Legendary pioneer in the arena of "gore" or "splatter" flicks, Herschell Gordon Lewis moved smartly from the strictures of academia (he had been a literature professor at the University of Mississippi) to the shadowy world of 1950s "nudie" films to the wide open spaces of regional exploitation filmmaking in the 60s and early 70s. He was not a particularly talented filmmaker; indeed the direction, scripting, performances and production values of even his "best" films were often shockingly bad. However Lewis has earned a place in the history of American independent filmmaking for upping the ante