Lewis served as producer on his first film venture,
The Prime Time (1959), which was the first feature film produced in Chicago since the late 1910s. He would assume directing duties on nearly all of his films from then on. His first in a lengthy series of collaborations with exploitation producer
David F. Friedman,
Living Venus (1961), was a fictitious account based on the story of
Hugh Hefner and the beginnings of
Playboy. Lewis and Friedman's movies were early exploitation films, and the films' nude scenes, although
softcore, were not seen in "mainstream" Hollywood pictures because of the censorship imposed by the
Motion Picture Production Code. The two continued with a series of erotic films in the early 1960s. These films marked the beginning of a deliberate approach to filmmaking that each respective party would continue through their production careers — films made solely with the intention of turning a profit. Typical of these nudies were the screwball comedies
Boin-n-g! (1963) and
The Adventures of Lucky Pierre (1961), a film made for a shoestring budget of $7,500, which would become the duo's first great financial success; it made three times its budget upon its first release. Because film restrictions had not yet allowed for sexual depictions in films, the bulk of Lewis and Friedman's early work consisted of
nudist camp features like
Daughter of the Sun (1962) and
Goldilocks and the Three Bares (1963), which appropriately billed itself as "the first (and to date the only) nudist musical". With the nudie market beginning to wane, Lewis and Friedman entered into uncharted territory with 1963's seminal
Blood Feast, considered by most critics to be the first "gore" film. Because of the unprecedented nature of this type of film, they were able to cater to the
drive-in theater market that would have been inaccessible with their prior skin flicks.
Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) and
Color Me Blood Red (1965) followed the same formula. The full-color gore on display in these films caused a sensation, with horror film-makers throughout the world becoming eager to saturate their productions with similarly shocking visual effects. Lewis stopped working with Friedman after making
Color Me Blood Red, but continued to make further gore films into the 1970s. His next gore entry wouldn't come until 1967, with
A Taste of Blood, often referred to as the "
Gone with the Wind of Gore" due to its relatively lengthy running time of nearly two hours. The following year would bring a more extreme take on the genre,
The Gruesome Twosome (1967), most notable for incorporating an electric knife used to scalp one of the victims. Outside his notorious gore canon, Lewis pursued a wide gamut of other exploitation avenues throughout the sixties. Some of the more taboo subjects he explored include
juvenile delinquency (
Just for the Hell of It, 1968),
wife swapping (
Suburban Roulette, 1968), the corruption of the
music industry (
Blast-Off Girls, 1967), and
birth control (
The Girl, the Body, and the Pill, 1967). He was also not above tapping the children's market, as with
Jimmy the Boy Wonder (1966) and
The Magic Land of Mother Goose (1967), which were padded out to feature film length by incorporating long foreign-made
cartoons. Most of Lewis' films are available for purchase through the Seattle-based video company
Something Weird Video, which finds and restores lost and little-seen exploitation movies from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Lewis financed and produced nearly all of his own movies with funds he made from his successful advertising firm based in Chicago. Always resourceful despite the low budgets he worked with, Lewis purchased the rights to an unfinished film and completed it himself, re-titling the film
Monster a Go-Go (1965). Many years later, the film gained notoriety after being shown on the
Mystery Science Theater 3000 television show, where the cast stated it was the worst film they have ever done. Lewis would repeat this formula when he acquired a gritty psychological piece called
The Vortex and released it as
Stick It in Your Ear (1970) to be shown as a second feature to
The Wizard of Gore (1970). This approach demonstrated Lewis's business savvy; by owning the distribution rights to both features (as well as most of his feature films), he knew he would not get fleeced by theaters juggling the box office returns, a common practice at that time. Lewis's third gore phase served to push the genre into even more outrageous shock territory.
The Wizard of Gore (1970) featured a stage magician who would mutilate his volunteers severely through a series of merciless routines. By 1973, Lewis had taken the gore approach to such a limit that it began to lampoon itself, which is why
The Gore Gore Girls (1972) (featuring an appearance by
Henny Youngman as the owner of a topless club) would mark his semi-retirement from film altogether. By the early 1970s, he decided to leave the filmmaking industry to work in
copywriting and
direct marketing, a subject on which he published several books in the 1980s. He is allegedly well known in direct marketing as one of the most successful direct response copywriters. == Later work and death ==