A few days ago, I checked out GRINDHOUSE, knowing I might not get another chance for a big-screen viewing after its sad-sack finish in the box office races, well behind the Hitchcock rip DISTURBIA, the MONEY PIT rip ARE WE DONE YET? And some other crap I’m not going to bother scouring the internet for. Given that the Weinsteins are now considering separating the program’s two features to recoup their losses, anyone wanting to see GRINDHOUSE as it was meant to be may be S.O.L. if they don’t hurry.
GRINDHOUSE the movie, and the experience, is great fun for anyone with a strong sense of absurd irony. I may be dating myself here: I was around for the tail-end of the grindhouse movement, and spent many weekends at the local run-down single screen cinemas and drive-ins soaking up wildly mis-dubbed kung fu flix, along with many blaxploitation, Godzilla and Italian gore classics. Younger film-goers, accustomed to watching demographically composed PG-13 fare on their portable DVD players, are probably scratching their green-tinted heads in confusion at the grindhouse concept, wondering what the hell is so great about scratched film stock and missing reels.
I won’t bother to try and explain it. But obviously I’m not alone in my appreciation for The Old Ways. Every other day, a new indie horror feature is announced, its producers enthusiastically promising a “throwback to the classics of the 70s and 80s…” I swear I’ve read some variation of this pitch at least twenty times.
The remake boom, now in full swing, is another symptom of the same philosophy, though many horror fans consider that a minus. Personally, I tend to judge each re-make on its own merits. But the line has blurred, with most filmmakers these days simply taking a tried-and-true concept, tweaking it just enough to avoid legal repercussions, then amping up the shock/gore/cruelty quotient, hoping that will fill any lingering needs for originality among us horror hounds. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I’m all for loving tributes, but it’s not hard to see who has their eyes on the easy money.
Being a screenwriter, I feel entitled to my rants. More than a few times, I’ve witnessed the scenario of would-be producers asking for something original, only to see them ask that it be extensively restructured to look like everything else. It seems that distributors would rather spend their time on something they can relate to a previous hit: “It’s like ‘The Hills Have Eyes’, but with strippers and hobos.”
And we horror fans wonder why our beloved genre is treated like kiddie porn.
Back to GRINDHOUSE: Tarantino and Rodriguez manage to not only work within the studio system, but to wield unimaginable power, making exactly the film they want (usually). This is a good thing people, not a bad thing, for these two former film geeks definitely come from the “loving tribute” school of imitative filmmaking, giving their well-trod material an original spin without resorting to cheap shocks.
GRINDHOUSE deserves a better fate than it got. And thanks to the DVD industry, you still have a chance to make up for caving to your non-horror-rabid buddy’s and girlfriend’s uninformed assertion that “’Disturbia’ looks better. Besides, it’s shorter.”
So be ready to rent or buy that sucker, and give it a spin. Forget not The Old Ways, for they are The New Way.
Read all of Patrick Green’s articles and reviews at Grave Misgivings
