[3] Initially recognized for his provocative and frequently controversial work in experimental theatre, Gordon began directing films in 1985.

Like his friend and fellow filmmaker Brian Yuzna, Gordon was a fan of H. P. Lovecraft and adapted several of the author's stories for the screen, including Re-Animator, From Beyond, and Dagon, as well as the Masters of Horror episode Dreams in the Witch-House.

He turned to the work of Edgar Allan Poe on two occasions, directing The Pit and the Pendulum in 1991 and The Black Cat for the Masters of Horror series in 2007.

[4][5] After graduating from Lane Technical High School, Gordon worked as a commercial artist apprentice prior to enrolling at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

In late March 1968, Gordon produced The Game Show on the Play Circle stage of the University of Wisconsin–Madison's Wisconsin Union Theater.

It wants you to get up and be forcibly smashed in the head and the body, it wants you to throw up, to scream out, to lose the trust of the person sitting right next to you, to reach and act.

[7] Gordon then formed Screw Theater in the summer of 1968 and produced and directed four shows, the final one, in the fall of 1968, a political version of Peter Pan that got him and his future wife arrested for obscenity.

As Gordon described it in a 2001 interview:I had been protesting against the war in Viet Nam, and got tear-gassed by the Chicago police, and it suddenly struck me that you could take Peter Pan and turn it into a political cartoon about the whole situation.

Later that year, with his wife Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, he relocated to Chicago and founded the Organic Theater Company, for which Gordon also served as artistic director.

[5] The initial production of Warp, co-written by Gordon, was such a huge hit for Organic that it briefly made it to Broadway, where it proved to be little understood.

[9] Gordon's 1973 production of The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit,(which 25 years later he made into a movie) featured an ensemble cast that included Dennis Franz, Meshach Taylor, and Joe Mantegna.

[9] In 2009, he directed the one-man theatrical show, Nevermore...An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe, which reunited him with Re-Animator alumnus, actor Jeffrey Combs[10] and writer Dennis Paoli.