Scarred Tuesdays double your pleasure with contributions by two exploitation greats with similar tastes.

Not many people can claim that they changed the face of cinema. Herschell Gordon Lewis, the undisputed Godfather of Gore, is one such person. Director of seminal gore flicks Blood Feast, 2,000 Maniacs, The Gore Gore Girls and countless others, as well as current projects like The Gore Gore Gore-Met, Lewis has spilled more blood in one scene than most modern horror filmmakers will see in a lifetime. All this may make what he finds frightening a bit of a surprise to some.

The nature of my involvement in the entertainment industry makes my attitude so unrelentingly analytical that fright doesn’t enter the mix, although occasional “startlement” might occur. For fright, I recall my initial reaction to the painting “Scream” by Edvard Munch. The primitive nature of this art has to be a major factor in evoking an emotional reaction.

Brandon Maggart pulled at the heartstrings while simoutaneously attempting to sever them as the greatest murderous Santa of all time in Christmas Evil. Maggart’s truly unhinged performance focuses as much on a true love for the holidays as it does taking out those on his naughty list, to great effect. With that in mind, what makes even Old St. Nick tremble in his coal black boots?

I was afraid of… the dark… then, of course, I read Bram Stoker’s Dracula…scared the crap out of me… of paintings:”The Scream” is unsettling…don’t want it around… but the winner is still… as a child, being left alone in the house in THE DARK.. But I found that a baseball bat by my bedside was an amazing comfort.

I received tickets to an advanced screening of Grindhouse for Wednesday night, but I’m waiting to see it with J. so I was unable to attend. My friend Rony graciously took my place and agreed to provide The Horror Blog with the following review. In addition to being one of the original contributors to the old HorrorCast, Rony has also accompanied me on many cinematic excursions, including The Messengers, Blood + Chocolate, Night of the Living Dead 3-D, Ghost Rider and numerous other horror movies of dubious quality. Our “man-dates” and the shouting matches we had afterwards will be one of the few things I will miss when I leave Ottawa. Thanks, man!

Usually the hype for a movie can ruin it for you. You have high expectations but soon find yourself not as fulfilled as you’d originally hoped. Well let me tell you that no hype will ever bring Grindhouse down, unless you don’t like awesome. Do you like awesome? Do you?! I do, and that’s why I was blessed with a ticket to watch a sneak preview of Grindhouse.

Both movies were so friggin’ awesome that I would punch a baby to see it again! Although when watching the first half hour of “Death Proof” I was thinking ‘Son-of-a-bitch get on with the smashing already’. I would have wished the order was different because “Death Proof” was slow in the beginning and then kicked so much ass later, and “Planet Terror” was a non-stop zombie killing ride. If they were to start off slow and then kick things into high gear then you wouldn’t feel your ass getting numb.

Planet Torror was my favourite of the the two but I think it was because I’m a zombie lovin’ man. They were a bit different from your traditional zombies, like taking different twists on the sub-genre (eg. talking, running, etc.) from a bunch of movies and then smashing them into one movie with a fucking sledge hammer. This movie was hysterical and gross at the same time. If I had to describe how I was feeling during the movie it would go like this “Hahaha… Oh my God! BLAAAAAH(puking), hahaha, RUN DUMMY, RUN!! Hahaha. Fuck it’s over, I want more!!” One thing I really friggin’ hated that took me out of Planet Terror was Fergie. Why they chose her to be in this movie is beyond me. Even though she was only in the movie briefly, I hated every second of her on the screen. I don’t hate her music or anything, I just hate it when singers make the move into film and do a really shitty job. To be fair, they did do a nice long ass shot of her, but you can see that in any of her music videos. Also, Tarantino had a cameo in Planet Terror as “Rapist #1″ which is not entirely accurate. He should have been called “Attempted Rapist #1″. I cringed a bit during certain parts of Planet Terror and I hardly ever do that.

The trailers inbetween the movies were classic grindhouse and stuck really close to the old ones, which was awesome. All were good but I was hoping for a bit more from Rob Zombie’s trailer. Not too sure why, but it didn’t impress me as much as the others did.

Death Proof did chug in the beginning and I had to listen to all this boring stuff, which might not have been so boring if the first movie didn’t rock so much. Tarantino did his thing with the whole old school jive talkin’ dialogue like he always does. It’s so “Tarantino” that if you were to close your eyes it would seem like you were listening to Pulp Fiction. After the lengthy chit chat, in comes some full out, balls to the wall car driving. If you’re a gearhead, then you will blow your load at the awesomeness. Kurt Russell in this movie is one of the kings of cool and it reminded me why I love his movies. He’s not only badass, but he’s also downright friggin’ hilarious. Although I was hoping for the raspy voice like he did as Snake Plisskin, but oh well.

