For Sizzle: AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE (2010)

 

I considered myself a sleaze merchant know-it-all prior to entering AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE, but still had to see it if only for my idol, Kim Morgan's presence (below) as a talking head. Turns out it's pretty cool and I learned new stuff. In addition to the "sinsational" Ms. Morgan there's: "Czar of Noir" Eddie Muller (good), John Landis (fun), Jack Hill (Zen), and Joe Dante (tres cool), not to mention people I was sure I'd be annoyed by but turned out to love, like Herschell Gordon Lewis (sage-like), of whom Landis says, "I don't particularly like his films, but I love his posters!" Hey, that's a compliment in exploitation land and you can tell Landis means every word of it. Despite the crushing despair I experienced covering the SW double feature of Lewis' JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT/BLAST-OFF GIRLS (for the now defunct DVD Angle), I must admit Lewis seems like a helluva nice, smart, relaxed guy - and even a squeamish feminist like myself has to doff his hat to the man who made 2,000 MANIACS - in the words of Michael Weldon: "YEE-HAW!".

Producer/director/editor Elijah Drenner keeps it all humming along at a nice clip through the decades, starting around the dawn of cinema and ending with recent tributes like Tarantino and Rodriguez's GRINDHOUSE. There's elements I would have put in (the rise of the VCR and Disneyfication of Times Square) and others I may have left out (THE TWO-HEADED TRANSPLANT) but you'll never squeeze the whole history into a single film, and Drenner keeps it all from being too flashy or too slow, too normal or too head-spinningly weird --and does not spare the adult content: bare breasts, sexual assault and horrific gore are all here, with many of the most disturbing clips from the most disturbing films: ILSA: SHE-WOLF OF THE SS and the works of HG Lewis (pictured below), such as BLOOD FEAST, for example. And the clips all look really, really good. It's very strange that this stuff was once so shocking you could only see it as a legal adult in a sleazy theater at the stroke of midnight, and now it's nostalgia and much less traumatic, and yet - the times are if anything more conservative and morally regressive than ever.

HGL and some of his 2,000 Maniacs

The best praise I could give for something like this is that it reminded me of when I was a kid in the 70s and actually scared of the TV commercials and newspaper ads for a lot of these movies. I could also see a portion of a drive-in screen, far in the distance, from my bedroom window, if I used my kid telescope - I watched THE MANITOU that way! I still haven't seen LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (from fear of post-rape viewing trauma more than anything else) but if I could be assured the actual DVD transfers of these films looked as good as they cleaned-up clips here, I'd be all over it. Plus, Drenner leavens any unease about the film by showing lots of outtakes: LAST HOUSE seems less foreboding now that I've seen David Hess shooting the breeze with his onscreen victims between shots.

It must have been a difficult choice to leave out the European imports that had a huge effect on grindhouse distribution patterns (I asked Drenner about that: "We had to make a clear line down the middle and decide what to cover and what to leave out.") On the other hand, who needs a complete picture? That's what Michael Weldon's Psychotronic Cinema Guide The Psychotronic Video Guide To Film is for! What we have here in AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE is a nice little summary of 100% American film output, a carny's insider view of Yankee hooplah and pitchman ballyhoo, with art and culture pushed way to the side until it's off the table -- and lands with a lowbrow splat.

There's stuff here I didn't know about, which shocked me. I had no idea the film THE CORPSE GRINDERS was a huge hit for Ted V. Mikels. The grinding of corpses carries no appeal for me, personally, but I always kind of subconsciously associated it with the term grindhouse (or the shredding of old film in a cheap projector, grinding the sprockets). When I learned the name's taken from "Bump and grind" as a mark of when the country's once plentiful burlesque houses were turned into theaters to show films of girls stripping (cheaper that way), you coulda knocked me over with a feather from a rhinestone pastie. Imagine if it was called 'bumphouse' instead? Why just grind, man? 

The whole stripper genre was a bit of a blind spot in my sleaze-education prior to this film but apparently there were an awful (in both senses) lot of them. Ed Wood fans still recovering from trying to stay awake through ORGY OF THE DEAD might be glad to know it's not anyone's fault that they failed. LSD fans who tried and failed to watch more than ten minutes of MANTIS IN LACE can also relax for the same reason. Apparently there was a time when looooong dull stationary camera striptease scenes (as with burlesque queen, Blaze Starr, atop with drum) were considered the height of decadence. Fascinating, yet tame and tedious in our age of readily ubiquitous nudity and XXX-rated websites.
 

I've got minor quibbles with AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE as a whole, of course: we'd be so much better off with more of the witty Kim Morgan, though when she's put on the spot for saying women like to see other women naked ("They do!" she exclaims in reaction to Drenner's apparent offscreen incredulity) it seems a bit of a weird inclusion; if you're going to leave it in the film, don't doubt the woman! She's trying to help Travis Bickle get Cybil Shepherd to go with him to see SOMETIMES SWEET SUSAN (see way below).  I always thought Travis was being rather passive aggressive, the pressure to be charming and get Cybil into bed leading him to this massive act of self-sabotage. But Kim says different. I believe her.

