David F. Friedman died on Valentine's Day. If you enjoy splatter or gore films, Mr. Friedman is one of the people you have to thank for the genre.
Working as a producer with his longtime partner, Herschell Gordon Lewis, as director, the duo had recently moved from making nudie cutie films to roughies. Friedman had said that for one scene they needed a little fake blood for a scene. When the blood arrived, it ended up being a literal bucket of blood. Always on the lookout for providing fare that the major studios wouldn't touch, Friedman and Lewis took a page from The Grand Guignol and came up with the story for Blood Feast, the first gore film.
Filming began in March, 1963 with a budget of just under $24,500. The story involves an Egyptian high priest, Fuad Ramses, butchering his way through Miami's ladies in the effort to resurrect Ishtar, an ancient Egyptian goddess. The cops find him, chase him, he hides in a the back of a dump truck and gets crushed. The film starred Playboy Playmate, Connie Mason as the final girl.
Blood Feast premiered on July 6, 1963. Critics puked at the film. His wife called it "vomitous." So, Friedman provided barf bags at the theaters. The film was a huge success. IMDB has the nice well rounded gross at $4,000,000, but I've always heard it grossed over seven million dollars. The film played almost continuously on the drive-in circuit for the next fifteen years.
Friedman and Lewis worked together on a few more films. Their second splatter film, Two Thousand Maniacs is even better than Blood Feast, in my opinion, and a true classic of the genre. Their last collaboration rounded out their gore trio. Color Me Blood Red, wherein an artist learns the blood of ladies makes a wonderful additive to his oil paints. Several other production companies started ordering their own buckets of blood and painting beautiful young virgins in gore. The genre exploded. Friedman and Lewis parted ways.
Friedman went on to produce many more exploitation classics. She-Freak, a modern retelling of Tod Browning's, Freaks, is a personal favorite.
I think, Friedman was THE master of film titles. How could you not want to see: Scum of the Earth, Nude Django, The Big Snatch, The Acid Eaters, Thar She Blows!, A Smell of Honey, a Swallow of Brine?
In 2002 Friedman and Lewis reunited to film Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat.
Below is the blood drenched trailer for Blood Feast. There is a better quality version on YouTube but it is not embeddable.
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