CHAINSAW SALLY (2004)

 The only reason I bothered watching this was to see Leatherface himself(Gunnar Hansen) and The Godfather of Gore(Hershell Gordon Lewis). They both only show up briefly but Gunnar gets to swing a chainsaw around poorly so I guess that's something to see. You can also see a bunch of pointless gore scenes including a gal getting acid funneled down her throat until her insides spill out of her asshole into a bucket. Just brilliant! Somehow there were multiple sequels to this in the form of 2 shot-on-video series and one episode of an animated series so apparently gorehound weirdos must have been thrilled by this one.

 

HOW TO MAKE A DOLL (1968)

 There's some pretty crappy movies made by cult director H.G. Lewis outside of his more well-known gore epics and sexploitation stuff and this is one of those. I guess you could technically label this one a sexploitation flick but there's not any nudity in it and it's really just a pretty tame(and lame) comedy. The plot is basically a proto WEIRD SCIENCE situation where a couple of guys use a computer to make women for themselves. Except that movie had a budget and executed the idea with a lot more talent. There is one character here, our main protagonist's mom(played by Elizabeth Davis from Lewis' superior THE GRUESOME TWOSOME), who sports some groovy late 60s style and has quite the hair-do that I found pretty amusing, besides her though this one is a tough sit. Stick with Lewis' more well-known fare for maximum cheap thrills. AKA HOW TO LOVE A DOLL


Goofy end credits!:

BLOOD FEAST 2: ALL YOU CAN EAT (2002)

 Director(and Godfather of gore!) H.G. Lewis stopped making movies back in 1972 with his epic swan song THE GORE GORE GIRLS. Unfortunately he then returned in the dreaded 2000s with this sequel to his first gore-filled classic BLOOD FEAST. While over the top gore was quite the novel spectacle back in 1963, by 2002 every hack who could hold a video camera was spewing out this kind of garbage(usually in some sort of zombie film but I digress). I guess Lewis' idea was to make this one a blatant comedy also which might work if anything in the movie was humorous. Sadly the humor is of the "hey watch this fat guy eat stuff"-level and the "hey isn't it wacky how this dead body keeps popping up in different scenes?"-type so don't expect to crack many belly laughs here. I did get some genuine laughs when director John Waters(perhaps the only person who can sorta act in this whole movie?) shows up as a pervy child-loving priest but his scenes amount to only a few minutes. Also the music, which is mostly rockabilly-type stuff, was pretty decent.

 Lewis would go on to make 2 more films before he croaked in 2016(one of which, HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS' BLOODMANIA, seems to have been released after his death) but I'm not sure I need to see those. I'd like to remember him for his trailblazing 60s/70s schlock-o-ramas. Having met Mr. Lewis at horror conventions I couldn't help but notice he didn't have any of his newer DVDs for sale so I'll assume these weren't his proudest achievements(or maybe there were some legal issues I'm not aware of).
 For a way better sequel to BLOOD FEAST check out BLOOD DINER from the 80s.

LINDA AND ABILENE (1969)

 Probably the most interesting thing about this softcore-porn/western directed by "The Godfather of Gore" HG Lewis(under the alias of  Mark Hansen) is that it was filmed at the Spahn Movie Ranch which as all true crime buffs know was at that time the home of The Charles Manson family. Though as a fan of Lewis' work in general I did find this incest-filled tale an interesting watch just for curiosity's sake. The sleazy plot deals with a brother and sister, Abilene and Todd, in the old west days whose parents drop dead and leave them alone so of course, this being filmed in the swinging 60s and all, they end up boffing each other every chance they get despite their sibling status. Things go well enough, I suppose, until Todd goes down to the local bar and meets the slutty Linda who swings both ways. Terrible acting abounds, there's a tiny bit of blood shown in a shootout, but no gore despite Lewis' reputation for such, and the sex scenes are all kinda straight forward softcore stuff if you just ignore the fact that most of them are incestuous. An interesting oddity that I assume most people would find a bit draggy due to it's slow pace.

Naughty Trailer!

