David F. Friedman
| David F. Friedman | |
|---|---|
| Born |
David Frank Friedman December 24, 1923 Birmingham, Alabama, U.S. |
| Died | February 14, 2011 (aged 87) Anniston, Alabama, U.S. |
| Occupation | Director, producer |
| Years active | 1954–2010 |
David Frank Friedman (December 24, 1923 – February 14, 2011) was an American filmmaker and film producer best known for his B-movies, exploitation film, as well as nudie cutie, sexploitation, gore and other low quality. He never claimed any artistic merit in any of his films.
Friedman first became interested in entertainment after spending part of his childhood in Birmingham and Anniston, Alabama, traveling carnival sites. He worked as a film projectionist in Buffalo before serving in the US Army during the Second World War.
He met exploitation film pioneer Kroger Babb during his army service. This encounter got him interested in films. He then worked as a regional marketing man for Paramount, and sensed the money in independent distributing.
He started his own company in the 1950s, which mainly produced so-called nudie cutie films such as Goldilocks and The Three Bares, shot in nudist colonies, films that were the closest thing to pornography legally available at the time. This trend was followed by the sexploitation and "roughie" genres, depicting simulated sex with a more violent edge, often horror- or crime-related. Examples of Friedman's roughies are The Defilers (1965),The Lustful Turk (1968), The Head Mistress (1968) and The Adult Version of Jekyll and Hide (1971, directed by Byron Mabe). Helming one of those movies, Friedman started his working relationship with Chicago-based teacher and filmmaker Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Friedman went on to produce the latter's 1963 film Blood Feast, an American exploitation film often considered the first "gore" or splatter film. He was also the producer of two of the first Nazi exploitation films, Love Camp 7 (1969) and Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS (1974), for which he wouldn't use his real name and was credited as Herman Traeger.
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