>>PREVIEW
GRINDHOUSE
STARRING: Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Danny Trejo, Kurt Russell and Rosario Dawson
DIRECTED BY Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino
Opens Friday, April 6
Check listings
It’s the Grindhouse cover story too big for just one writer! Bryn Evans gives you the facts you need, and the hard-hitting journalism you’d expect! John Tebbutt provides all the undignified drooling exuberance you could ask for! It’s a double shot of slam-bang film reportage under one cover! Only in Fast Forward Weekly!
Folks, let me ask you something. Are you ready for zombie infestations and insane vehicular mayhem? Are you ready for an accelerator-stomping Kurt Russell, a machete-flinging Danny Trejo and the bodacious Rose McGowan as an ass-kicking stripper with a machine gun for a leg? Are you ready for back-to-back no-holds-barred exploitation nirvana? Lemme hear you shout hell yeah!
Grindhouse is almost here, ladies and gentlemen, and I’m so giddy with excitement that the expression on my face frightens children and animals. It finally happened – Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, El Mariachi) and Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction) got together and said "Hey, let’s make a double feature just for that guy in Calgary who loves all those skuzzy old movies so much." Gentlemen, I am touched and overwhelmed that you would undertake a project so perfectly suited to my outlandish tastes. Thank you.
Glee is one of the most enjoyable and misunderstood emotions available to us. We all love to experience glee, but we’re also ashamed of it, mostly because it feels so simple and childish. It is usually inspired by something silly and trivial, like unwrapping a Christmas present and finding a die-cast model Batmobile inside, complete with flashing dome light and grappling hook launcher. There’s nothing dignified about glee, and it’s an extremely difficult reaction to explain after the fact. What Rodriguez and Tarantino are doing is sharing their enthusiasm, their glee, for those outrageous lowbrow exploitation films most people are afraid to admit liking. If you’ve seen the trailer for Grindhouse, you’ve probably already made up your mind about it. Either it leaves you cold or you’re already in line outside the cinema, hopping up and down and foaming at the mouth.
The movies being celebrated in Grindhouse are the kinds of films we once saw in drive-ins, in skuzzy little downtown cinemas or on lurid VHS and Beta tapes. I remember the brief period in which 7-11 stores experimented with movie rentals and their one measly shelf was always packed with tacky but unforgettable junk like Bury Me An Angel (1972), Pieces (1982) and After the Fall of New York (1983). Advertising was where these gems really shone and their posters and trailers would tease viewers with images so outré and melodramatic that the viewer marvelled that such films could possibly exist. You’d catch a glimpse of a nun firing a machine gun from the back of a moving car and you’d be hooked.
In addition to utilizing exploitable hooks, the Grindhouse team is also dedicated to rediscovering the vanishing art of showmanship. Robert Rodriguez has already made great strides in restoring this practice by bringing 3-D glasses back to the cinema (Spy Kids 3-D, The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl), but here we’re getting something we haven’t seen in ages – an actual bona fide double feature. Is this Tarantino’s way of apologizing to audiences who had to pay twice to see the split-into-two-parts Kill Bill (2003 and 2004)? Who cares? We get two movies for the price of one! Plus, we get to see fake movie trailers from guest directors Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, and Edgar (Shaun of the Dead) Wright! The fake trailer gambit is a stroke of genius, and I’d love to see an entire feature made up of these crazy things.
I’m not the only one excited by this whole fake trailer thing. In Austin, Texas, the SXSW (South by Southwest) Film Festival recently held a competition in which amateur directors submitted their own homemade "Grindhouse-style" fake trailers. The shot-on-camcorder results include a bounty of lurid delights with such eye-catching titles as Tetas De Muerte, Night of the Hell Hamsters, Emmanuelle, Prisoner of Frankenstein, Kitty Kat Daniels vs. the Nuclear Cannibals and the competition-winning entry, Hobo with a Shotgun. The competition certainly seems to have inspired a lot of wigged-out creativity – I’m particularly fond of the vengeful porn star zombie epic, Snuff’s Enuff. You can view these twisted two-minute masterpieces on websites like YouTube and Ain’t It Cool News (to witness my own stab at a Grindhouse-style trailer, check out my Video Vulture column, elsewhere in this issue).
There are many who don’t look forward to Grindhouse with this level of enthusiasm. That’s fine. There are many who don’t share my taste in deviant cinema. Believe me, I understand. Some people would rather be right than happy. I’d like to point out that "happy" is a pretty nice thing to be. At the moment, the sight of Rose McGowan propelled through the air by an explosion, mowing down zombies with her machine-gun leg is making me grin like I’m made entirely out of teeth. If you are similarly inclined, I look forward to meeting you in the theatre lobby on opening day. |
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