Girls & Corpses Magazine is honored to present an interview with one of the most remarkable figures in the history of show business, Herschell GORE-don Lewis, the Godfather of Gore!

Girls and Corpses guts the Gore-licious H. G. Lewis

By David Tamarin

Girls and Corpses Corpsepondent and Member of the Cult of H.G. Lewis

Herschell Gordon Lewis is the undisputed king of exploitation flicks, director of such amazing classics as Bloodfeast; 2,000 Maniacs; The Wizard of Gore; The Gore-Gore Girls; The Gruesome Twosome; Scum of the Earth!; and the biker flick She-Devils on Wheels. They are full of eye-gouging, brain-eating, dismemberment, redneck torture, suburban cannibalism, perverted freaks, sadistic torture and mutilation, and miles of grotesque ropy intestines.

And now, on to the Godfather of Gore!

G&C: Thank you, Herschell, for agreeing to this gutting. We love gore films and girlie films here at Girls and Corpses, and it is an honor to interview someone who has inspired everyone from Lloyd Kaufman to The Misfits. We particularly love anyone who combines porn stars with gore, would you call that ‘pore’ or ‘gorno’?

HGL: Neither. The girl would be my ghoul-friend and the key male would be the skeleton key.

G&C: Tell us all about The Uh-Oh Show. How did the project begin, and where did you get the idea?

HGL: The original title was Grim Fairy Tale. I had become bored by the sameness of splatter films. Each seemed to be a thin coat of paint over all of the others. My intention was to weld together the classic splatter film and a more conventional comedy. That meant letting the viewer in on the gag from the beginning. A quiz show (Uh Oh!) in which the contestants win outrageous prizes if they answer the questions correctly, or the uh-oh source of gore if they answer incorrectly, struck me as the ideal way to accomplish this.

G&C: Can you give away a couple of gore scenes to our readers?

HGL: All right. Envision a lovely contestant who is willing to risk bodily harm to enjoy the prizes. The manic MC asks her, “What was President Woodrow Wilson’s first name?” As you can already tell, it wasn’t Woodrow. She doesn’t know the answer. Out strides Radial Saw Rex and he promptly whacks off her arm at the shoulder.

This is where The Uh-Oh Show departs from the splatter film formula. Instead of dying from shock and blood loss, our contestant is annoyed, and the show agrees to reattach her arm. We then see a workman in a filthy outfit begin to reattach a shriveled black arm on to her shoulder using a hammer and big spike. She says, “Hold on! That isn’t my arm, and you’re putting it on backward!” He replies, “Hey, lady, this ain’t the Mayo Clinic.

To read the rest of this fascinating interview and see the amazing photos: Order this issue now here.