Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on September 1, 2011, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Low-budget goremeisters may come and low-budget goremeisters may go, but Herschell Gordon Lewis endures. The man credited with inventing the splatter film is back in bloody business with the new DVD release of The Uh-Oh! Show, his first feature as director since Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat nearly a decade ago. Helping him do it were a pair of fellow Floridians with a similar penchant for entrail-laden entertainment: producers Andy Lalino and Andrew Allan of The Film Ranch.
The duo had previously churned out the award-winning short Filthy and the grisly mad-science feature Brainjacked when they became involved with the Lewis project then titled Grim Fairy Tales. The collaboration was a dream come true for the two lifelong fans of the director. “I was introduced to the cinema of H.G. Lewis as an impressionable teenager, in the pages of then-fledgling FANGORIA magazine,” Lalino recalls. “I was making a gradual transition from Saturday-matinee creature features to drive-in/exploitation fare, and there was no filmmaker at the time more notorious to the curiosity-seeker than Lewis! Titles like Blood Feast and The Gruesome Twosome, and the graphic stills accompanying the articles, forewarned that these movies were not for shivering cowards, and to be experienced only by the bravest of souls—at the risk of personal sanity. It was a rite of passage; a brazen dare; a challenge a young cinephile could take to graduate into manhood.”
The then-burgeoning VHS boom made Lewis’ films easily available, allowing them to feast on what Lalino describes as “a nonstop barrage of gory effects that often topped themselves scene after scene. Mix that with a cast of colorful, theatrical villains, and what you have is akin to a crude, bloodsoaked league of supervillains à la the ’60s Batman TV series.” Lalino later met Lewis at a Florida horror convention, and says, “I recall being surprised that he was so generous with his conversational time, but since then I’ve come to discover just how appreciative he is of his fans. It was at that convention that we became friends, and shared a bond as filmmakers. Andrew and I were poised to produce another feature—little did we know it would be for a horror legend like Lewis!”
The Uh-Oh! Show—the first of Lewis’ fright flicks on which he’s also the credited screenwriter since 1965’s Color Me Blood Red—takes place on the set of an over-the-top game show where contestants literally play for their lives. Get an answer right, and you’re rewarded with riches, but get it wrong, and you face the “Wheel of Misfortune,” a spin of which determines what form of dismemberment you suffer. “A question for horror fans: Are you looking for H.G. Lewis characters worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Fuad Ramses, Montag the Magnificent and Adam Sorg?” Lalino asks. “The Uh-Oh! Show delivers by introducing a new assortment of scary and sexy HGL characters, including gore-geous reporter Jill Burton [Nevada Caldwell], crazed show host Jackie [The Lost Boys’ Brooke McCarter], the hulking Radial Saw Rex [Broward Holsey], the outrageous Fred Finagler [B-movie regular Joel D. Wynkoop], models Champagne [Brainjacked’s Krista Grotte] and Coco [Lauren Schmier] and many more.
“There are also two cameo appearances horror fans will dig: Mike Christopher, the “Hare Krishna zombie” from Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, as a hip ticket scalper, and Troma’s incomparable Lloyd Kaufman as a foul-mouthed pimp,” Lalino continues. “Kaufman is a personal friend of Lewis’ and was tremendously excited to be on the set. It’s my opinion that Kaufman doesn’t get enough credit as an improvisational comedic actor—he’s so hilarious and witty, and so good in his role. As a special treat for the fans, Herschell is also the movie’s narrator; in test screenings, we found to our surprise that his scenes were among the audiences’ favorites.”
The veteran filmmaker also won Lalino and Allan’s admiration after The Uh-Oh! Show was greenlighted in January 2009. “We had precious little time to assemble a topnotch crew, build sets, cast actors and logistically plan everything for the shoot in St. Petersburg,” Lalino recalls. “We made it all work; the production was swift, bloody and intense, but I can tell you first-hand that Lewis was a consummate professional whom all the actors and crew looked up to. It couldn’t have gone smoother.”
“Herschell is great to work with because he is a very democratic director,” Allan adds. “He knows what he wants, but he encourages ideas from everyone on the set. That’s how we ended up with the extremely notorious breast-feeding scene.”
All the grossness was created for the cameras by Marcus Koch of Oddtopsy FX, a veteran of Brainjacked who has also contributed to the likes of The Theatre Bizarre, 100 Tears, Sweatshop and the upcoming Psychic Experiment (a.k.a. Walking Distance). “The Uh-Oh! Show is loaded with some of Herschell’s best kills yet,” Allan promises. “Unlike so many contemporary horror films which cut away after just a second of gore, Herschell locks the camera on it. You see it all, and the movie ended up very bloody and disturbing. We did everything we could as producers to ensure Herschell’s vision made it to the screen just as he intended. As producers, our goal was to make sure The Uh-Oh! Show stayed true to Herschell’s repertoire. We believe that’s our biggest success with this film: It picks up right where [1972’s] The Gore Gore Girls left off—in style, tone and bloodshed.”
Lalino takes that sentiment one further: “Fans can look forward to a storyline, characters, cutting-edge makeup effects and production value that are far superior to those in any previous Herschell Gordon Lewis movie. Hopefully, fans who see The Uh-Oh! Show will agree that it’s not only Lewis’ biggest movie, but also his best.” And for those who want to know how it was all put together, he adds, “During shooting and into the postproduction period, documentary filmmaker Tony Perri chronicled the behind-the-scenes action, which will soon be available on a DVD called Herschell Gordon Lewis and the Making of “The Uh-Oh! Show” from Cult Movie Mania Releasing. The documentary will also feature exclusive interviews with John Waters, Joe Dante, Lloyd Kaufman, Bill Moseley and many others.”
The Uh-Oh! Show has picked up two festival prizes so far: the Audience Choice Award at Texas Frightmare Weekend and Best Feature Horror Film at the Melbourne Independent Filmmakers Festival. But for its two producers, the true reward has been getting the chance to collaborate with one of their horror heroes. “The Uh-Oh! Show was a once-in-a-lifetime, unforgettable experience,” Lalino says. “The movie fulfilled a lifelong personal goal of producing a mass-market horror film, one truly made in the tradition of the great grindhouse/drive-in movies of the ’70s. I sincerely hope fans love watching it as much as we loved making it. If you get the chance, see it on the big screen—we hope to get it to as many festivals, conventions and exclusive screenings as we can.”
“We consider ourselves to be the luckiest exploitation fans in the world,” seconds Allan, “because we were able to help create a new movie for one of our idols. Producing The Uh-Oh! Show was like stepping into the past and watching a grindhouse legend at work. It was amazing. This movie proves, once again, that Herschell Gordon Lewis is still ‘The Godfather of Gore’!”
