The New Grindhouse Era

Back in 2007. Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino teamed up to make a two part feature film experience appropriately titled Grindhouse.  Each director provided their own feature length film in the grindhouse cinema tradition including bad edits, missing reels, and noticeable film grain.  It was a throwback film designed to not only be an enjoyable time at the movies, but to recall a point in history when the rejected films of society were celebrated in dollar theaters in big cities around the country.  These films usually consisted of taboo subject matter including large amounts of sex, violence, and drug use and in some cases, all of those.  This was a form of entertainment that a large portion of society wanted to see, but Hollywood was just not producing at the time.  When Grindhouse came out in 2007, it inadvertently opened the flood gates to a style of filmmaking that would invoke a new renaissance of stylistic qualities.

This may require some explaining and in doing so, take for example recent films such as Black Dynamite or Bitch Slap.  They are designed to be enjoyable films that exist to comment on a wilder and loosely time in cinema.  For Black Dynamite, it highlighted ridiculous moments in the Blaxploitation era of films like Shaft, Little Ceaser, and Blacula.  Bitch Slap goes a little bit of a different route and tires to appeal to the nostalgia of the sex/cars/nudity = awesome philosophy.  The films are enjoyable sure, but more importantly they are just a few of the many grindhouse style films (and internet videos/projects) that have been popping up steadily since 2007.  I understand the whole craze (it looks cool, invokes awesome warm and fuzzy feelings), I really do, I just feel that this stylistic choice is becoming a bit overplayed.   

The choice of using this style today does have its uses in the popular definition of what a grindhouse film has been recently become identified with.  The film grain, scratches, muted colors, and artfully terrible dialog act as a visual signifier to let the audience know what they are getting themselves into.  It’s going to be filmmaking to the absolute extreme.  Now this could mean sex, violence, gore, or even action but that detail is moot considering you already know that you are going to see something that is insanely awesome (hopefully).  However, when you overuse this stylistic technique, you can quickly go from a cool and nostalgic throwback to a fun time in movie history into a bloated and terrible film that is using the grindhouse style as a marketing tactic.

In Grindhouse, this is not the case.  Quentin Tarantino chose to do his segment in Grindhouse (called Death Proof) in a very visually specific manner.  There are frame drops, scratches, and grain that exist to comment on QT’s personal film experiences growing up.  He remembers the Vanishing Point days of massive car chases and collisions and he wants to both narratively and stylistically make homage to those types of car chase films from the 70s.  I have no problem with using the style here whatsoever because QT wants to educated and entertain rather than just use the style as a way to give the audience a hint about what the movie will intail.  At the core of his effort is a good film that is only supplemented by this stylistic choice.  Robert Rodriquez did something similar with his installment titled Planet Terror.

Planet Terror was a study in overused clichés that someone made its way into a bad ass movie and fun ride.  In many ways, RR wants to not only recall films from his past, but point out glaring clichés in a genre that was boiling over with them.  Normally this becomes a very annoying practice, but RR’s movie isn’t just one big cliché and gag factory, it’s a very fun and entertaining look at a viral outbreak.  It uses just the right amount of recall from previous films as well as its own merits as a storytelling vehicle to invoke all the right responses on a very fine line between comedy and all out farce from a viewer.  It was like RR was telling the audience, "This is why I love the Grindhouse era of films; it’s for moments like these".  Then again like I said before, not everyone uses the style and conventions as supplementation.

I don’t want to name certain films here, but I’m sure you’ve all seen recent attempts at capitalizing on the resurgence of the grindhouse style.  It’s supposed to be a stylistic choice, not a reason for presenting the world with a terrible movie.  Planet Terror and Death Proof both worked because the stylistic choices fit in with the movie’s themes, ideas, and central concept of reliving an entire experience.  This was magnified with the fact that if you take away the grindhouse look, you’re still left with two good films.  With these imitators, when you take away the grindhouse look, you are left with a terrible movie that if it wasn’t for the market scheme, would probably have never been picked up by a distributor.

Please don’t misunderstand me here; I love the grindhouse treatment that modern films are getting peppered with.   It reminds me of a time when movie going was actually a bit dangerous, like maybe for instance you would go to that dirt cheap cinema and someone became addicted to crack immediately after viewing the film!  It was movie hype at its best with films constantly trying to one up each other in the realms of sex, violence, or Gary Busey levels of crazy.  I’m just not too keen on movies using it to evoke feelings out of viewers that they themselves don’t fully understand.  It’s not like we are going to go to one of these nu-grindhouse films and see something that we have never seen before, but then again, maybe someday someone will shut me up.  I hope that they do.