The skinema world lost a true pioneer of poon today with the death of sexploitation producer David F. Friedman. Friedman produced a number of b-movie classics, from the pioneering gorefest Blood Feast to the Nazisploitation shocker Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS.
Friedman started his career producing underground “sex hygiene” films in Chicago, before beginning a fruitful partnership with director Herschell Gordon Lewis. Together Lewis and Friedman produced dozens of films that preached the unholy gospel of sex violence, from "Nudie Cutie" pics like Goldilocks and the Three Bares to “roughies” like the Defilers.
With the liberalizing of the Production Code in the late 1960’s the film market become flooded with hardcore pornography. Friedman showed little interest in producing XXX films, claiming he was in the business of “selling the sizzle, not the steak.” Still, he continued to produce exploitation films throughout the 1970s and 1980s, coming out of retirement to produce Blood Feast 2: All You Can Eat in 2002.
David F. Friedman, the Mighty Monarch of Exploitation, baron of boobs and blood, has left the building. He will be missed.
