It has been a long time since author and director Oscar Méténier turned a Gothic church in the Pigalle neighborhood into a small macabre theater for just under 300 people on a street in Paris at the end of the 19th century.
The Grand Guignol consisted of disturbing the spectators with a series of macabre themes and wild staging that we have never, ever been lucky enough to witness unless, by some cosmic coincidence, we have had the privilege of attending an Off-Broadway musical of The 'Evil Dead' fretwork. Believe me, the "openwork" thing comes to mind.
Movie Magic (Bloody)
Barely a year after the Pigalle Street theater closed, Herschell's wacko Gordon Lewis would rush to the hemoglobin rendezvous to keep the bar high, albeit without splashing. But, "be careful", that before the shocking images of him for 'Blood Feast' we had already been hit in the guts with some of those moments that are not forgotten.
'An Andalusian dog' is the first "Here I Am" by Don Luis Bunuel.
The unforgettable moment, of course, is the one in which a razor cuts a female eye at the beginning of the short film. The trick is that it is a cow's eye and the explanation, is very Hitchcockian for her, which should shock the viewer from the start and provoke free association in the public.
From that viscous eye filler, we are going to skip a few years in the future and travel to Japan to remember how gross the master Akira Kurosawa could get. The movie was 'Sanjuro' and the moment to remember is the final duel: that bloodbath had to splash the most open-minded viewer of the sixties.
With everything well dyed red, the door for the arrival of Herschell Gordon Lewis was wide open.
The magician of gore
Like the great directors, like the legends, Lewis chained a series of annual successes based on a couple of basic concepts: blood and mutilation. 'Blood Feast' was the first to arrive. Since its premiere, in July 1963, it is considered the first gore film in the history of cinema.
Several notable moments in the film narrate the adventures of an entrepreneur who wants to succeed in the world of catering, but on a historical level, it would not be bad to remember the sacrifice to Ishtar, with organs removed and that red blood so typical of the time.
After the feast came the crackpots of '2000 maniacs', a much more fun and aggressive film than the previous one. The senses of humor and excess were still there, but you couldn't take anything that was happening seriously. Well, if you were a 1964 viewer, you might be. Perhaps the moment that best defines the film is that of the barrel.
Peace and love are over
Combining these movements of authorship, entertainment, and revolution, the 1970s went all out when it came to torpedoing viewers' stomachs.
Herschell Gordon Lewis was on his last legs before suddenly disappearing after directing 'The Gore Gore Girls in 1972, although the three years he spent in prison for fraud surely had a lot to do with that disappearance. In any case, their backs were well covered when the decade opened with a film titled 'I drink your blood', one of the funniest nonsense in the midnight cinema. Gore and hatred towards the hippie, which in this case would also be equivalent to saying "satanic", were in fashion.
This masterpiece of coarseness was nothing more than the fun opening act: the hard-to-bear came right after. He arrived with 'The Exorcist' by William Friedkin. Spectators had already "suffered" with 'A Clockwork Orange', 'Deliverance' or 'Los Demonios', but no one was prepared for this new type of devil. Fainting, avalanches, and waves of terror are caused, among many other sequences, by things like this:
In any case, however, you look at it, Friedkin's film was mainstream for all audiences compared to what was to come, a revolution in cinema, narrative, and atmosphere: 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' still haunts us. blood freezes today Probably more than then.
A key moment from the movie? Well, there are so many and so dry that if I have to choose one, I choose the credit sequence. Never before had we been warned in such a way about what we were about to witness.
The Texas thing came and won, and also allowed one of the revolutionaries before Tobe Hooper to return to what he knew how to do best, only to the maximum. 'Zombie: Return of the Living Dead,' George A. Romero's masterpiece, was another kind of revolution. Tom Savini's makeup remains almost unimaginable in today's cinema. Yes, because 'The Walking Dead' doesn't count. You don't blow heads like that anymore.
