Great news! The documentary American Grindhouse (for which I provided some animated “film burn” titles) will be premiering next month at South by Southwest in Austin, TX!
Dates have been confirmed for:
Saturday, March 13th at 9 pm
Tuesday, March 16th at 10 pm
It’s terrific documentary about the history of exploitation film in America. Great interviews and tons of clips — featuring interviews with master filmmakers Joe Dante, Larry Cohen, John Landis, Herschell Gordon Lewis, William Lustig, Ted V. Mikels, Fred Olen Ray, Lewis Teague and more.
ALSO, the movie will be playing at the Boston Underground Film Festival the week of March 25 – April 1.
Congrats to director Elijah Drenner and crew!
Here is the official SXSW Greenband Preview. Warning, includes some sexiness…
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Am I the only person bothered by the overuse of the term “Grindhouse” to refer to exploitation films? “Drive-in movie” is a much better term; especially considering that the experience of viewing a film at a drive-in is unquestionably the perfect way to view a motion picture. I find it especially jarring that the preview would feature animation taken from drive-in intermission reels.
It’s obvious that the primary reason behind the current proliferation of the term “grindhouse” has to do with the championing of the Urban over the rural (drive-ins were typically located in areas where the “city” met the “town” and outside of the urban-scum-hive. The title “American Grindhouse” emphasis on the “American”; is even more troubling considering that the Drive-in theatre is far more symbolic of the great dying American culture and it’s attachment to the big cars that promised to be (and can be) chariots to the heaven that is the “American Dream”.
When my local drive-in closed; which was STILL playing films like Faces of Death in the 1990s (often prefaced by having some drunken local psychos smash a rusted out car spraypainted with the words “kill me!”) I vowed to never again view a movie in an indoor theatre. As Americans we should strive to champion the ideal enviroment for viewing exploitation films (real American food, girl in the seat next to you, speaker in the window, stars above you) as oppossed to the pathetic grindhouse where there existed the immediate threat of being urinated or vomited on by some tranny wino with an Archie Bunker accent. At least when people at the drive-in were steaming up their windows I DIDN’T HAVE TO SMELL IT.
I see your point, that the grindhouse and drive-in environments were two different things. One might have a totally different experience seeing the same movie in each.
But many of those movies DID play in both places. For better or worse, grindhouse is now a term that has become equated with exploitation films. It’s hard enough to agree on a definition of “explotiation,” but that’s what American Grindhouse explores. It talks about the origins of and distribution for non-studio films in America. Grindhouse theaters played a part in that. Drive-ins played a part. Ultimately, exploitation elements were incorporated into big budget theatrical movies, as well as becoming fodder for the direct-to-video market.
Personally, I have no nostalgia for either the urban (grindhouse) or rural (drive-in), as my childhood movie-going took place in sub-urban multiplexes. But I admire the spirit — and sometimes lunacy or depravity — of movies made outside the mainstream.