Before he broke into the motion picture business, Herschell Gordon Lewis was a serious-minded academic with a doctorate degree in psychology.

Lewis taught English for a time at Mississippi State University and was a television producer at WKYY in Oklahoma.

While working for a Chicago advertising agency, Lewis partnered with the firm's co-owner to make low-budget features and produced the youth drama The Prime Time (1960) featuring Karen Black.

Establishing a production company with David F. Friedman (a former carnival barker), Lewis began shooting "nudie cuties," precursors of soft core pornography, in 1961.

To direct his "nudie cuties," Lewis affected the pseudonym Lewis H. Gordon.

After shooting Bell, Bare and Beautiful (1963) for producer Leroy Griffith in Florida, Lewis and Friedman decided to stay in Miami and make a film for themselves rather than return to Chicago in the dead of winter.

Leading man William Kerwin (billed as Thomas Wood) had appeared in some of Lewis' "nudie cuties", as well as the 1963 "roughie" Scum of the Earth.

The San Diego-born Kerwin was a cofounder of the San Diego Actor's Theater.

Leading lady Connie Mason was discovered while working at the Miami Playboy Club.

William Kerwin and Connie Mason were married from 1964 until Kerwin's death from a heart attack in 1989.

Credited scenarist Allison Louise Downe was a secretary for Florida filmmaker K. Gordon Murray, who loaned her out to Lewis and Friedman for Blood Feast.

Blood Feast coeditor Robert L. Sinise is the father of CSI: New York star Gary Sinise.

Beach victim Ashlyn Martin would go on to be Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month in April 1964.

In 1968, Lewis operated his own Grand Guignol theater called The Blood Shed, which was trashed during the riots surrounding the Democratic National Convention that year.

Lewis directed a belated sequel to Blood Feast in 2002, Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat.

Compiled by Richard Harland Smith

Sources:
Herschell Gordon Lewis interview by Andrea Juno, Mark Pauline and Boyd Rice, RESearch: Incredibly Strange Films
Herschell Gordon Lewis interview by Bill Kelley and M. J. Simpson, Video Watchdog No. 60, 2000
Herschell Gordon Lewis interview by John Wisniewski, Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 34, 2001
Herschell Gordon Lewis/David F. Friedman audio commentary, Blood Feast DVD (Something Weird Video)