ReFocus: The Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis

by Calum Waddell (Editor)

Overview

Dubbed “The Godfather of Gore,” no other exploitation filmmaker made the most of scant budgets, short shooting schedules and amateur special effects like the legendary Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Making his mark with Blood Feast in 1963 and helming such notorious splatter—shockers as Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964), The Gruesome Twosome (1967) and The Gore Gore Girls (1972), the director provoked generations of indebted genre stylists – from John Waters and Frank Henenlotter to Eli Roth and Damien Leone, with his hit Terrifier franchise.

This is the first academic study into the work of Lewis, covering not just his bloodstained celluloid, but also his background in sexploitation and infomercials. In doing so, this entry in the ReFocus series takes one of cinema’s most influential low budget craftsmen out of the grindhouse and considers him as an Avant Garde auteur in his own right.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399536011
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	01/31/2026
Series:	ReFocus: The American Directors Series
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Calum Waddell is a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, where he also received his PhD. His previous work includes The Style of Sleaze, The American Exploitation Film (2018), Images of Apartheid: Filmmaking on the Fringe in the Old South Africa (2021), South African Horror Cinema (2025), and the edited collection The Films of Wes Craven (2023). He has occasionally worked on producing bonus content and documentary work for Blu—ray labels and documented the “gory glory” days of grindhouse cinema with his feature—length nostalgia—trip 42nd Street Memories (2015).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Notes on the Contributors

Introduction – Calum Waddell

Part I. Early Provocations

1. Carving Against the Grain: The Case of Carving Magic — Jack O’Dwyer

2. In the Name of Ishtar: Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Blood Feast — Jialu Zhu

3. Unearthing the Past and Facing the Present: A Historical and Social Reading of Two Thousand Maniacs! — Erika Tiburcio Moreno

4. “Obscene, disgusting, perverted and sadistic”: Existentialism, Absurdism, and the “Blood Trilogy” of Herschell Gordon Lewis — Daniel Tilsley

Part II. Texts of Transgression: The Bloody Bombast of Herschell Gordon Lewis

5. Just For the Smell of It: Offal and Olfactory Awfulness in the Horror Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis — David Scott Diffrient

6. “It all seems too real”: Herschell Gordon Lewis and Theaters of Horror — Richard J. Hand

7. The Wizard of Bore: Magic, Authorship and Tedium — Murray Leeder

8. The Black List? Herschell Gordon Lewis, Black Love and the Dubious Pleasures of “Pure” Paracinema — Calum Waddell

Part III. Rethinking “The Godfather of Gore”: Lewis Legacies and the “Art” of Schlock and Awe

9. Herschell Gordon Lewis, This Stuff’ll Kill Ya!, and the “State” of Oklahoma — Gary D. Rhodes

10. Where do these people come from? Abjection and audience reception in the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis and John Waters — Joseph M. Sirianni

11. Bloody and Bawdy: Herschell Gordon Lewis’s Comedy of the Body — Kate Russell

12. Herschell in Video—Land: Consuming Blood Feast 2 — Calum Waddell

Editorial Reviews

ReFocus: The Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis constitutes a substantial anthology of critical essays dedicated to an often overlooked figure in horror cinema. This volume is poised to serve as the definitive scholarly resource on Lewis’s oeuvre, encompassing his earliest industrial documentaries through to the direct—to—video sequel, Blood Feast 2.

University of Worcester Mikel J. Koven