THE JERRY EDEN INTERVIEW

AGAINST THE WIND - THE JERRY EDEN INTERVIEW
We discover the star of the H.G. Lewis Gore trilogy!

I love Hollywood tell-all books. From the time I first read Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon books, I was hooked on the genre. When I discovered that a self-published book, Against The Wind, had dirt on Frank Sinatra running around nude at an orgy, Elvis letting his pals watch him have sex with Tuesday Weld and more stories I couldn‘t believe were in print, I had to order it right away. Sure enough, this book does not blink. I kept running to my wife showing her the wild stuff on each page. And each page tops the next! But then I got to a chapter that made my jaw REALLY drop. Jerry Eden was in fact Jerome Eden, the actor in the Herschell Gordon Lewis and David Friedman films Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs and Color Me Blood Red, among others. His amazing story was riveting enough before that chapter, but this was the Psychotronic icing on the cake.

Although the book sells at Amazon for $21.00, you can get a copy SIGNED by Mr. Eden for $15.00 by clicking here or on the book cover image. If you are a fan of the Lewis films or a fan of Hollywood tell-all books, this is the find of the year! Mr. Eden also has a mystery book, Murder 3, available through Barnes and Noble, and the sequel to Against The Wind, Paris Without You, is due out this year.

FLORES - How did you meet Friedman and Lewis?

EDEN - David Friedman owned a nudie theater on Washington Street and made his own films for the hall. Bunny Yeager had a home that had the wildest parties and she told me that Friedman was looking for actors. The first film was a nudie called Daughter of the Sun and was shot in five days on a budget of ten grand. That was the entire budget. Then we did Blood Feast the week after.

FLORES - Bunny Yeager has had a big resurgence of interest and popularity because of her photos of Bettie Page.

EDEN - I had met a hooker at one of her parties named Fraya Payne and she had introduced me to Friedman. I was excited to be shooting in a nudist colony, but found out why Friedman had cast actors to play the nudists. They weren’t much to look at! One actress was so beautiful, every guy wanted her. Her name was Rusty Allen. Her lesbian girlfriend was on the set and very protective. But I did finally score with her! After we finished the shoot, we started right away on Blood Feast. Now, David Friedman was a carnie guy, a barker. Herschell was this nice Jewish family man. Couldn’t be more different. We laughed the whole time we were making those movies. We couldn’t believe what we were doing, and didn’t think anyone would want to see it. None of us had only one job. I was hiring actors, doing the gore effects, helping with sound. I was getting $200 a week. We would do one take and set up for the next scene. I thought that Blood Feast was the worst thing ever put on film. And so did the critics. We were the first ones to do that kind of stuff.

FLORES - I know Herschell has said the script for Blood Feast was written the night before shooting!

EDEN – Mike, it was written on napkins at Wolfie’s Coffee Shop! Connie Mason was a Playboy centerfold who was the star. I remember pulling a pig’s heart out of her and putting my finger in the aorta to simulate her heart beating! I don’t know if you can see that on the small screen. I don’t think any of us was prepared for the audience reaction.

FLORES - What happened?

EDEN - I saw people run out of the theater and literally throw up. There had been nothing before it that had the gore. People lost it!

FLORES - Was there a lot of controversy?

EDEN - The controversy for me didn’t hit until we did the film Color Me Blood Red. I had blurted out “Oh my God” during a shoot. The scene was left in. No one had ever said “Oh my God” in a movie before! Critics couldn’t believe the language! The gore didn’t shock them as much as me saying that!

FLORES - How did 2000 Maniacs come about?

EDEN - We shot it in St. Cloud, Florida. The townspeople did not know what the film was about. I think they thought it was a murder mystery. Remember the scene of the barrel with nails going down a hill?

FLORES - Oh yeah.

EDEN - I was in the barrel! To get a camera shot from inside! The camera was OK but the battery pack left me bruised and hurt. So I had to get makeup on all these bruises, as I was in the next scene! It was a lot of fun, though. I went on the road with 2000 Maniacs at the drive-ins, promoting the film. That was what Herschell and David did back then. They would go to theater owners’ homes and pitch them the movie and make a deal. I would appear at the theater. Pontiac gave me a car to use. No money, but it helped sell the film. When you see shots of the townsfolk in 2000 Maniacs, those are the real people that lived there. We had taken the whole town over! They saw us do the shot of me pulled apart by horses, and didn’t realize we were shooting a horror film. We did not open the film there, as you might imagine. Years later, a fan took me back to the town and looked up the old stories from the local paper. When their reviewer did his review, his headline was that the town had been hoodwinked!

FLORES - Next came Color Me Blood Red.

EDEN - We shot almost that entire film at one house in Florida. That scene where the painter uses a girl’s entrails to paint with?

FLORES - Yes.

EDEN - I packed her stomach with these things! Sure enough, when the artist started painting with them, audience members fled the theater! You know, the only movie to ever give me nightmares was The Thing when I was a kid. After working on those films, I was never scared at a horror film again! My favorite film to work on was Friedman’s The Defilers. There was actually a budget on that one! The lead actor was so bad they replaced him. Byron Mabe was the grip and he took over the role! He went on to direct She Freak and had a big hit with The Doberman Gang. That was a great time.

FLORES - So you saw Sinatra naked -- and in drag!

EDEN - [Laughter] Yes.

FLORES - That is one of my favorite parts in the book! Man, I still can’t get over the stories you have in Against The Wind! Tell me about hanging out with Elvis.

EDEN - Elvis was renting this house that had been rented by the Shah of Iran and Ali Khan. It was huge and in Bel-Air. There was a sex room. It had theater seats. There were three rows of five seats, facing a big two-way mirror. I was working for Troy Donahue and he was doing the hit show Surfside 6 and sex was everywhere. Well, we would quietly take our seats and Elvis and sometimes the Memphis Mafia (the name of his hangers-on) would have sex with the girls when Priscilla wasn’t around. Which all of us could see. I doubt Tuesday Weld, or the other big-name actresses know to this day. But if they were at that house in Bel-Air. . . What made it odd was that Elvis was such a goody-goody in so many ways. There was no liquor allowed in the house then. Yet he was also a raging pervert!

FLORES - You have lived a life, even with its highest highs and lowest lows, that most men only dream of. This book is a terrific read and I can’t recommend it to our readers enough.

EDEN - Thanks. I tried to be as honest as I could.

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