ReFocus: The Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis

Calum Waddell is a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, where he also received his PhD. His previous work includes The Style of Sleaze, The American Exploitation Film (2018), Images of Apartheid: Filmmaking on the Fringe in the Old South Africa (2021), South African Horror Cinema (2025), and the edited collection The Films of Wes Craven (2023). He has occasionally worked on producing bonus content and documentary work for Blu-ray labels and documented the “gory glory” days of grindhouse cinema with his feature-length nostalgia-trip 42nd Street Memories (2015).

• AcknowledgementsNotes on the ContributorsIntroduction – Calum WaddellPart I. Early Provocations1. Carving Against the Grain: The Case of Carving Magic - Jack O’Dwyer2. In the Name of Ishtar: Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Blood Feast - Jialu Zhu3. Unearthing the Past and Facing the Present: A Historical and Social Reading of Two Thousand Maniacs! - Erika Tiburcio Moreno4. “Obscene, disgusting, perverted and sadistic”: Existentialism, Absurdism, and the “Blood Trilogy” of Herschell Gordon Lewis - Daniel TilsleyPart II. Texts of Transgression: The Bloody Bombast of Herschell Gordon Lewis5. Just For the Smell of It: Offal and Olfactory Awfulness in the Horror Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis - David Scott Diffrient6. “It all seems too real”: Herschell Gordon Lewis and Theaters of Horror - Richard J. Hand7. The Wizard of Bore: Magic, Authorship and Tedium - Murray Leeder8. The Black List? Herschell Gordon Lewis, Black Love and the Dubious Pleasures of “Pure” Paracinema - Calum WaddellPart III. Rethinking “The Godfather of Gore”: Lewis Legacies and the “Art” of Schlock and Awe9. Herschell Gordon Lewis, This Stuff’ll Kill Ya!, and the “State” of Oklahoma - Gary D. Rhodes10. Where do these people come from? Abjection and audience reception in the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis and John Waters - Joseph M. Sirianni11. Bloody and Bawdy: Herschell Gordon Lewis’s Comedy of the Body - Kate Russell12. Herschell in Video-Land: Consuming Blood Feast 2 - Calum Waddell

ReFocus: The Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis constitutes a substantial anthology of critical essays dedicated to an often overlooked figure in horror cinema. This volume is poised to serve as the definitive scholarly resource on Lewis’s oeuvre, encompassing his earliest industrial documentaries through to the direct-to-video sequel, Blood Feast 2.