Mahoning Icon Series

On Friday, May 29th, The Mahoning Drive-In Theater Icon Series presents a tribute to the Godfather Of Gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis, with a rare 35mm souble feature of two of his most notoriously demented Drive-In classics!First up&Have you ever had&an Egyptian Feast? Nothing so appalling in the annals of horror! Fuad Ramses invites you to mouth-wateringly murderous BLOOD FEAST (1963)! Youll recoil and shudder as you witness weird and horrendous ancient rites, as a cannibalistic caterer serves up mystery meats!An admonition: If you are the parent or guardian of an impressionable adolescent, DO NOT BRING THEM or PERMIT THEM TO SEE THIS MOTION PICTURE!Then, witness an astounding walk down the bloody corridors of the occult! Behold THE WIZARD OF GORE (1970), the maniac magician whose tricks actually work! SEE! The smashing punch press! The sword-swallowing trick! The spike through the brain! The burning tank! The lady sawed in half..as youve never seen them before! A crazed conjurer whose bloody on-stage illusions become all too real once his victims leave the stage!Herschell Gordon Lewis was a Chicago ad man in the 1950s whose flair for grabbing the attention of his audience translated well to his shift to film in the 1960s, from nudie cuties to childrens films, biker movies to Grand Guignol horror pictures. None of his films would ever be confused with polished Hollywood product, with their threadbare sets, clunky dialogue, and performances sometimes indistinguishable from the furniture, but the very aspects that make these films unintentionally hilarious to modern audiences, along with their taboo exploitation elements Hollywood dared not show, made them unforgettable to on any who witnessed them, and kept them lighting up Drive-In screens for decades. Along with frequent producing partner and cinematic carney extraordinaire David F. Friedman, Herschell Gordon Lewis carved out an unlikely niche that has reverberated in Drive-In cinema for over half a century, and