Horror History: Grindhouse (2007)

Tarantino and Rodriguez’s “Grindhouse” was a 2007 double-feature experiment that bombed initially but carved out a significant cult legacy.

In 2007, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez took a big risk.

The pair, who had famously collaborated over the years on projects such as Sin City, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Desperado, came up with the idea of reintroducing modern audiences to the nearly lost art of the double feature format. The dynamic duo would each make a 90-minute movie, separated by a brief intermission consisting of faux movie trailers, various other ads, and classic movie “bumpers.” They would dub the entire experience Grindhouse.

There were only two problems. The double feature experience was almost exclusive to gasping drive-in movie theaters, and most modern audience members had no idea what a “grindhouse” was.

Way back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, long before chain theaters reigned supreme in every single suburb, several major American cities played host to studio-owned movie palaces born out of the Golden Age of cinema.

These once-glamorous venues, which saw their decadent heyday between the 1920s and 1960s, gradually declined into dens of debauchery, where questionable patrons eager to lose themselves in a bottle of booze, get high in the bathroom, or pleasure themselves before the exposed flesh on the giant tattered screens would plunk down money for a double or triple bill that promised several hours of uncompromising mayhem.

The theaters would “grind” out these pictures, most of the time over the course of one evening, thus earning them their nickname—“grindhouses.”

Sometimes the movies advertised on the glowing marquees outside delivered on the insanities they promised. Sometimes, they didn’t, which only incensed the hardened viewers already looking for confrontation.

If a movie like Make Them Die Slowly (aka Cannibal Ferox) didn’t, well, make the folks in the picture die SLOWLY, take cover. You were probably getting belted by an empty beer bottle.

By the late 1980s and early ‘90s, “grindhouses” (and the neon peep-show culture that surrounded these types of theaters) faded away into the history books.

They were shuttered by the emergence of home video, AIDS, and even harder drugs.

The most prominent hive of “grindhouses” was found on 42nd Street, right in the heart of bustling New York City, which morphed from a playground of XXX thrills into a family-friendly tourist destination brought to you by Disney and other big corporations.

Meanwhile, over in the home video market, exploitation cinema (or “grindhouse” movies) had taken on a cult following. Stuff like Cannibal Holocaust, The Streetfighter, Thriller, Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, Switchblade Sisters and more went deep underground, living again on worn VHS tapes and on the yellowing pages of various nostalgia books and horror magazines.

Were they cool? Not especially. At least not to the teens that were more interested in Scream and the countless other conveyor-belt hack-and-slash films that were flooding cinemas in the ‘90s.

By the early 2000s, things were starting to change for horror.

In 2004, “torture porn” emerged triumphant with the release of James Wan’s Saw, a solid little independent horror movie that, yes, was heavy on the blood-and-guts, but also tried to tell a complex story with a wicked twist of a final shot.

Meanwhile, a bevy of old horror movies were getting the remake treatment, with a new generation discovering spiffed-up takes on classics like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead, and The Hills Have Eyes, ratcheting up a newfound curiosity for the pillars of the genre. And then there were Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.

Tarantino and Rodriguez both rose to fame on the wings of exploitation past.

Tarantino exploded on the scene in 1992 with the silver-tongued crime thriller Reservoir Dogs. That same year, Rodriguez’s spaghetti-western tinged El Mariachi also blasted its way onto the radar of mainstream moviegoers.

Each film had one foot planted firmly in the past, right in the bullet-riddled center of the exploitation annals that undoubtedly played to drunks, perverts and junkies inside those famed “grindhouses”. They’d continue to forge their respective career paths referencing these types of cheapie movies, to chef’s kiss results.

As the duo struck up a friendship, they bonded heavily over their shared love for trashy horror and B-movie toughies that shaped their cinematic eye. Tarantino soon became known for hosting movie nights at his house, where he’d invite over his closest pals to gather before his personal collection of movie prints of the weird and wild, thus planting the seed for the Grindhouse project.

After kicking the idea around with Rodriguez for a spell, the pair geared up to make a double feature unlike any other, at least in the current indoor theater setting.

Rodriguez got to work on Planet Terror, a sci-fi-zombie hybrid heavily inspired by Dawn of the Dead and the knockoffs that Italy was whipping up in the early ‘80s. Tarantino got behind the wheel of Death Proof, a slasher movie that wandered onto the set of Vanishing Point and Death Race 2000.

They churned them out fast and furious, like two kids set loose in a candy shop.

They even went so far as to add digital scratches in an effort to make it look like their films were previously unearthed relics salivating for the light of day, or, at the very least, a movie projector.

As the team assembled their grand experiment, a red light bulb clicked above their noggins.

Why not toss in a few fake trailers to punch the project up?!

Enter Eli Roth (Hostel), Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) and Rob Zombie (House of 1000 Corpses), who hunkered down to deliver Thanksgiving, Don’t, and Werewolf Women of the SS, three gems (along with Rodriguez, who churned out Machete) that furthered added to the batshit landscape of Grindhouse.

Brimming with go-go dancers outfitted with machine gun limbs, cannibalistic ghouls with melting penises, stuntman slashers whose preferred weapon is their muscle car, and more body fluids than you could shake a severed leg at, Grindhouse fishtailed into cinemas on Easter weekend of 2007, with anticipation fairly high (or at least that is the way it seemed).

