Dead Night of the Living Dead Day of the Dead

Lucio Fulci

“I feel that Zombie is an authentic zombie film. I wanted to send them back to their origins. That is why we shot the film in Santa Domingo. My inspiration came from Jacques Tourneur, not George Romero.”

Fulci shares the “Godfather of Gore” title of honor with Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Watch (if you dare): Zombie/Zombi 2 The Beyond New York Ripper