Paul Naschy reads a document pertaining to his fate in THE NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF.
films played at area drive-ins, you could never compare visiting an ozoner with a downtown fleapit. It simply wasn’t the same.
I think this is the vibe that Tarantino and Rodriguez were channeling; otherwise, they would have called their film “Drive-In.” Neither of them seems old enough to have experienced a true grindhouse first hand (maybe Tarantino made it down to 42nd Street at the tail end of the “era”), but I think they cap- tured exactly what you might have seen if you went to one. My 18-year-old son attended GRINDHOUSE with me at the ven- erable old Senator Theater here in Baltimore, which also added to the atmosphere. I prepped him on the way down by giving him a primer on the grindhouse experience. He “got it” and really enjoyed the movie. However, I don’t think I’ve made him into a convert. While he likes contemporary horror, sci-fi and fantasy films, he thinks most of the older stuff I watch is just “junk”! Kids!
Tom Shumaker Parkton MD
78 GRIND BEEF
Before moving on to my main point about the GRINDHOUSE Round Table Discussion, I’d like to correct the statement that Quentin Tarantino (did not) “ever set foot in a real grindhouse the- ater...” Leading up to the release of GRINDHOUSE, Tarantino helped organize a two-month series of real grindhouse double- and even triple-bills at LA’s New Beverly Cinema. It was an amaz- ing array of dozens of rare and hard-to-find titles interspersed with genuine trailers from the era. Tarantino even provided many of the prints from his collection and introduced a number of the screenings personally. In his intros, he specifically mentioned driving up from the suburbs to downtown LA to go and see films such as SCREAMS OF A WINTER NIGHT and ROLLING THUNDER (both part of the fest) during the last gasp of the city’s grindhouses. So, a correction on that.
This leads to my larger point. I attended a couple dozen of the
films in that series. I was as primed to see the feature GRIND- HOUSE as you could be (as a Thank You, Tarantino personally arranged a sneak peak at the New Beverly). I enjoyed it, yet I felt let down at the same time. GRIND- HOUSE wasn’t true “grindhouse.” When you factor in advertising it’s reported cost spiraled to upwards of $70M plus. VW’s RTD does give some discussion to this (particu- larly the use of extensive CGI), but the group missed the true heart of the argument. Having been ex- posed to the real thing in an in- tensive festival atmosphere, GRINDHOUSE simply lacked the true inspiration, grit and attitude that the original films had. Hir- ing big time actors (sure, some were just cameos), employing CGI and makeup artists, and hav- ing a decent shooting schedule eliminates the need to be quick and resourceful as the original filmmakers had to be (and low cost doesn’t necessarily equate with low quality! Witness what Tom Savini and George Romero did with the makeup effects on something like DAWN OF THE
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