Stuart Gordon likes to get a rise out of people.

And if it involves blood and guts, so much the better.

"Shocking people, I think, is something that I enjoy, " says Gordon, 60, director of the horror thriller "Stuck " being screened Saturday night at the 10th annual Wisconsin Film Festival. "I like to do things that get people 's blood running and their hearts beating. "

Because, the film director explains, sometimes a quickened pulse and that I-can 't-stand-to-look-but-I-have-to-look feeling in a darkened theater can force audiences to think once, twice and more about a theme that underlies the gruesome special effects.

It 's a lesson he first learned while an undergraduate actor and director at UW-Madison from 1965-69. That 's when Gordon -- best-known today for his 1985 horror hit "Re-Animator " and 1987 's murderous "Dolls " -- first egged on spectators to the point that they 'd rise out of their seats and attack actors in a play.

The university is where Gordon also made headlines by putting nude students on-stage for an avant-garde production of "Peter Pan. "

Later, he 'd found several performance companies, including Broom Street Theater, and eventually head to L.A.

Born in Chicago, Gordon attended Lane Tech High School in hopes of becoming a commercial artist, a dream that was dashed when he landed an apprenticeship in a commercial art studio "and hated it, " he says. "So I decided I 'd go to college and try to figure something else out. "

He 'd heard that UW was a good school and, besides, one of his best friends -- Dennis Paoli, Gordon 's writing partner to this day -- was going there. The pair roomed together in Ogg Hall.

"When I got (to Madison), I felt like I was in paradise, " Gordon says. "I had been going to an all-boys technical high school that was very strict and repressive. And Madison felt like just the opposite: Very welcoming and fun. And beautiful girls. I ended up meeting my wife (Janesville native Carolyn Purdy-Gordon) there, and we 've been married ever since. "

Gordon had always been interested in film, but at the university, "there was only one film class in those days, and it was full. So I took an acting class instead. One of the requirements was that you had to be in a play. And the play that was being done that semester was called Marat/Sade. '

"It was a ground-breaking, revolutionary piece that takes place in a madhouse, a play-within-a-play being put on by the inmate, " he says. "There 's the sense that at any moment, the inmates may go berserk and jump into the audience and start killing everybody.

"That play really changed my attitude about theater, " says Gordon. "I always thought theater was just sort of bad movies. But the idea that there was interaction between the audience and the actors is something that was a completely new idea to me. "

Inspired, Gordon wrote his own theater piece, which won a playwriting contest and the chance to direct it in the Memorial Union 's Play Circle. Called "The Game Show, " the play "was set up sort of like one of those TV game shows like Truth or Consequences, ' " he says. "The audience were given different colored tickets when they walked in and a wheel was spun, and whatever color came up, they were the contestants. It was rigged, of course, so we had plants in the audience playing some of these contestants. They were brought on stage and humiliated, and sometimes beaten.

"One woman was about to be raped. And what ended up happening was that at every performance, the audience would rise up and stop the play, " he says. "They would attack the actors. It was insane. "

As a result of "The Game Show, " Gordon was invited by a faculty member to produce a summer 's worth of experimental theater.

"This was in 1968, the same year as the Democratic convention in Chicago, " says Gordon. He and Carolyn joined protestors at the convention "and we ended up getting tear-gassed and attacked by the police. I was arrested.

"It was a huge political awakening for both of us, " he says. "We came back to Madison in the fall, and I had this idea that maybe you could do sort of a satire on what was happening, and frame it within the play Peter Pan. ' "

Gordon didn 't change the script, "but we made Peter Pan and his Lost Boys into hippies, sort of revolutionaries, " he says. "Wendy and her brothers were sort of the straight kids who got pulled into the whole thing, as Carolyn and I had that summer. Captain Hook was Mayor Daley of Chicago. "

The "trouble " arose, however, when instead of flying off to Neverland in stage harnesses, the characters took a trip via LSD under a psychedelic light show, which was projected onto several naked dancers, including Gordon 's girlfriend.

"When word got out that that 's what was happening, the district attorney stepped in said the show was obscene, and that if we continued we would be arrested, " he says. "We thought that was a violation of free speech. " The show went on, and "my wife and I both got arrested on obscenity (charges). We got married because we were living together at the time, and our defense attorney said that 's not going to look good when you go to trial. "

The charges were later dismissed. Gordon, with just a semester till graduation and a warning from the theater department that he 'd be "heavily supervised " until then, decided to leave school. He founded Broom Street, and soon took his Organic Theater Company to Chicago, which over the years premiered "Bleacher Bums " and David Mamet 's "Sexual Perversity in Chicago. "

At Organic, "I had this wonderful company of actors that included people like Joe Mantegna and Dennis Franz. Whenever a movie was going to be shot in Chicago, they 'd always get cast, " he says. "It occurred to me that maybe we should do movies too. "

A friend suggested starting with a horror film, "because he said that was the easiest kind of film to raise money for. That 's still pretty good advice, " says Gordon, whose first film evolved into "Re-Animator. "

"I felt there were a lot of ideas that I had that I thought could only be expressed as film, " he says. "I still do theater from time to time. I still love it, and I still think it 's the most difficult art form, even more difficult than movies. "

Gordon did an artist-in-residence stint at UW-Madison in 2000. This year, he 'll come to answer questions after the late-night screening of "Stuck. "

"I always think of Madison is one of the places where I spent my happiest times, " he says. "For me, it was where I found out what I wanted to do with my life. It was the beginning of everything. "

IF YOU GO

What: Wisconsin Film Festival

When: Thursday through Sunday, April 6

Where: Nine theaters throughout the UW-Madison campus and Downtown

Tickets: $7 for most films. Available at the box office, 2nd floor, Memorial Union, 800 Langdon St.; at the door; or online at www.wifilmfest.org