ReFocus: The Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis

by Calum Waddell (Editor)

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.

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 31, 2026

About the author

Calum Waddell gained his PhD at the University of Aberdeen and teaches at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China.