Herschell Gordon Lewis (born 15 June 1929, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is an American filmmaker, best known for creating the "splatter film" subgenre of horror. He is often called the "Godfather of Gore" (a title also given to Italian director 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.
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Herschell Gordon Lewis (born 15 June 1929, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is an American filmmaker, best known for creating the "splatter film" subgenre of horror. He is often called the "Godfather of Gore" (a title also given to Italian director 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.
Lewis served as producer only on his first film venture, The Prime Time (1960), which was the first feature film produced in Chicago since the late 1910s. He would assume directing duties on nearly all of his films from then on. 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...
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