On that note, no review of a movie on a topic like this would be complete without the word misogyny, so there it is. Surprisingly, the most feminist-friendly guy on the show seems to be HG Lewis! There's ample time devoted to his feminist-fave, SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS, but where's Russ Meyer's FASTER PUSSYCAT, Abel Ferrara's MS. 45, that Hemingway sister joint, LIPSTICK, and the whole rape-revenge cycle? For that matter, where's the Satanic possession and the EXORCIST / ROSEMARY'S BABY knockoffs? Where's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE? ERASERHEAD? Bette Davis' BABY JANE microgenre, and 70s telekinesis? BLACULA? And ballyhoo meister David Friedman's classic quote about how his movies were "all sizzle and no steak," and pornography gave people the steak, so the sizzle was out, and that's how grindhouse essentially died and became pornography?

Not to kvetch of course, just to flaunt my own expansive knowledge and hide my terror. Because not only am I afraid to see LAST HOUSE, I'm afraid to see PASSION OF THE CHRIST (above), which Landis astutely points out is "the last real grindhouse film!"

Speaking of passion, I've got a soft spot for New York accents, so I got a real kick out of sleaze director Don Edmonds alternately justifying, apologizing for, and boasting of, the excesses of his ILSA: SHE-WOLF OF THE SS, a film I rented back in 1990 in Seattle (from Scarecrow Video!) and which made me see red, literally, when I closed my eyes during sex for the next three years!  But one must admire the relative care that went into ILSA, vs., say, most other Nazisploitation (called "Nazi Exploitation" here, for some reason) with their use of Lewis' patented nail-the-camera-to-the floor, yell-action-and-sneak-off-for-a-nap style framing. But what about the other period sleaze auteurs that aren't mentioned (unless they were mentioned whilst I was in the bathroom, or mixing drinks, or smoking crack, or rolling johns in the men's room), shouldn't there be a sequel? Eurosleazeonomicon, or something cool like that?

AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE never reaches much of a conclusion beyond confirming that Americans will always make films with both eyes on the ticket window and just a toe brushing up against the edge of art, and thus our baser instincts will always be catered to. It's a comforting but disturbing thought about the value of prurience and the way always getting exactly what you want to see can make you a perverse mess just like the anti-porn crusaders have always harangued it would. But at a brisk under-90 minute running time (it would be a perfect part of any exploitation double feature), AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE moves fast enough there's nary a dull moment. For casual fans you can really get an idea of what avenues you may want to explore. Just be prepared to be shocked, amazed, and... most of all, flabbergasted! Grind yourself deep into your seat as you enjoy a splice-ridden slice of film history, one bedecked with sound, fury, and sizzle. In the words of Pam Grier in COFFY (below) when her cop boyfriend tells her she can't just go around just killing everyone: "Why not?"

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Lords of Fliestown (3 capsules)

  THE CHILDREN (2009)

British horror auteur Tom Shankland closes in on Neal Marshall for the title of British John Carpenter with this sweet tale of a tadpole egg-related infectious disease that turns children into coughing, smiling, wan, matricidal maniacs in an isolated English estate on Xmas holiday. 

 

What's really good here--aside from the awesome music--is the film's knowing critique of our fucked up social order in the wake of 1980s conservative "Spielbergism," through which 'cute' children are allowed to literally get away with murder while sulky teens are ostracized for beginning to remind parents too much of themselves. As an eldest child attention-seeker who's had to face being upstaged by cuter little tykes (and with no children of my own), I relish scenes where blind adherence to child-worship  results in bloody death. The seminal archetypal moment in this is perhaps the daughter in the basement rising up to grab a trowel in 1968's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (right). Advancing towards her mom while all mom can do is plead, so crippled by maternal compassion she can't even ward off a single stabbing blow. 

If that's one of your favorite scenes in movies, then you will love THE CHILDREN, wherein moms conveniently forget that their sweet children were trying to stab them just minutes ago, preferring to blame the savvy teenage girl in the group, rather than be forced to re-adjust their sense of the cuteness hierarchy. It's a terrifying thing when your parents won't believe you for no other reason than your little sister is more angelic and less openly rebellious, so you wind up punished for her murders. Shankland creates a great sense of mood, pace and real time amidst the dead winter English countryside, and it's fun to see parents that dare to drink and smoke in front of their kids, as they did in my day. I'm sure there's American audience members who think that if you smoke and drink in front of your child you should be arrested for reckless endangerment, and I'd just love to stick these sanctimonious reactionaries in this movie, so they could cry "Won't someone think of the children?!" as they gently wipe their own blood off their children's mouths and knife edges. Oh yeah. Believe it, for the jealous older sibling in each of us, THE CHILDREN delivers the corn.

