Trivia

Known as the "Godfather of Gore". He worked in advertising and financed most of his own films. Pioneered the horror genre in the 1960s known as the "splatter film," which focused on gore and gruesomeness. Horror films created by Lewis included Blood Feast (1963), Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964), A Taste of Blood (1967), The Wizard of Gore (2007), The Gruesome Twosome (1967) She-Devils on Wheels (1968) and Scum of the Earth (1963). Lewis died in his sleep on 9/26/2016, at age 90. John Waters, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and James Gunn are among filmmakers who were inspired by Lewis' work.

Did most of the voice-overs in his films, including the theatrical trailers, because he did not want to pay any more actors to speak the lines.

For more than 20 years he taught graduate-level courses in mass communications. He lectured at professional seminars worldwide.

Headed his own advertising and consulting firm, Communicomp, based in Plantation, FL. Writes a regular series of articles, "Copy That Sells", for "Direct Marketing" magazine, and was the copywriting columnist for "Catalog Age.".

Father of Robert Lewis.

Son of Geraldine (Waldman) and Calvin Emmanuel/Manuel Goldberg. His parents were Jewish emigrants, his father from Russia and his mother from Poland.

His first in a lengthy series of collaborations with exploitation producer David F. Friedman, Living Venus (1961), was a fictitious account based on the story of Hugh Hefner and the beginnings of Playboy. The two continued with a series of erotic films in the early 1960s. These films marked the beginning of a deliberate approach to filmmaking that each respective party would continue through their production careers - films made solely with the intention of turning a profit. Typical of these nudies were the screwball comedies Boin-n-g! (1963) and The Adventures of Lucky Pierre (1961), a film made for a shoestring budget of $7,500, which would become the duo's first great financial success; it made three times its budget upon its first release. Because film restrictions had not yet allowed for sexual depictions in films, the bulk of Lewis and Friedman's early work consisted of nudist camp features like Daughter of the Sun (1962) and Goldilocks and the Three Bares (1963), which appropriately billed itself as "the first (and to date the only) nudist musical".

Lewis directed a short promotional film entitled Carving Magic, sponsored by Swift & Company, in 1959. Along with Swift & Company's "home economist" Martha Logan, the short starred William Kerwin and Harvey Korman, who would go on to star in other Lewis projects.

Herschell Gordon Lewis was an American filmmaker, best known for creating the "splatter" subgenre of horror films.

During his retirement from filmmaking, Lewis wrote and published over twenty books during his long business career in advertising, including The Businessman's Guide to Advertising and Sales Promotion in 1974 and How to Handle Your Own Public Relations in 1977.

On Lewis' career, AllMovie wrote, "With his better-known gore films, Herschell Gordon Lewis was a pioneer, going further than anyone else dared, probing the depths of disgust and discomfort onscreen with more bad taste and imagination than anyone of his era.".

Lewis spent three years in prison during the 1970s after being convicted for fraud.

Lewis's third gore phase served to push the genre into even more outrageous shock territory. The Wizard of Gore (1970) featured a stage magician who would mutilate his volunteers severely through a series of merciless routines. By 1973, Lewis had taken the gore approach to such a limit that it began to lampoon itself, which is why The Gore Gore Girls (1972) (featuring an appearance by Henny Youngman as the owner of a topless club) would mark his semi-retirement from film altogether.

He is often called the "Godfather of Gore" (a title also given to Lucio Fulci), though his film career included works in a range of exploitation film genres including juvenile delinquent films, nudie-cuties, two children's films and at least one rural comedy.

Outside his notorious gore canon, Lewis pursued a wide gamut of other exploitation avenues throughout the sixties. Some of the more taboo subjects he explored include juvenile delinquency (Just for the Hell of It, 1968), wife swapping (Suburban Roulette, 1968), the corruption of the music industry (Blast-Off Girls, 1967), and birth control (The Girl, the Body, and the Pill, 1967).