(For those of you who wondered what Herschell Gordon Lewis, "The Godfather of Gore," is doing these days, here's a news item Renfield thought may be of interest...)
by Chris Stamper
Herschell Gordon Lewis once reigned as the undisputed king of horror movie gore. He launched his grisly career in 1963 with "Blood Feast," now a cult classic. Then drive-in wonders such as "Monster a-Go Go," "The Gore-Gore Girls" and "A State of Blood" repeated the classic Lewis formula: heaping helpings of blood, guts and gore. 10,000 Maniacs even named their band after one of his movies.
Today Lewis is applying those shock-and-startle concepts to the Web. Lewis, now the president of the Communicomp ad agency, told The Netly News that the same principles apply to low-budget filmmaking and web design. "Is a $25,000 web site always better than a million-dollar web site?" he asks. "Does the budget improve response?"
Lewis recently published a book with his son
Robert (an InfoWorld columnist) called
"Selling On The
Net." In it, they rip into web sites from AT&T and Kodak
to LawLinks and SkiNet. The duo argue the case for fast
downloads, attention-grabbing copy and pulling out every stop to
stop surfers in their tracks. (Due in March is a follow-up called
"Cybertalk That Sells.") Even a new medium, they argue,
can learn from some old-fashioned sales tips.
The former moviemaker now writes columns for magazines such as "Fund Raising Management," "Direct Marketing" and "Catalog Age" and endless tomes on selling via direct marketing. Lewis also spent 20 years teaching graduate classes in mass communications at Chicago's Roosevelt University. His clients have included Easter Seals, St. Jude's Hospital and UNICEF.
Lewis complains that too many web sites are more concerned with boasting the latest technology than with enticing their users. He compares it to bad horror moviemaking where violence is strewn across the screen without building excitement in the audience. It becomes all flash and no thrill. Yesterday's cool site ends up in the back of the video store shelves of cyberspace.
"Novelty is short-lived," he says. When the effects become paramount over the psychological impact, we're on a short track to where the impact is reduced."
The shockmaster turned salesman criticizes much of what passes for online commerce. "Look at Amazon," he explains. "They've on page one of the Wall Street Journal but they're still losing money. Why is that possible? Because the people who surf aren't book buyers. They're not motivated to buy online."
Instead, the 71-year-old pitchman's favorite example of a cyber pitch done right is Ragú. "It's the perfect match of entertainment, showmanship and salesmanship," he says. "It teaches you how to speak Italian with sentences that relate to the product."
Lewis's own efforts live on in home video. Movies like "She-Devils on Wheels" -- one of Joe Bob Briggs' favorites -- are even sold online by companies such as Something Weird Video and Movies Unlimited.
"That's a sci-fi movie itself," Lewis jokes. "It's the schlock that wouldn't die. Where were these people when I was making movies? It's a miracle our movies existed at all." The filmmaker talked of a lost movie called "Moonshine Mountain," but I found it in the catalog of Scorched Earth Productions."
Small surprise that zine
writers sing his praises. "Forget 'Psycho,'" says Dan
Taylor, editor of Exploitation Retrospect. "'Blood Feast'
had a woman getting her tongue being ripped out. Lewis is the
king. He's invented the splatter film. Movies like Color Me Blood
Red [where a struggling artist finds success by painting with
human blood] are crude, plotless and idiotic, but they broke
tremendous ground."
Taylor says that behind the splatter of chicken guts on department store dummies are off-the-wall concepts that Hollywood couldn't touch in the 1960s. In the movie "2000 Maniacs," for example, the South rises again in bloody fashion. A bunch of Confederate zombies celebrate the centennial of the Civil War by butchering a bunch of helpless Yankees. (History may be repeating itself: One of Lewis's final movies was "Year of the Yahoo!")
According to Rob Firsching, keeper of The Amazing World of Cult Movies, Lewis's days in the limelight ended when mainstream cinema caught up with his extreme style. After violent movies like "The Wild Bunch" and "Bonnie & Clyde" became popular, Hollywood began moving into big-budget horror. "Lewis had gone as far as he could go with gore," he says. "How do you compete with 'The Exorcist?'"
Today, Lewis seems to be burying his past in exploitation movies. His ad-industry bios fail to mention his films. "I thought they might be an albatross around my neck," he says. "But every time I give a speech somebody wants my autograph. It's heartwarming."
Reprinted from The Netly News and is © The Netly News
