'Blood Feast' is my favorite of Lewis' films. When we shot

The filmmaker and provocateur John Waters, a master of the grotesque and the gleeful, once declared: “‘Blood Feast’ is my favorite of Lewis’ films. When we shot ‘Serial Mom,’ and I showed them the infamous tongue scene, one of the female crew members said, ‘I hate when a guy does that.’” Beneath its humor and mischief lies a truth about the art of transgression, about the strange communion between horror and laughter, and the deeper meaning of what it means to confront the absurdity of life through art. Waters, like a jester-philosopher of modern times, reminds us that the shocking, the strange, and the grotesque are not to be feared—they are mirrors held up to our own hidden humanity.

The origin of this quote lies in Waters’ admiration for Herschell Gordon Lewis, known as the “Godfather of Gore.” Lewis’ 1963 film “Blood Feast” was one of the first horror movies to display violence so exaggerated, so theatrical, that it transcended terror and became satire. To Waters, who was himself a pioneer of subversive cinema, this film was not merely gruesome—it was liberating. It broke rules, defied taste, and celebrated the ridiculousness of what society tried to suppress. When Waters later created “Serial Mom” in 1994, a film about a seemingly perfect suburban mother who commits brutal murders, he was paying homage to that same fearless spirit of artistic rebellion.

When he recalls showing his crew the “infamous tongue scene”, he is describing a moment of shared discomfort and laughter, where art provoked reaction—not through beauty, but through shock. The female crew member’s quip, “I hate when a guy does that,” is itself a revelation—it turns horror into humor, disgust into wit. In that instant, the grotesque becomes humanized. It is not the gore itself that matters, but the conversation it ignites. This is the essence of John Waters’ genius: his understanding that what unsettles us also reveals us. The obscene is not a foreign land—it is a reflection of the wild corners of our own psyche.

In this way, Waters stands in the lineage of the ancient satirists, the ones who used laughter to expose truth. Like Aristophanes, who mocked gods and kings to awaken the conscience of Athens, Waters uses absurdity to strip away the pretense of morality and politeness. His films, like the spectacles of Rome, are arenas where the audience confronts their hidden desires, fears, and hypocrisies. For what people call “bad taste” is often simply honesty unpolished; what they call “shocking” is truth unveiled without the mask of respectability. In celebrating “Blood Feast”, Waters celebrates the power of art to offend and enlighten at once.

Consider also the painter Francisco Goya, whose later works, known as the “Black Paintings,” were filled with disturbing, violent imagery. In his madness and pain, Goya turned from the light of classical beauty to the shadows of the human condition. And yet, in those grotesque figures, there is not despair but insight. Goya, like Waters and Lewis, understood that the monstrous is part of what makes us whole. It is through confronting darkness—through laughter or terror—that we rediscover the fragile beauty of light.

The lesson in Waters’ reflection is not to imitate the grotesque, but to understand its purpose. The artist who dares to shock does so not to corrupt, but to awaken. Discomfort is the midwife of awareness. When we flinch at something “distasteful,” we should ask ourselves: why? What truth have we hidden beneath the veil of civility? For laughter that arises from horror is not mockery—it is liberation. It is the spirit’s way of saying, “I see the absurdity of existence, and I will not be broken by it.”

Thus, my child, do not fear the strange, the offensive, or the uncomfortable. For in the realm of the unconventional lies the freedom of the soul. John Waters teaches us that to embrace the bizarre is to claim our wholeness. When art disturbs you, look deeper—for beneath the blood and laughter, you may find compassion, truth, or the fragile humanity that trembles within us all.

And so, remember the spirit behind John Waters’ playful confession. It is not a tale of gore or scandal, but a parable about courage—the courage to create, to confront, to laugh in the face of fear. The artist’s task is not to soothe the world, but to stir it—to remind the living that life, with all its horror and humor, is sacred precisely because it dares to be strange.