COMING SOON TO SXSW! AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE

The feature-length documentary “American Grindhouse” explores the hidden history of the American Exploitation Film. The movie digs deep into this often overlooked category of U.S. cinema and unearths the shameless and occasionally shocking origins of this popular entertainment. Exploitation Cinema has left an indelible mark on American culture, and this informative and amusing documentary proves that its principles and popularity endure to this day.

American Grindhouse website

Exploitation Explained by The Other Bill

Bill Martell - my partner in cinematic pulp -  has an excellent review of the movie BITCH SLAP. 

Within that review Bill takes the time to go over the history and power of what is the exploitation film:

(Emphasis mine)

The review in the Los Angeles Times complained that BITCH SLAP was an exploitation film send up without the send up... and this made me scratch my head, because I never got the memo that it was a send up, and when you read the poster or publicity stuff (they had a great gimmick to make you see it more than once - collectible postcards for each of the characters in the film, and they gave away a different one every night) there was nothing about this being a send up... it was pretty much advertised as a fun exploitation film that *knows* it’s an exploitation film. Which makes it just an exploitation film.

Back in the drive in days, there were lots of exploitation films - made cheap and filled with things that would attract and audience. Lowest common denominator stuff like fast cars and topless women and machine guns. A studio film might have all of those things in a pretty story - and those things serviced the story. An exploitation film was *about* the exploitation stuff, with a flimsy story connecting the elements. Now, some exploitation films had *great* stories connecting the elements, and now those films are considered art. Tod Browning’s FREAKS is a great film, but where would it be without the promise of seeing a bunch of side show freaks? And the suggestion of side show freaks having sex with a hot blonde woman? Hey - I gotta see that!

And the drive in exploitation films offered the same sort of forbidden thrills. Hey, what really goes on in a women’s prison where they evil lesbian warden enjoys whipping the hot naked prisoners? Hey - I gotta see that!

One of the things I hate in studio films, I love in exploitation films: “kitchen sinking”. So many of those A.I.P. drive in films seemed like a grab bag of cool stuff threaded together into a film. So you might have custom hot rods and acrobats and some rock & roll band and a bikini beach party and dogs that do tricks and martial arts and a monster... all in the same movie! Hey - I gotta see that!

I’ve seen studio films that try to throw in a little bit of everything and end up with nothing, and the reason why is that the film is supposed to be about the story... and just ends up being about a little bit of everything. A mainstream studio film is all about the story, and even though it may have fast cars and hot women and a machine gun, it’s not ever about those things. Those things are elements of the story, not the story itself. The exploitation is in the background not the foreground.

Someone on a message board a couple of months ago was lamenting the 50s and 60s when Americans went to see foreign films... and even though that was before my time sitting in a cinema seat, I can tell you from conversations with those older than I am - they went to foreign films to see boobies. American films had no nudity at all - we still had censorship under the old system. But foreign films managed to sneak in nudity and the censors didn’t seem to care, maybe because the films were “cultural” and had subtitles and not everyone was going to flock to see them. Except a surprising number of normal middle class Americans saw a bunch of foreign films... often featuring nudity or lingerie or lots-a-cleavage. Thank you, Sophia Loren! Hey - I gotta see that!

Foreign films ended up being exploitation films! Just, with culture!

And that is the problem with the poor exploitation film - it has no culture. It is honest about its intentions. You may see a foreign film for culture... um, cleavage culture... but you see an exploitation film for the exploitation. We always complain that people these days go to the movies for the explosions and CGI - the exploitation elements. And it’s funny that I will hate TRANSFORMERS and then have an excited conversation with another film fan about that amazing street shoot out in HEAT. Okay, why isn’t HEAT an exploitation film? Why is a long shoot out in some B movie just stupid and a similar scene in HEAT complete genius? Well, it’s that HEAT isn’t just that shoot out (and the other great action scenes). But, isn’t there room in cinema for a film that *is* just about the shoot outs? A film that isn’t going to try and pass itself off as culture, and just be its sleazy self? A film that knows that one of the main reasons why you go to see HEAT or some big budget Hollywood movies is the exploitation elements? “You’ll believe a man can fly.” “From the moment they met it was murder.” Movies are all about sex and violence and exploitables... Heck, how many pages would be left in The Bible if we cut out all of the sex and violence?

Click on the link above and read the rest of the review.

William Castle: 1914 - 1977

This is William Castle.

You screwballs who are in film school right now who don't know who he is are MISSING OUT.

In fact an entire company division was created in order to remake this man's movies.

Note the cigar chomping resemblance to the Bastard in the profile on the right >>>>

Learn more here.

Note to professorial types: How can you teach film and not cover someone like Castle? What's film education coming to these days?

At A BadAss Theater Near You!

Though we've talked about it before - it bears repeating.

Prepare to be Exploited...

Do you have a B-Movie jones? Do you hunger for shotguns and six-pack Annies? Serial killers and spaceships? Alien abominations from the deepest, darkest reaches of the infinite?

But have you already exhausted your library of DVDs, worn holes through your VHS tapes?

Do you need to see more and more low budget exploitation masterpieces (ahem) than are actually out there?

Well now you can...sort of.

www.scripttease.tv is a website dedicated to those forgotten masterp...gems...tax write-offs that never existed. Titles like:

Shitty Waiter
Gianni Gunwhip
Impression
Breakdown
The Bike Thief
A Locomotive For Murder
Torcano!
Take Two and Kill Me in the Morning
Hangnail Hill
Death Knell

Now go have fun and tell Nik Macaluso that the Mad Pulp bastard sent you.

Sometimes...

when designing a marketing campaign you have to go to those places where you know the client is NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS going to go ...

Those dark places with the signposts up ahead that say, "Beware, here there be daemons."

It's very hard to surprise an entertainment industry audience these days (mainly the distributor and the foreign buyers) because they've seen every genre movie that's out there. Because they've heard every pitch, seen every poster, sell sheet, trailer, what-have-you...

But then, something connects and you decide, "I may get laughed at in the meeting, but I'm going to go old school on their ass!"

(This is where your movie history comes in handy. It's still new if they haven't seen it before!)

When you do it, sometimes you knock the client off their chair with something that is so different from what they were originally thinking, not part of the art direction they handed you, that they begin to think in new ways, new possibilities... options.

And then it's a whole new ball game.

And on the other side of the coin, you get laughed at. This one didn't get approved, but I like it. It opened doors, and allowed us to try things with another concept they liked better. The point is to keep swinging, trying new stuff, pushing the envelope, and never ever resting on your laurels.

I will post some of the other concepts later because you get to see the range of a genre concept and what you can do with it.

The Lunatics are Running The Asylum...

Of course, I mean this Asylum...

Dailies

Fantastic Fest Beer-Soaked Review...

From our special pulp correspondent James Moran:

Re: Not Quite Hollywood: It's fantastic - full of the raw, spunky grit and energy of the Ozsploitation flicks it celebrates. I was surprised how many I hadn't heard of, and how many I had but didnt know were Oz flicks. Some insane stories, and a genuinely insane film critic who said that one producer should be burnt down with all his works, and salt sown in the ground. Insane.

Great fun, as was JCVD, and The Burrowers which deserves a theatrical release but is a Lions Gate movie so will naturally be dumped on DVD...

Beer coma now...

No Explanation Required: Not Quite Hollywood

The website is here. The Variety review is here.

See you in the third row.

This just in: James Moran is at Fantastic Fest and tells me he's hoping to catch the screening of this movie. James, please send us your review if you do see it.

The Film Biz is Filled with Characters...

Of which Dick Randall is but one.







Courtesy of Mondo Macabro DVD.