A disturbing journey through the most unpleasant scenes in the history of cinema

The Grand Guignol consisted of disturbing the spectators with a series of macabre themes

A lot has happened since the author and director Oscar Méténier turned a Gothic church in the Pigalle neighborhood into a small macabre theater for just under 300 people on a Paris street at the end of the 19th century.

The Grand Guignol consisted of disturbing the spectators with a series of macabre themes and wild staging that we have never, ever been lucky enough to witness unless by some cosmic coincidence we have had the privilege of attending an Off-Broadway musical of the draft of 'Evil Dead'. Believe me, the "draft" comes to mind.

Unfortunately, the public declined in the years after the Second World War, and The Grand Guignol closed its doors in 1962, after 65 years of works such as 'La Loterie de la Mort', '

Barely a year after the closure of the Pigalle Street theater, Herschell's wacko Gordon Lewis would rush to the appointment with the hemoglobin to keep the bar high, albeit without splashes. But, "eye", that before the shocking images of him for 'Blood Feast' we had already been hit in the guts with some of those moments that are not forgotten.

The unforgettable moment, of course, is that in which a razor cuts a female eye at the beginning of the short film. The trick is that it is a cow's eye and the explanation, very Hitchcockian, that should leave the viewer in shock from the beginning and provoke free association in the public.

From that slimy eye filler we're going to jump a few years into the future and travel to Japan to remember how gross the master Akira Kurosawa could get. The movie was 'Sanjuro' and the moment to remember is the final duel: that bloodbath had to splash the most open-minded viewer of the sixties.

With everything well dyed red, the door for the arrival of Herschell Gordon Lewis was wide open.

The magician of gore

Like the great directors, like the legends, Lewis chained a series of annual successes based on a couple of basic concepts: blood and mutilation. 'Blood Feast' was the first to arrive. Since its premiere, in July 1963, it is considered the first gore film in the history of cinema.

There are several notable moments in a film that narrates the adventures of an entrepreneur who wants to succeed in the world of catering, but on a historical level it would not be bad to remember the sacrifice to Ishtar, with excised organs and that red blood of the time.

After the feast came the wackos from '2000 maniacs', a much funnier and more aggressive film than the previous one. The senses of humor and excess were still there, but you couldn't take anything that was happening seriously. Well, if you were a viewer of 1964, you might. Perhaps the moment that best defines the film is that of the barrel.

Peace and love are over

Combining these movements of authorship, entertainment, and revolution, the 1970s went to great lengths to torpedo viewers' stomachs.

Herschell Gordon Lewis was on his last legs before suddenly disappearing after directing 'The Gore Gore Girls' in 1972, although the three years he spent in jail for fraud surely had a lot to do with that disappearance. Anyway, the backs were well covered when the decade opens with a film entitled 'I drink your blood', one of the funniest follies of midnight cinema. The gore and the hatred towards the hippie, which in this case would also be equivalent to saying "satanic", were fashionable.

This masterpiece of coarseness was nothing more than the entertaining opening act: the hard to bear came right after. It came with 'The Exorcist' by William Friedkin. Viewers had already "suffered" with 'A Clockwork Orange', 'Deliverance' or 'The Demons', but no one was prepared for this new type of devil. Fainting, avalanches and wave of terror caused, among many other sequences, by things like this: