Horror films take guts, as Herschell Gordon Lewis knows

BEGINNING WITH Blood Feast in 1963, Herschell Gordon Lewis took horror films to unprecedented lengths (or depths) of explicit blood and guts, defining what came to be known as the "splatter film." He has influenced generations of independent filmmakers, chief among them superfan John Waters.

On Sunday, local horror-film presenters Exhumed Films will do a marathon screening of five Lewis classics: Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs!, Color Me Blood Red, The Gruesome Twosome, and The Wizard of Gore. As a special treat, the 87-year-old filmmaker will be in attendance to answer questions and lead a singalong of the theme to 2000 Maniacs!, his redneck horror opus.

Although he has become famous as "The Godfather of Gore," Lewis in conversation drips self-deprecating sarcasm, not blood. Of this weekend's retrospective, he says, "I think what I'm proving here is that if you live long enough, you become legitimate."

Lewis spoke by phone from Pompano Beach, Fla., with Daily News contributor Shaun Brady.

Q What inspired you to make Blood Feast and slather on the gore?

What I was trying to do was make the kind of movie that the major film companies couldn't or wouldn't make, but that some brave theater might show, and some brave theatergoers might attend because it was so oddball. Quite logically, I spent as little money and made the movie as gory as I possibly could.

Looking at it in my little cutting room in Chicago at the time, people would ask, "Is this a medical film?" and I feared we were lost. But we weren't - we had simply invented a kind of movie that has become more mainstream with each passing year.

Q That's true. You can find more blood and violence in an episode of prime-time TV than in some of your movies.

I'll take credit.

Would that have happened had I not made these movies way, way back in ancient times? I have no answer to that question, and I'm certainly not saying that with pride.

But Columbus could not have crossed the ocean competitively with even the cheapest ocean liner today. He left not knowing where he was going, he got there not knowing where he was, and he came back not knowing where he had been. But history books will point out Columbus as the person who made the Americas available for exploitation.

I guess I can make the same kind of ridiculous claim.

Q To what lengths did you have to go to create these effects without a budget?

The effects that we used could not have been more primitive. Today, any magic store will give you hands that move, and rubberized effects. What we would have given for those.

I didn't have that. I had department store mannequins, and in fact, when you look at them, they look like department store mannequins.

Q How quickly did you realize you had a success on your hands?

We made a deal to open the picture in Peoria, figuring if we died in Peoria, who will know?

We opened the picture at a drive-in theater on a Friday, and on Saturday, I went down there. About a mile short of the theater, there was a traffic jam on the highway, and I thought, "That's all we need."

Well, it turned out we were the traffic jam. In one day, a movie with no cast, no crew, and no production value had caused enough of a reaction to make me wonder if the entire planet had gone mad.

For two or three years after that, I had the entire industry to myself. I was grinding out these movies like so much hamburger because I felt - and I still feel - that it doesn't require a great deal of talent. What it requires is a great deal of guts.

H.G. Lewis Gore-A-Thon, 2 p.m. Sunday, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., $30, exhumedfilms.com.