The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies (Mammoth Books)

by Peter Normanton

  Herschell Gordon Lewis

  (June 15, 1929–)

  The first “Godfather of Gore” started life in the most innocuous of manners, being brought up in Pennsylvania and after graduating with a degree in Journalism and going on to become a Professor of English Literature. He left his academic life at Mississippi State College to move into managing a radio station, then stepped up to become a director in the same field. A move into advertising in Chicago would see him return to part-time teaching until he began directing commercial adverts. In 1960 Herschell G. Lewis produced his first film, Prime Time, shot in the city of Chicago, but from there on in he chose the director’s chair, working alongside exploitation producer David F. Friedman. Their collaboration began with Living Venus (1961), a fictitious account of Hugh Hefner and his early years with Playboy. There followed a series of exploitation movies, many of which contained scenes of soft-core pornography, which would never have made it to a Hollywood feature, owing to the watchful eye of the Hays Office. These films were low-budget ventures, designed to make a fast buck.

  When these nude-styled films began to wane in popularity, Lewis and Friedman produced their first horror film and made it available to the drive-in theatres. The gore-ridden Blood Feast (1963) shocked its young audience but still had them begging for more. Although considered camp, as many of his movies were, it is now recognized by many as the first splatter movie. Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) and Color Me Blood Red (1965) used the same outrageous display of blood-soaked cheap gore effects and set the standard for the horror movies of the next few years as other emerging film companies looked to follow suit. In 1967 Lewis pushed the boundaries by introducing electrical implements to scalp his victims when he let a mad old woman and her mentally challenged son loose in The Gruesome Twosome, announcing “The most barbaric humour since the guillotine went out of style”. He later resorted to butchering strippers in a sleazy nightclub in the self-parodying ultra-cheap schlock-fest, The Gore Gore Girls (1972), before going into semi-retirement from the world of film, although he was occasionally tempted back to stand behind the camera. Away from film he developed a successful career in the areas of copyrighting and marketing, and then after almost thirty years away from directing he returned to begin work in 1999 to make the direct-to-video Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat (2002). This movie was as exploitative and sleazy as anything Lewis had previously released, characterized by the same hankering for scantily clad women and copious amounts of blood and guts from over thirty years before. At the age of eighty, Lewis returned to deliver more of his lurid blood-filled madness with The Uh-Oh Show (2009), an extreme quiz show that punished the wrong answer with the severing of an arm or a leg; reality TV was never quite like this, well not so far!

  His work would influence Tobe Hoper as he embarked on his legendary entry to the world of splatter cinema, and more recent low-budget gore sleaze directors such as Canada’s Lee Demarbre, whose Smash Cut (2009) combined Lewis’s two streams of exploitation, sex and gore, before going on to direct the worthy slasher of the same year, Summer’s Blood. Lewis has his detractors but among his fans he remains exalted, for without his self-effacing excess we may never had had so many of the excruciating features found in these pages. Herschell Gordon Lewis really was the man “who ought to know better, but don’t”.

  George Andrew Romero

  (February 4, 1940–)

  George Romero, like many other directors, will admit to having moments in his professional career where he has become completely fed up with producers, but he has never tired of zombies. So much so, he has been bestowed with the honour as the “Godfather of all Zombies”. Without his vision, we may never have seen Lucio Fulci produce his splatter-filled masterpieces and those who have since followed the trail of the walking dead. Inspired by the fantasy elements of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s film The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), and having been given an 8-mm camera at the age of fourteen, he looked to a career in media. Soon after graduating Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University in 1960 he went into shooting short films and commercials for The Latent Image, a company he co-founded with friends John Russo and Russell Streiner. The trio soon became bored with commercials and discussed the idea of producing a horror movie, which was no surprise with Romero having been a fan of the legendary Universal features of the 1930s and 1940s as well as the notorious horror comics of the 1950s. They went on to establish Image Ten Productions and between them raised the money to produce Night of the Living Dead (1968). Inspired by Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend, Romero’s film, co-written with John A. Russo, has became a cult classic and changed the face of modern horror cinema, although, as he has always insisted, none of his flesh-eaters, as they were termed in this film, and his later zombies has ever demonstrated an overwhelming appetite for brains.

  The less successful Season of the Witch (1972) and The Crazies (1973) soon followed, but his next visit to the director’s chair produced the critically acclaimed vampire tale Martin (1977). Ten years after making his seminal flesh-eating movie, Romero returned with this same atrophied host to breathe life into the highly influential Dawn of the Dead (1978). This was the film that was to set the standard for the blood lust of the next three decades and ultimately popularized this flesh-eating breed. In 1982, alongside Stephen King, he returned to the terrors of his youth, directing the comic book inspired Creepshow. Romero then made the third entry in his “Dead Series” with Day of the Dead (1985), which didn’t prosper anywhere near as well as its predecessors at the box office. While Romero has tried to resist the idea that his zombie films have a sociological undercurrent, these films have inadvertently reflected the socio-political climates of three very different decades. Collaborations with his long-time friend Dario Argento on the Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, Two Evil Eyes (1990), and Stephen King on The Dark Half (1993) have since followed, among many other projects, none of which has captured the cinema-going public’s imagination.