SOMETHING WEIRD (1967)

 This dude(Tony McCabe) gets his face half-melted by an electrical wire and then gains the power of extra sensory perception. Oh and then he meets an ugly witch(Mudite Arums) who sometimes appears as a sexy lady(Elizabeth Lee) who heals him up if he becomes her boytoy. Then some government agent gives him LSD for some reason and he trips out and fights a blanket. This is obviously not a movie that makes a whole lotta sense and every time the witchy lady shows up I think it's going to turn into a kiddie movie. While not the best movie in director HG Lewis' oeuvre it's a passable time waster just for living up to its title.
 More importantly this film's title spawned the greatest video-releasing company of the 80s and they are still around today so give them a look for all your weirdest movie needs: https://www.somethingweird.com/

                                                                                                                                                                       
                                                                   HG Lewis 2-fer!:

BLOOD FEAST (1963)

 The movie that introduced the world to graphic, splattery gore! Director HG Lewis moved over from nudie-cuties into the world of the ol' ultra-violence and lowbrow cinema was never the same.
 I got a chance to view this at a drive-in theater over the weekend and that is the perfect way to watch this since it's how it initially made its impact on unwary patrons. While not the greatest movie in the world  by a very long stretch, its historical significance cannot be denied. The characters are all dumb as dirt, the plot, about an Egyptian caterer who's also a serial-killer trying to appease an ancient Egyptian god, is pretty thin and the acting is either over-the-top or just plain awful but for hardcore gorehounds this is ground-zero and just plain old goofy, grand-guignol fun.
 This is part of a loose "gore trilogy" by Lewis which includes 2000 MANIACS and COLOR ME BLOOD RED. AKA FEAST OF FLESH

With that Italian vampire flick!:

The whole "blood trilogy" together with LOVE GODDESSES OF BLOOD ISLAND under an alternate title. A great night out at the drive-in!:

BLOOD ORGY (1972)

 Much better known under the title THE GORE GORE GIRLS this is 'The Godfather of Gore's'(aka director H.G. Lewis') final opus in his classic gore film series. He did return in 2002 with a couple of less-than-stellar attempts to appease his gore-hungry following but I think it woulda been fine with me if this was where he stopped.
 Equal parts absurd black comedy and goss-out splatter epic this one has the memorable distinction of playing wonky cartoonish circus music while we watch various strippers get their faces smashed-in or their eyeballs smushed or their asses beaten with a meat-tenderizer until dead!?! The one stand out bit for me is always the part where we get a gal who has her nips snipped off to produce regular and chocolate milk from each boob. What a nutty guy! Henny Youngman shows up briefly to give this some sorta star power and I'm sure he was very proud of being in something like this. While this isn't my favorite of Lewis' movies(BLOOD FEAST, 2000 MANIACS and JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT are in the top spots for me) and it gets a little repetitious at times it is a pretty good summation of his work and since Mr. Lewis checked out a few days ago you should give this a watch in his honor.

 

                            One of the greatest VHS covers ever!!:

An H.G. Lewis Gore-stravaganza!!:

SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS (1968)

 Whenever anyone asks me what my favorite HG Lewis movie is I can't help but say this one. Of course Mr. Lewis will always be remembered as the guy who pretty much invented the gore film with his classic BLOOD FEAST but this is the one out of all his movies that I've probably re-watched the most. The kitchiness is overflowing here and all that over-the-top ridiculousness can't be ignored. The story is basically a strange feminist inversion of the biker flick with a gang of snazzily-attired ladies called The Maneaters led by a gal named Queen who sounds like Alice Kramden while barking out orders to her gang of insatiable nutjob ladies. This being an HG Lewis film you do get some ultra-violence including a guy dragged behind a bike and a decapitation to move things along and while most of the bad stuff happens to men there is a rape thrown in. Why weren't there more female biker flicks like this back in the golden era? I guess the world wasn't ready for such amazing sights yet.

The Cramps were fans!:

THE ALLEY TRAMP (1968)

  The Godfather of Gore, H.G. Lewis, apparently directed this weird, incest-filled, sex flick under an alias. Also all the actors are disguised with French names(I guess French movies were considered more risque at this time). This is a strange throwback to Lewis' earlier nudie-cutie type films except this one features a supposedly under-aged schoolgirl who bangs her cousin and gets off spying on her parents having sex. Later on she ends up sleeping with the same guy her mom is cheating on her dad with. "Let's keep it all in the family" seems to be the quote to remember when it comes to this one. There's also a really stupefyingly dumb speech delivered by our slutty teen. The whole thing is pretty perverted if you think about it too much but it's all played out pretty light-hearted and goofy(even the abortion sequence) and I think they were attempting to make this a comedy of some sort and of course they attempt to shoe-horn a twisted moral lesson in there and are unsuccessful at both goals.
 A good time only for fans of giant 60's panties and naked gals with beehive hairdos.