I was extremely glad I went because this double bill was totally worth skipping out on work and standing in line for an hour. Each movie had it’s lows and each had it’s super heroin eye injecting, face punching, groin grabbing, scream at the top of your lungs awesome highs. You will find yourself cheering throughout the length of the movie and if the person beside you talks you will want to rip out your chair and throw it directly into their mouth, instantly killing the A-hole. At the end, if you still have feeling in your legs, you should stand up and give a flying high five to the person beside you.

If you read any horror sites other than this one, odds are good that you’ve already come across Eli Roth’s faux-trailer for Grindhouse. If you’re one of the handful of people who hasn’t, here you go. Be warned, it packs an awful lot of nastiness into it’s short running time.

One of the things I find most fascinating about the release of this trailer is it’s use as a marketing ploy. Instead of the usual selection of trailers which are only slightly different from one another, the movie itself has generated alternate advertising material to keep the film fresh and exciting in people’s minds. Of all their attempts to emulate the exploitation movie experience, I think this is Team Grindhouse’s most successful yet.

First there was news of Frank Henenlotter’s triumphant return to horror, now another batch of ’80s NYC trash peddlers are making a comeback. After discovering that there was a website devoted to a Street Trash sequel, Creature Corner rang up producer Roy Frumkes to find out if the rumour is true.

I’ve been going to conventions, and jeez, in Cleveland back in October at Cinema Wasteland, we had 2,000 people lined up with posters and things. So the fanbase is out there, and it’s huge. And they’re always excited if we mention anything about a possibility of another film. The only difference between Jimmy and my vision of it, I think, is that he sees it as being Street Trash 2 but I think 20 years is so long it should be Street Trash 3. Just leave out the middle one, and then if we go back and do another one we can do Street Trash 2: The Missing Viper Bottles.

So it appears both the director and producer are ready to bring this forward, with the possible inclusion of some original cast members even. How cool would a Bad Biology/Street Trash 2 double bill be?

Eli Roth has confirmed at the New York Comic-Con that his next project after Hostel II will in fact be an adaptation of Stephen King’s Cell, the script for which is currently being written by 1408 screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. In other Roth news, Cinematical chatted to the director at the convention as he tried to juggle press conferences with meeting King to discuss the feature, and they certainly let him cut loose.

“…you know, the ‘Saw’ guys, we check in with each other. They call me and they’re like ‘Oh, we just filmed this fuckin’ scene and we got this guy and he’s got all these piercings and we’re going to rip ‘em out and he blows up.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, Fuck! I had cut to interior torture room, Whitney gets her belly button ring ripped out.’ And I just crossed it out of the script. ‘Goddamn it! That was the perfect torture!’. We actually check in with each other, none of us want to repeat the same deaths they’re doing. I notice there’s the same plastic sheeting in ‘Saw III’ then we had in ‘Hostel: Part II’ but it’s okay. I guess Jigsaw and the factory, they all go to the same Torture Depot. We check in and talk about every kill and about what got in through the MPAA. There’s a real good ‘Splat Pack Line of Communication’.”

While he’s at it Roth expounds on The Signal, Thanksgiving, Tarantino and Woody Allen.

The history of grindhouse cinema has rarely been explored, and when it has it’s usually only through ‘zines and books with unbelievably small print runs. Perhaps the problem lies in the term being used to describe a wide variety of films with little in common other than means of distribution and choice of venue. Regardless, anyone just getting acquainted with the grindhouse will find resources spotty at best.

Along comes Twitch Film, which has uncovered the republication in web form of Eddie Mueller’s book Grindhouse - The Forbidden World of Adults Only Cinema over at Greencine. Mueller’s tome starts way back in the 30’s with the roadshow and makes it’s way through the 40’s, 50’s, and up to the 60’s, when Herschell Gordon Lewis and David Friedman traded in soft-core for hard gore.

The next frontier, perhaps, was to show nude people actually engaged in erotic entanglements. They knew that would never pass. In 1963, the sight of a single pubic hair could bring out the riot squad. A penis penetrating a vagina? Absolutely inconceivable.

But what about a knife? Or better yet, an ax?

It’s a great read, and definitely worth your time if you’re interested in the sordid underbelly of cinema.