It roared in and found itself playing to a confused crowd who simply didn’t “get it.”

It opened to poor numbers at the box office, which continued to dwindle as audiences just shrugged their shoulders at this eccentric little oddity. However, critics mostly loved it, gushing over this kitschy throwback and all it lobbed at the audience over its three-hour runtime.

Some audiences groaned about the film’s momentum, with Tarantino’s film being more of a chatty slow burn compared to the full-throttle blast that was Rodriguez’s effort.

The debate still rages as to which film reigns supreme.

In the wake of its release, the Weinstein Company split the film into two and dumped them separately onto Blu-ray, mirroring the film’s release outside the United States.

Since the “grindhouse” experience was uniquely American, the intended presentation failed to resonate beyond the U.S. border. The Blu-ray release angered fans who celebrated the film’s theatrical presentation, crying out for Grindhouse to be released in its intended form—a double feature with those funky little trailers included.

Several years later, the rabid fanbase got their wishes with a fully-loaded Blu-ray that found Planet Terror and Death Proof together again in unholy matrimony, joined up with the dizzying nuggets of faux-trailer gold that put the bloody bow on this ooey-gooey package.

Spin-offs also emerged, with Rodriguez directing a feature-length Machete movie (which also failed to really nab attention outside of Grindhouse worshippers), Rob Zombie recording a surf-rock ditty centered around his Werewolf Women of the SS contribution, and Roth finally expounding on his ingenious Thanksgiving trailer with an impressive full-length feature.

To this day, Tarantino continues to defend this unfortunate flop, admitting that people just weren’t clued in on what he and Rodriguez were trying to achieve.

Rodriguez said that he felt the Weinstein Company buried the film because Rose McGowan was one of the film’s stars. McGowan would famously accuse Harvey Weinstein of rape during the emergence of the #MeToo movement in 2017.

Together, it’s clear the duo cherishes the film, and their undying love is laid bare in every frame, a jubilant carnival of what gets these fellas out of bed in the morning.

Despite failing to stick the landing when it first debuted, Grindhouse continues to seduce the attention of horror gurus, both new and old.

When it came out, the environment seemed primed for a goopy throwback (with “torture porn” and remakes the rage, you’d would have thought the crowds would have been bigger), but the stars didn’t quite align.

Strangely, a slew of wannabes followed in the film’s wake, but none of these wannabes seemed to pluck the same bump-and-grind guitar notes that pleased the day-one fans like me. I proudly marveled at its excesses on opening night, surrounded by friends in a memory I cherish. Many of them probably forgot, but I haven’t.

Today, we thrive on a steady diet of nostalgia.

As the remake craze cooled and the “torture porn” well dried up, the horror genre found other ways to wallow in the past, with synthy scores that screamed EIGHTES right into your eardrum, retro title cards complete with trademark information tacked on, and more, all in a desperate attempt to appease those who dig on these types of winks and nods (see stuff like The House of the Devil, It Follows, Terrifier, and countless others).

Did Grindhouse spark this appetite? I think you could argue that it did and continues to do so.

The beauty about true-blue horror fans is that we respect that past while embracing the future.

Speaking personally, I genuinely love to see what these new school directors are cooking up, but my backwards baseball cap is off to the catalogue of yesterday. I go wild for releases from Grindhouse Releasing (who have been in operation since 1996), Severin, and Vinegar Syndrome, to name a few.

I love seeing what whacked-out foibles they unearth, a love that I feel extends to Grindhouse and its literal explosion of adoration for the underbelly of cinema.

I firmly believe it was the seed that blossomed into our thirst for a fizzy cocktail of years-gone-by. And, yes, Tarantino’s filmography since Grindhouse has helped bolster it even further, with his spaghetti westerns, buffed-up war picture, and his spin on ‘60s Hollywood, all of which have had their hands in the nostalgia cookie jar.

But Grindhouse, man, that’s the fucking ticket right there. How can you resist it? And how can you ignore it?

Eighteen years on, Grindhouse still kicks a whole bunch of ass.

It’s funny and fresh and kills with homages (the splinter in the eye tribute from Zombie, the “Acuna Boys” reference that tips the smoking shotgun barrel to Rolling Thunder, and more). It begs to be seen with friends, paired up with cold beers and calorie-heavy snacks.

It’s lean, mean, and uber macho, as macho as Kurt Russell downing cocktails between big bites of greasy nachos. It’s touching, offensive, strangely harmless, and, in a way, like a film school history course crammed into “one SMASH EXPLOSIVE show.”

So, I say to you, if you haven’t seen—or EXPERIENCED—Grindhouse in some time, or, if you’ve slept on it all these years, find a copy of it. Now. What are you waiting for? You’ll be amazed by how influential it actually is.

Despite sputtering over the starting line, it helped mainstream the exploitation vault of cinema and invited horror aficionados to fully immerse themselves in the lost and forgotten passion projects that cinema history tried desperately to bury; the real deep cut shit that was nearly discarded and forgotten.

Thankfully, Rodriguez and Tarantino didn’t forget them.

Come to think of it, maybe Grindhouse wasn’t such a flop after all…