                                      "I'm a woman!!":

HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS: THE GODFATHER OF GORE (2010)

Starting out with the early sexploitation days of Mr. Herschell Gordon Lewis this is a very good documentary about the film career of the pioneer of gore and other sleazy cinema atrocities.  Lovingly directed by Frank "BASKET CASE" Henenlotter you get a pretty good idea  of the state of exploitation movies from the same era in general.  You get Joe Bob Briggs, Hersch's partner Dave Friedman, John Waters and HG himself giving expert commentary on the historical significance of the man who figured out that if violence sells then ultra-violence will totally sell-out!  Full of blood, boobs and rare behind the scenes footage (even some footage of a wacky looking uncompleted film) this is worth checking out if you're at all a fan of gore flicks or just weird cinema in general and if you're not grow some fucking taste will ya!

SCUM OF THE EARTH (1963)

HG Lewis(credited here as Lewis H. Gordon?) sexploitation flick which tells the tale of a young girl taken advantage of by sleazy photographers who apparently make their money by selling cheesecake pics to local high-school kids.  It's kind of a mixed bag, you get some of the roughie elements(in fact this is supposed to be the first film in the "roughie" genre), you get lots of silly dialogue and a bunch of boring bits in between all that stuff.  Mal Arnold who plays old Fuad Ramses in Lewis' BLOOD FEAST here plays an underage juvenile tough guy which is a little unbelievable.  The weird thing about the film is that I don't recall any actual nudity, just leg shots, which is sorta strange for something dealing with the exploitation of young women. I guess Lewis wanted to equally exploit his audience's expectations.  Adding to my non-enjoyment of this might be the fact that the theater I saw this in didn't have the right lenses to project the film or something because it intermittently went from a clear picture to a blurry mess every few minutes or so.  I would imagine the Something Weird DVD would be of slightly better quality.  

This speech really is the highlight of the whole sordid epic:

MONSTER A GO-GO (1965)

Even the ads for this mock it.  You would expect more from a movie that was directed by two people, one of which being the great H.G. Lewis, but it still sucks.  Everything from the terribly recorded sound to the monster, who's just a tall guy with some bad skin who hugs people to death.  The story is kind of like a really crappy version of  THE HIDEOUS SUN DEMON where a scientist is exposed to radiation and becomes monster-ish. There's some go-go-ing teens and some random voice-over narration but mostly just scientists gabbing on endlessly.  Overall there's just not much to recommend this movie for, as it's about as dull as clipping your toenails.  Watch Lewis' gore movies instead or just go trim your nails.   

At least the music is groovy:

THE WIZARD OF GORE (1970)

                                                                   "It was Montag!!!" 

  Yeah, this is one of the original H.G. Lewis gore flicks that paved the way for all the slasher and other gore movies and made history and made Lewis "the godfather of gore". Hard to put a movie like that down. It's stupid, silly gore for gore's sake. But it's a fun movie to watch anyhow. This last time I watched it I noticed how painfully illogical and meaningless the ending scenes are. So it wasn't really Montag doing the killings the whole time?? Or was it?? I guess these things aren't ever meant to be fully known by mortal men. This movie is sort of a quaint old-time blueprint of BLOODSUCKING FREAKS. I wanna check out the Crispin Glover remake sometime soon. I don't imagine it will stack up in the campy kitsch department like the original but it might be interesting anyway. I liked the 2000 MANIACS remake enough. Not really a remake but a sequel BLOOD FEAST 2 was kinda crappy but it had some good points in it too(like John Waters creepy priest character). I think BLOOD DINER was a better remake of that one. Wow, how many gore movies can I reference in one paragraph? Anyway like most all of Lewis' films this one's very stupid but fun and historical.

                                              One of the all-time great VHS covers!: