Deming hipped me to this ... Herschell Gordon Lewis' column on the direct mail advertising business, an area in which he's celebrated as an icon. Why do we care? Only because he's an exploitation film icon as well, a mere sideline for a man who spent his entire adult life in the advertising game.

For years I've been fascinated by H.G. Lewis and his film work, which includes the 1963 proto-slasher Blood Feast. The first to reduce horror cinema to its basest, most pornographic elements and make a bundle in the process, Lewis spent a decade or so pumping out cheap, violent drive-in product like The Gore Gore Girls, Two Thousand Maniacs! and The Wizard of Gore, overcoming his indifference to pacing and coherence with sickening butcher shop special effects and a peculiar flippant tone amid the savagery.

Lewis also took stabs at the biker genre (She-Devils On Wheels), juvenile delinquent dramas (Just For The Hell Of It), children's fare (Jimmy, The Boy Wonder), even rock & roll films (Blast-Off Girls). I could not in good conscience recommend any of these films to the casual viewer, but they're in a class all their own, amateurish and crass, made only to turn fast bucks thanks to outrageously overblown ad campaigns ... still, Lewis' sardonic wit and intelligence seeps through nonetheless, making his filmography as strangely personal as it is cold and calculating.

After retiring from film in the 1970s, Lewis, who owned and operated an advertising agency during his years as a director, went on to revolutionize the direct mail marketing business. What does society do about a man responsible for not only the proliferation of slasher films but junk mail besides? There has to be retribution at some point, right?