6. Herschell Gordon Lewis
A little known fact about Herschell Gordon Lewis - he was a Professor of English before he took to film making. Lewis got into directing films purely to make money, he had little sense of artistry and how to make a polished film. Now this doesn't make him a bad guy, but what makes him thoroughly evil is his dedication in bringing some of the most twisted, gory and violent films to our screens with the sole purpose of making us lose our lunch. Lewis' horror films (he directed some other exploitation movies that were not gore fests but which weren't very good) were nothing more than an excuse to showcase grievous acts of violence. Take Blood Feast. It's just a shell of a story about some dumb birthday catering palaver. The real raison d'être of the film was to shock and appal people with acts of dismemberment and extreme gory violence. Lewis decided that his money would come from gore extravaganzas and he ruthlessly peddled extreme acts of gore to audiences who were willing to be disgusted and freaked out. Lewis has been accused of misogyny, but he quickly rebuffed that by saying he would kill men just as easy as women if he thought it would make money. Instead, in a series of grotesque films, Lewis treats us to some outrageous gore perpetrated on female bodies. He injected humour into his films as well. The Gore Gore Girls is supposed to be funny but the ultra violence in the movie - a killer smashing women's faces to a pulp - is sick to behold and it really pushes the boundaries of what is watchable in cinema. An incredibly intelligent, avuncular and well spoken man, HG Lewis retired from cinema in 1972 and made a fortune in marketing. He made a comeback by popular demand to make Blood Feast 2 and there have been remakes of his films. Of course they are all a pile of crap compared to the bare faced cheek of the originals. For getting into cinema purely to revolt people and achieving that result with his sadistic films, HG Lewis deserves the title of an evil director.