  It appears he can never escape the walking dead; although he has made other kinds of features he is regarded by both the industry and fans alike as a genre filmmaker. He updated his original screenplay for Night of the Living Dead and handed it to special effects maestro Tom Savini, who assumed the role of director for the remake in 1990. Again this film didn’t fare too well; it looked as if the dead were about to be returned to the grave. However, having settled down in Toronto he brought a renewed breakdown of society in Land of the Dead to his new home city in 2005, followed by a filmmaker’s vision of the apocalypse in Diary of the Dead (2007). Two years ago, he gave us another insight into how humanity would react to their downfall in Survival of the Dead (2009) with a couple more “Dead” movies currently in the planning stage. Recent years have seen Romero become involved with videogames and the writing of DC Comics zombie title “Toe Tags”, based on an unused script that was originally intended as a sequel to the original “Dead Trilogy”. His favourite zombie movie of the latest batch is Ruben Fleischer’s visually stylish Zombieland (2009).

  Mark Shostrom

  (May 13, 1956–)

  As a child, Mark was an avid of reader of Famous Monsters of Filmland and his introduction to the world of horror movies came with Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and the pioneering craft of Jack Pierce. He was later inspired by Dick Smith’s book Do-It Yourself Monster Make-Up Handbook, from a make-up artist who started with the semi-documentary styled noir Call Northside 777 (1948) and at the height of his career contributed to the success of The Exorcist (1973), The Taxidriver (1976) and Scanners (1981). At the age of thirteen, Shostrom moved with his parents to Hong Kong where he was exposed to both oriental and European cinema. While living in Hong Kong he also met the widow of Boris Karloff, who became a friend for the next eighteen years.

  As with so many kids of his age, Shostrom became addicted to the Planet of the Apes films and then later the television series. In 1975 he began corresponding with the acclaimed make-up artist John Chambers, who won an academy award
for his work on Planet of the Apes (1968). Chambers had started life as a medical technician in World War II, repairing the faces of the injured and building prosthetic limbs. He also created Leonard Nimoy’s pointed ears for the original Star Trek series. Working from a converted garage next to his house he stayed in touch with the young Shostrom and later appointed him as his mould maker for a film to be made for television. Sadly, this fell through, but a position did come when he was asked to join an aspiring Bart Mixon, although Chambers was still working on his behalf in the background. Shostrom’s new partner later went on to create the make-up for the much maligned zombie movie The Curse of the Screaming Dead (1982) before going to work on a series of major features, including A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddie’s Revenge (1985), House of 1,000 Corpses (2003) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006).

  Thankfully, Shostrom’s ingenuity was also recognized; his first major assignment would be the Santa slasher To All A Goodnight (1980). Soon after that he found regular engagements, notably on The Slumber Party Massacre (1982), Videodrome (1983), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and the groundbreaking metamorphosis in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddie’s Revenge (1985). Television also beckoned with placements on prestigious shows such as Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Voyager, The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and then he later worked with Tobe Hooper to outdo the CGI effects on his zombie movie Mortuary (2005). Shostrom has become one of the genre’s greatest heroes and twenty-five years later his imaginative work on Evil Dead II (1987) is still lauded by splatter fans across the world. No doubt there will be a youngster reading one of the current selection of monster mags who is inspired by Shostrom’s artistic innovation.

  Tom Savini

  (November 3, 1946–)

  “The more you do, the more you get to do” has remained Tom Savini’s philosophy and once he entered film, it certainly paid off. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, six years after his co-conspirator George A. Romero. At the age of twelve, he was inspired when he saw Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), which starred James Cagney as the legendary Lon Chaney Sr. He would one day follow his hero, Chaney Sr. to become that rarest of breeds, when he showed himself to be a hugely capable stuntman, actor, make-up artist and director. He was also another makeup artist in the making to be beguiled by the work of Jack Pearce on Universal’s Frankenstein and was later able to give a fellow creator for whom he had such admiration a call to discuss their techniques: none other than effects wizard Dick Smith. As Savini made his way in the business, he was astounded by the work of his fellow professionals, among them Stuart Freeborn, Rob Bottin, Rick Barker and Stan Winston.

  Savini met George Romero while still at school when he was an aspiring actor. Several years later, just as he was about to join Romero on Night of the Living Dead (1968), he was drafted and sent to Vietnam as a combat photographer. His wartime experiences between 1969 and 1970 would see him come face to face with the wounded and the dead. For the first time in his life he would encounter something few effects artists would ever see: “anatomically correct gore”. When he moved into film and set to creating his gory effects, he strived to achieve the same feeling he had experienced when he was first exposed to these bloody scenes. If his efforts didn’t create this same impression, he knew he had not accomplished his goal.

