“Yes! I am Montag. Master of illusion. Defier of the laws of reason. What is real? Are you certain you know what reality is? How do you know, that at this second, you aren’t sleeping in your bed, dreaming that you’re in this theater?”

In Herschell Gordon Lewis’s bloody 1970 schlock-fest, The Wizard of Gore, a TV talkshow host and her newspaper sports-writer boyfriend investigate a “master illusionist” who seemingly kills off female volunteers from the audience of his shady, underground Grand Guignol with horrific dismemberment, and yet, take a bow, they actually weren’t killed. Well, not yet at least. That happens later. Or does it?

The Wizard of Gore, with its reverse Cartesian logic (“I think therefore I’m… not sure I’m dead... yet”), prodigious flesh and blood quotient and the surreal speeches of deadly magician Montag, occupies a space shared only by the Coffin Joe films and Bloodsucking Freaks, one of the most infamous, morally depraved and misogynistic grindhouse flicks of all time (Bloodsucking Freaks is actually based on The Wizard of Gore). The demented funhouse mirror reasoning that permeates the film is quite effective and adds a philosophical underpinning to the proceedings that take it to a higher intellectual level (I’m not kidding!) and making it unique amongst gorehound classics.

What was once only able to be viewed in a urine and vomit-stained Times Square flea-pit or in low rent drive-in movie theaters down south can now be viewed, in its entirety, on YouTube… You used to have to work to see this stuff!
 

 
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.