Cover Art

Credits

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis Starring: Frank Kress, Amy Farrell, Hedda Lubin, Henny Youngman, Russ Badger Screenplay: Alan J Dachman Country: USA Year: 1972

When dancers at a strip club are murdered by a deranged psychopath, suave detective Abraham Gentry (Frank Kress) and a nosy reporter Nancy Weston (Amy Farrell) must race against time to locate the killer before they strike again. When the murders become increasingly brutal and daring, Abraham and Nancy realise that they must do far more than simply search for the killer – Nancy must pose as a dancer in order to lure the murderer out, risking her own life and that of the girls at the club. Of particular note here is a quizzical cameo by Henny Youngman as himself, in a role that sees him as a comedian at the go-go club. After The Gore Gore Girls was released, Youngman denied his involvement ('Oddly, he denied being in the film' Lewis later said, 'and it's as funny as it is odd, because there he is').

Despite following maligned works such as Two Thousand Maniacs and The Wizard of Gore, the thing that's most striking about The Gore Gore Girls is its violence. By today's standards, Lewis' 1972 film is still fairly puerile stuff, and the director's predilection for voyeuristically leering at scenes of grue has rightfully earned him the tag of 'Godfather of Gore'. The nastiness of the film has led to a number of censorship issues – New Zealand has a cut version classified 18, while the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification banned the picture in 2006 owing to the fact that the level of violence exceeded that of an 18 classification. Such a hysterical response is quizzical given the majority of the objectionable content was very comically done – case in point is when our antagonist bashes in a woman's arse with a meat tenderiser and seasons it, or when one unfortunate girl gets her head deep-fried. That's not to say the rest of the violence is as camp – the queasy opening scene in which the killer mashes up a dancer's face is admittedly heavy-going stuff, surely a reason it's so reviled as a B-picture. The Gore Gore Girls was certified X by the MPAA for violence upon its initial release, one of the first non-pornographic films to receive such a rating.

Adding to the film's impact are allegations that Herschell Gordon Lewis, a marketing agent by profession, used subliminal gore imagery to add to the overbearing tone of violence and depravity. While this has never been proven, it adds to the Lewis legacy – essentially, he was a businessman who just so happened to direct some of the most controversial pictures horror has ever seen. What is most admirable about Lewis however is that he ceased directing altogether after The Gore Gore Girls, ending at the zenith of his career. Ever the entrepreneur, Lewis' attitude was that the gore map had been well and truly charted (a statement that has proven far from true) and devoted the remainder of his filmmaking career towards writing and producing pictures, before heading back to his original profession as an advertiser.