  In 1974 he found work with Bob Clark as a special make-up artist and still photographer on his movie Dead of Night (1974), which later became known as Deathdream. That same year he stepped up to work as the head special make-up artist on Clark’s next film, Deranged, which was very loosely based on the life of serial killer Ed Gein, and directed by Alan Ormsby. At this time, Savini was working as a freelance photographer by day and as an actor and make-up artist at night doing repertory regional theatre in North Carolina. Here he learned the skills of the trade, both as an actor and in the various areas of production. While teaching and attending Carnegie Mellon University under a fellowship, he finally got the chance to work with Romero on his vampire movie Martin (1977). Romero certainly got his money’s worth as Savini not only supplied the make-up effects, with one notable wrist-slashing sequence, but also played one of the roles in addition to performing the stunts. The following year he was invited to work on Dawn of the Dead (1978). Here Savini came into his own, creating the emaciated creatures that would become his trademark. As this host of zombies rampaged through the shopping mall, they became the inspiration for countless others, including Lucio Fulci, for whose creations Savini would come to have such great respect.

  More work as a special-effects man and actor would follow in Maniac (1980) and then came another jewel in his crown, Friday the 13th (1980). As the years rolled on he would be asked to join two legends of the period, Dario Argento on Trauma (1993) and Tobe Hooper for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), after having contributed to so many gory masterpieces during the 1980s, among which was the scaled-down Day of the Dead (1985). While he readily joined the set on some of the more memorable films of these years, he was not averse to becoming involved in low-budget projects such as his transformation into Jack the Ripper in Christopher Lewis’s straight-to-video The Ripper (1985). He later played the whip-wielding, vampire-fighting biker ‘Sex Machine’ in From Dusk till Dawn (1996) and only recently fought off an infestation of zombies in Planet Terror (2007).

  As a director, Savini would come to appreciate George Romero’s frustration when the budget on the remake of Night of the Living Dead was drastically reduced in 1990. In recent years while still working on many projects he has been running the Special Effects Make-Up and Digital Film Programs at the Douglas Education Center in Monessen, Pennsylvania, as well as writing several books on special effects. It is only in the last decade that Savini’s most grisly work has been seen by gore-mongers in the UK and the US following a relaxation in attitudes towards censorship. During the late 1970s and on into the 1980s he endured the frustration of seeing so much of his most accomplished moments end up on the cutting room floor. Now the world can see the true extent of his blood-crazed carnage.

  The Video Nasties

  They Tried to Ban

  Listed below are the seventy-two films that between 1983 and 1985 were registered on the UK Director of Public Prosecutions’ offending lists of video nasties. Some of these films only stayed on the list for a matter of months, while thirty-nine of them remained banned until the end of the panic. Most of these films have since been released.

  Absurd (1981) also known as Rosso Sangue; Horrible; The Monster Hunter; Anthropophagus 2

  Anthropophagous: The Beast (1980) also known as Antropophagus; Anthropophagous; Antropofago; Gomia, Terror en el Mar Egeo; Man Beast: Man-Eater; The Savage Island; The Grim Reaper

  Axe (1974) also known as Lisa, Lisa; California Axe Murder; The Axe Murders

  The Beast in Heat (1977) also known as La Bestia in Calore; Horrifying Experiments of S.S. Last Days

  The Beyond (1981) also known as E Tu Vivrai Nel Terrore – L’aldilà; Seven Doors of Death

  Blood Bath (1971) also known as Reazione a Catena; A Bay of Blood; Twitch of the Death Nerve

  Blood Feast (1963)

  Blood Rites (1968) also known as The Ghastly Ones

  Bloody Moon (1981) also known as Die Säge des Todes

  The Bogey Man (1980) also known as The Boogeyman

  The Burning (1981)

  Cannibal Apocalypse (1980) also known as Apocalypse Domani

  Cannibal Ferox (1981) also known as Make Them Die Slowly

  Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

  The Cannibal Man (1972) also known as original title La Semana del Asesino; The Apartment on the 13th Floor

  Cannibal Terror (1981) also known as Terreur Canníbale

  Contamination (1980)

  Dead & Buried (1981)

  Death Trap (1977) also known as Eaten Alive

  Deep River Savages (1972) also known as Il paese del sesso selvaggio; The Man from Deep River

  Delirium
(1979) also known as Psycho Puppet

  Devil Hunter (1980) also known as Il cacciatore di uomini

  Don’t Go in the House (1980)

  Don’t Go in the Woods (1982)

  Don’t Go Near the Park (1981)

  Don’t Look in the Basement (1973) also known as The Forgotten

  The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982) also known as Pranks; Death Dorm

  The Driller Killer (1979)

  The Evil Dead (1981)

  Evilspeak (1981)

  Exposé (1976)

  Faces of Death (1980)

  Fight For Your Life (1977)

  Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) also known as Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein

  Forest of Fear (1980) also known as Toxic Zombies; Bloodeaters

  Frozen Scream (1975)

  The Funhouse (1981)

  Gestapo’s Last Orgy (1977) also known as L’ultima orgia del III Reich