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LOG IN Forgot Login? Register General Discussion • Trading Post • Non-Film Score Discussion  Profile • Preferences • Community Rules • Help/Contact • Search Board Search Terms:  Search Within:  topics posts since 2019 2018 posts 2017 posts 2016 posts 2015 posts 2014 posts 2013 posts 2012 posts 2011 posts 2010 posts 2009 posts 2008 posts 2007 posts 2006 posts 2005 posts 2004 posts 2003 posts 2002 posts 2001 posts 2000 posts users  search tips  You must log in or register to post.   Go to page:  1      Non-Film Score Discussion: R.I.P. Herschell Gordon Lewis   Last Post   Posted:   Sep 26, 2016 - 1:15 PM     By:   blue15   (Member) Horror filmmaker Herschell Gordon Lewis, known as the “Godfather of Gore” for his bloody exploitation movies that launched the splatter genre in the 1960s with films such as “Blood Feast” and “Two Thousand Maniacs,” died Monday at 87. https://www.facebook.com/SomethingWeirdVideo/posts/1550064575007491    Posted:   Sep 26, 2016 - 1:42 PM     By:   leagolfer   (Member) Dam that's a shame really liked them films have what music to them, sad day today R.I.P. Herschell Gordon Lewis    Posted:   Sep 27, 2016 - 2:26 AM     By:   Bob DiMucci   (Member) 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.    Posted:   Sep 27, 2016 - 10:30 AM     By:   Bob DiMucci   (Member) Just two weeks after BLOOD FEAST finished filming, Lewis embarked on his next film project. Six days later, the principal photography was completed for SCUM OF THE EARTH. The film was about a naive and innocent teenage girl who is blackmailed into modeling in the nude for a photographer who is in league with a teenage gang. The boss of the gang illegally sells photos of teenage girls being abused and degraded. Several of the cast members from BLOOD FEAST, including Mal Arnold, appeared in this new film. Jonas Peabody (aka Manuel Ortiz) scored the film.    Posted:   Sep 27, 2016 - 10:54 AM     By:   Bob DiMucci   (Member) Connie Mason, the female lead in BLOOD FEAST, worked again for Lewis in 1964's TWO THOUSAND MANIACS!. Mason had been Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for its June 1963 issue. Filmed in 14 days, this new picture followed six people who are lured into a small Deep South town for a Centennial celebration where the residents proceed to kill them one by one as revenge for the town's destruction during the Civil War. The film was shot in St. Cloud, Florida, and in countryside now occupied by Walt Disney World. The plot of this gore film was inspired by the musical "Brigadoon." Herschell Gordon Lewis novelized his screenplay into a tie-in book, the original edition of which is now in high demand by collectors. Lewis again provided his own film score, which Rhino Records released on a 1984 LP.    Posted:   Sep 27, 2016 - 2:54 PM     By:   Bob DiMucci   (Member) Producer-director Bill Rebane began shooting the film "Terror at Halfday" in 1961, but ran out of money. A few years later, director Herschell Gordon Lewis bought the incomplete film to team it with his production "Moonshine Mountain" (1964) as a double feature. Finding it unusable as it was, Lewis filmed some additional footage (under the pseudonym "Sheldon Seymour"), added narration (which he did himself), and released it separately in 1965 under the title MONSTER A GO-GO. Many of the actors didn't come back for later filming, which explains why most of the characters disappear without explanation. One actor changed so much that he ended up playing his own brother. In the film, a space capsule crash-lands on Earth, and the astronaut aboard disappears. Is there a connection between the missing man and the monster roaming the area?    Posted:   Sep 27, 2016 - 3:51 PM     By:   Bob DiMucci   (Member) In 1965's COLOR ME BLOOD RED, a mad artist kills his models in macabre fashion to obtain their blood, which he uses to make his paint. Lewis cited Roger Corman's A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959) as the main inspiration for the film. Shot in early 1964, the picture remained on the shelf for over a year due to production, editing, and sales release issues after producer David F. Friedman terminated his business partnership with director Herschell Gordon Lewis.    Posted:   Sep 27, 2016 - 4:12 PM     By:   Bob DiMucci   (Member) In 1967's A TASTE OF BLOOD, a businessman (Bill Rogers) turns into a vampire after drinking brandy laced with vampire blood and sets out on an odyssey of killing the descendant's of Dracula's executioners. Filmed in Miami, the $65,000 picture was made well enough to impress Roger Corman, who offered Lewis a directing job working for his production company in Hollywood, which Lewis politely turned down.    Posted:   Sep 27, 2016 - 4:27 PM     By:   Bob DiMucci   (Member) 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.    Posted:   Sep 27, 2016 - 4:43 PM     By:   Bob DiMucci   (Member) Lewis entered the biker flick genre with 1968's SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS. In the film, an all-female motorcycle gang, called "The Maneaters" holds motorcycle races, terrorizes the residents of a small Florida town, and clashes with an all-male rival gang of hot-riders. Most of the women playing bikers were actual bikers, whom Lewis filmed over a two-week period.    Posted:   Sep 27, 2016 - 5:08 PM     By:   Bob DiMucci   (Member) In the violent melodrama JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT, a young teenage boy (Rodney Bedell) is blamed for a Florida neighborhood being terrorized. But the real culprits are a gang of four punks leading a group of local delinquents on a nihilistic lifestyle of destruction and mayhem. Larry Wellington scored the film.    Posted:   Sep 27, 2016 - 11:14 PM     By:   Bob DiMucci   (Member) 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.     Non-Film Score Discussion: R.I.P. 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