1.1. February
annals of horror!" Words that appeared to drip blood were the norm. While Friedman admitted that his movies were "garbage," his "trailers and advertising were things of beauty," Schaefer said. "He really was of that P.T. Barnum school of showmanship, drawing people in with every possible gim- mick and trick." The film cost $24,500 to shoot over five days and turned a $6.5-million profit, Friedman told The Times in 2002. "It was crude. The acting was terrible, and the ef- fects were homemade," Friedman said in 2001 in the Birmingham, Ala., News. "But it was just something new, something no one & had ever dared do before." David Frank Friedman was born Dec. 24, 1923, in Birmingham, Ala., the son of the business editor of the Birmingham News and his wife, a music teacher and pi- anist. After his father died, Friedman moved to Buffalo, N.Y., with his mother and stepfather and attended Cornell University. While in the Army, Friedman sold sur- plus searchlights to exploitation film and road-show pioneer Kroger Babb and later became a road-show salesman for Babb. Friedman also was a regional publicist for Paramount Pictures in Atlanta and later held similar positions in Charlotte, N.C., New York and Chicago. By 1956, he was producing low-budget movies in Chicago and in 1964 moved to Los Angeles, where he lived in the Hol- lywood Hills. With Lewis, he made two more horror films, "Two Thousand Ma- niacs!" (1964) and "Color Me Blood Red" (1965). They reteamed once more in 2002 for "Blood Feast 2." In the late 1960s, Friedman turned to the adult film industry and released a succes- sion of films known as "roughies," violent movies that showed skin. As films be- came more sexually explicit in the 1970s, Friedman adapted by making a string of bawdy soft-core sex farces that included "The Erotic Adventures of Zorro" (1972). It
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was promoted as "the first movie rated Z." Once hard-core movies began proliferating, Friedman said, he was not interested in making such permissive fare and eventu- ally left the business. He continued to manage and promote the video sales of the roughly 50 pictures he owned, includ- ing "The Defilers" (1965) and "Acid Eaters" (1968). His memoir, "A Youth in Baby- lon: Confessions of a Trash-Film King," was published in 1990. In 1988, he moved to Anniston to be near his wife’s family. She died in 2001. He is survived by nieces and nephews.
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