With scenes featuring flesh devouring microbes gnawing and eating their way into legs, faces, and famously out of Ray Tudor's stomach, it was The Flesh Eaters that pioneered the art of the "gore" film back in 1964. Director Jack Curtis would die of pneumonia in 1970 without making another film, but the editor of The Flesh Eaters, Radley Metzger, moved into the director's chair to create his own groundbreaking work -- in the world of adult films.

Metzger's shift from editor to stylish porn director began when he decided to import I, a Woman in 1966, a Swedish sex film which became a huge success in the US. He decided to direct his own soft core film the following year, and with the release of Carmen, Baby, he began his career as an auteur of adult films.

His early work -- The Lickerish Quartet (1967), Camille 2000, and the commercially successful Therese and Isabelle (1968) -- was considered more elegant and worldly then those of his peers. Fittingly, during the "porno chic" era of the 1970s, Metzger adopted the more sophisticated-sounding pseudonym, Henry Paris, and directed several other highly successful films.

A fan of Max Ophuls and Orson Welles, Metzger did direct one mainstream feature, The Cat and the Canary (1978), but his work in the "golden era" of adult cinema is how the editor turned director will be remembered. It was his 1976 film, The Opening of Misty Beethoven, that garnered him his biggest prize: Best Director and Best Film honors at the first Adult Film Association of America Awards.

Flesh Eaters airs tomorrow, Saturday, March 1 on AMC at 4:45AM | 3:45C. For the full schedule, click here.