The grindhouse faux-trailers keep rolling in, this time with the stop-motion Vietnam zombie extravaganza Cong of the Dead. Dave of The Abbatoir rated this one higher than Hobo With A Shotgun, but for me it faltered slightly by using the same voice actor as the narrator and the characters.

Bonus Grindhouse faux-trailer - It’s a bit rough around the edges, but at least Emmauelle, Prisoner of Frankenstein has it’s heart in the right place.

I’m a little late getting to this party, but I’m hoping to make up for lost time.

Over a month ago I posted about a small contest Robert Rodriguez was holding in conjunction with SXSW where participants would submit their own faux-trailers for an imaginary grindhouse feature. I immediately forgot all about it, but since then dozens of people have taken up the challenge, many of them posting their contributions on You Tube. I’ve gone through over 30 of them so far, and of them all one stands head and shoulders above the rest. Rodriguez, Tarantino, et al. better watch their backs, because I’m not sure even they can match the exploitative power of Hobo With A Shotgun. Link courtesy of The Rue Mortuary.

Bonus Grindhouse faux-trailer - Witness the horror behind the patch! 150 Days of Sodom’s Warren makes a special appearance in Blind Vengeance.

Like a lot of people in the creative arts, Quentin Tarantino has a hard time nailing down a project without being distracted by something else. The amount of films he’s enthused about that never came to be far outweighs all the ones that did make it to the screen. Fangoria digs up some of the highlights from Tarantino’s previous horror associations.

“I didn’t write it down, but what I would’ve done is [have HALLOWEEN 6 begin with] 15 or 20 minutes of just the man and Michael having left the jail. What it takes to get him out of sight. He literally takes him to a diner, they sit down, shit happens at the diner, they have to escape, they go to someplace else, shit goes down at the motel, they have to go someplace else.”

I had heard about Tarantino’s involvement with the Halloween franchise, but the anecdote concerning the Evil Dead remake is new to me. What do you think? Could he have made either of them work. Better the Devil you know…?

The road to respectability is a long, strange one. I wonder if this is the first occassion the New York Times has acknowledged grindhouse cinema.

The article in question sheds some light on a number of aspects of Tarantino and Rodriguez’ collaboration. Only four directors are cited for the trailers found between films, and one of them is not Quentin Tarantino with his Cowgirls of Sweden as previously reported. Both films are clocking in at under an hour and a half, which is great news for bladders everywhere. Tarantino is convinced that Death Proof will contain one of the top three car chases of all-time, which should add just a bit more excitement to the slightly overshadowed feature. And both Rodriguez and Tarantino have confirmed that not only will both films be artificially aged, but they will both also be missing a reel, so the action will cut out partway through and resume again without the audience knowing exactly what transpired. I bet theatre managers are really looking forward to that one.

“That’s part of the lurid quality. It feels like it’s a popular film that’s been screened a bunch of times. The texture, all the scratches, makes it look really creepy, like you’re watching something you’re not supposed to, where anything could happen at any moment.”

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Get your keister over to The New York Times website for the entire thing.

Not enough time for blogging when you’re out galivanting until 6 in the morning, but at the very least I knew I just had to post this picture of Sybil Danning from Werewolf Women of the SS, as originally presented by Fangoria.

Make sure you pop by tomorrow for another gathering of the grteatest minds in horror blogging, The Horror Roundtable. Oh, god. That’s so sad.

Ain’t It Cool News shows off a kick ass fan poster for Grind House which you can see on the right. The poster on the left is from Hell’s Belles, and was obviously used for reference. Hey, this is the grindhouse. If you’re looking for originality, you’ve come to the wrong place.

I had limited computer access over the holidays, but I did manage to clock in some time on the internet. One of the things I filed away for my return was the trailer for a new documentary film being produced called Grindhouse Glory (and in case you can’t tell from the title, this one is Rated NSFW).

It’s a tad overlong for a trailer, and it’s mostly bulked up with clips from various movies of that era taken out of context, but the real treat is that they’ve roped in a fair amount of near-forgotten directors to discuss those halycon days. Some of the people profiled include Jeff Lieberman (Squirm), David Durston (I Drink Your Blood), Greydon Clark (Satan’s Cheerleaders) and John “Bud” Cardos (Kingdom of the Spiders). Hell, yeah!

For even more information, make sure you check out Horror Movies interview with the director behind Grindhouse Glory, David Litz.

“I also work for bullets.”

Thanks to The Movie Blog for bringing this to my attention.