The Los Angeles premiere of director Frank Henenlotter’s new documentary, Hershell Gordon Lewis: The Godfather of Gore takes place at Cinefamily in Hollywood, CA on October 12th on a double feature bill with the gore classic, Two Thousand Maniacs. Henenlotter and producer Mike Vraney will be here in person for a Q&A in-between the films.

Frank Henenlotter, one of our favorite HFS directors and the man behind classics like Basket Case and Brain Damage, is back with the definitive portrait of Herschell Gordon Lewis, one of the godfathers of exploitation movies! Featuring John Waters, drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs, Lewis’s legendary early producer David F. Friedman, Herschell himself, and testimony from the people who were actually there! You’ll witness Lewis’s beginnings in the bare-naked innocent era of “nudie cuties,” just before he shocked the world with Blood Feast, the first ever gore film—and then you’ll be treated to a madcap whirl of his notorious, controversial career, featuring Two Thousand Maniacs!, She-Devils On Wheels, Blast-Off Girls, Just For The Hell Of It and the incredible The Wizard Of Gore! Experience a decade of motion picture madness, with tons of film clips, rare outtakes, and unintentional hilarity, as The Godfather of Gore leaves you laughing and screaming at some of the most amazing movies to ever play American theaters!

[True story: When I met future “Club Kid Murderer” Michael Alig (when both of us were still teenagers) he was the first person I knew who had a VCR, but he only had three videotapes: Hershell Gordon Lewis’s Blood Feast and 2000 Maniacs and Abel Ferrara’s Driller Killer. Coincidence? You decide!]
 

 
Below, the trailer for Lewis’s hicksploitation “masterpiece” Two Thousand Maniacs. I’ve only seen this film twice, and yet I can still remember most of the lyrics to the insanely catchy theme song.