SURVIVING CROOKED LAKE (2009)

Or "Anti-Antigone" as this Canadian film (made by three University of Toronto film students) winds up being about a girl's irrational refusal to bury the decomposing corpse of her brother. You don't need a hostile Greek king to pronounce her sentence, she'll do it herself. That's feminism! Steph (Stephannie Richardson) and her three cute blonde friends are lost in the Canadian wilderness. Rather than fight bears, tigers or hillbilly mutant cannibal rapists, the girls have to contend with Steph's obsessively self-righteous "no corpse left behind" policy.

Up until about half-way through the film it's a pretty good bucolic fantasia. Our three student directors keep the shots artsy and the shorts short, with sun-dappled dreamy close-up dissolves from one blonde-haired, nearly-mature beauty to the next. There's a nice film school idyll at work, like the cinematographer really studied PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (1973) and maybe even MEAN CREEK (2005). But then the film bogs down into an argument about whether to drag the heavy , rotting corpse of their accidentally dead guide --he is also Steph's dead brother--FITZCARRALDO-style over hill and dale towards what they hope will be the highway. 

As Steph is the insane one who wont bury her brother or leave him, it becomes very hard to not judge her as the villain for her selfish, reckless endangerment of her friends, just so she can save her sibling's rotting corpse from being re-absorbed into nature. When some friendly wolves offer to take the corpse off her hands, Steph shoos them away and you don't know whether the filmmakers want you to cheer her bravery or wish she'd just get eaten, too. In other words, are they weirdos who think the spirit remains in the body after death, crying for legal permission to be buried, or are they recovering from some past trauma of being forced to attend an open casket funeral as a child?

So what's the raison d'etre, then, of this film, which is advertised as being a taut survival in the wilderness thriller with bonding teen chick streaked highlights? Whereas THE CHILDREN seems a veiled critique of modern over-parenting and child worship, SURVIVING CROOKED LAKE becomes an open one on girls who can't let go of their "inability to let go," even with slow death by starvation (anorexia) and constant vomiting from the stench of a decomposing brother (bulimia) staring them in the face. Are Canadians obsessed with dragging corpses around? Is this a national problem the way child obsession is in the states and UK? Something that needs to be addressed? It's certainly far enough outside my own realm of experience it seems made for some weird necrophiliacs-trying-to-get-straight rehab lounge. I hope it's not that someone somewhere secretly gets off on seeing girls regularly vomit from the stench of what was days ago their mutual object of teenage lust! Praise Jesus and King Edward, it ain't me babe.

 PS - If you want to check out another quiet strange "personal" Canadian exploitation film along the lines of CROOKED LAKE, may I recommend PUNCH?  Allegedly about the world of female topless boxing, it's actually the story of a widower trying to ween his daughter off her incestuous desires for him so she'll stop socking his new girlfriend, a timid photo booth worker with a topless boxing sister who may just have to come to the rescue. The director's actual daughter plays the girl and admits in the essential commentary track that the story is based on their true relationship!! In other words, he got funding to make a sleazy late night Cinemax cat fight flick but highjacked it to tell his own perverse confession, ala Ed Wood with GLEN OR GLENDA! Icky but fascinating... read my review here. 

 

 PLAIN DIRTY (2003)

And if you want a good swampy jail-bait exploitation fairy tale that's way off the radar and which the writer/director subverted to his own motive--this time to a loose reading of MACBETH--check out the under-appreciated PLAIN DIRTY (2003, above). It's almost Val Lewton-esque in that it shows you can make art instead of obsessive confessions and still hide it all under a functionally exploitative backwoods sleaze rubric. It does what HOUNDOG could have and Dominique (LOLITA) Swain holds her own as a conniving Lady MacBeth type! Woo Hoo!! Here's an excerpt from one of my first Acidemic reviews ever:

They take a typical swamp and cut off shorts exploitation set up ala Gator Bait (left), Poor White Trash, or Mudhoney, and then go off the deep end with it, into Kentucky-Freud Gothic grandeur. There’s a great, scraping viola and cello score by Nathan Barr, and dark, steamy cinematography by Scott Keven, both of whom worked, along with Verveen, on that last great entry in the redneck genre, Cabin Fever (2002). Keven doesn’t waste any chance to capture muted swampy sunlight trying to break through the filthy windows of these muddy shacks. The performances are all wonderful, especially Verveen’s, who manages to be believable while being simultaneously dirty, poetic, sneaky, charming, and oh so creepy as he woos Inez with lines like: “I wanna see what you look like when you grow old. Is you gonna grow gray or what?” Swain’s untamed Lolita-like energy makes her a believable force of girl nature, running around in her cut off shorts (nowhere near as short as Daisy Duke’s, alas) and cut up, dirty legs, or a filthy summer frock.

MMMmmmm, filthy... isn't there some over-nurturing movie parent out there who can come do her laundry?

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