The Range of Sin: The Wonders and Problems with the Grindhouse

Like some teenagers, I was introduced to the whole Grindhouse scene with the movie Grindhouse. This homage to the original Grindhouse movies of yore made by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez was an absolute blast. I had never heard of movies like this until I saw the trailers for this movie and it just looked like absolute fun.

That seemed to be the main objective of old Grindhouse films. They were cheaply made exploitation flicks that were designed to make money through sex and violence. I saw one of the original Grindhouse movies called The Big Bird Cage. The tagline was - "Women so hot with desire they melt the chains that enslave them!" I can't really remember anything that happenend in this movie. Maybe, I've been spoiled on the recent R rated movies, but none of the Grindhouse thrill ever reached me. I think the movie had something to do with enslaved girls being kept in prison by gay guards and them eventually breaking out. For some reason, this film didn't grab my attention.

Later, I saw Zombie Strippers which actually came out in April of 2008. This film to me was pure genius. It was also an homage to Grindhouse films (with it's interesting title) and featured Jenna Jameson who hasn't been doing that well recently. The main plot of this movie involves a zombie virus that gets out of hand and turns all of the local strippers into zombies (this movie is set six years into the future with Bush still president and underground, llegal strip clubs). I have never been a big fan of strippers, but I've always loved zombies, so I wanted to see a hybrid of the two. All of the zombie bits are interesting, but they are fairly typical (lots of zombies being shot with lots of guns). Even if you have seen it a billion times, a zombie being shot in the head with a shotgun never gets old. The big revelation of the movie is when Jenna Jameson (who is now a zombie with blood all over her) strips while the male crowd goes wild. This is kind of sexy, but becomes really disturbing when she starts to decompose. To give you an idea of the level of creativity that went into this movie, there is a zombie stripper duel where Jenna shoots billard balls at another zombie stripper (one of the billard balls goes through the head of an innocent bystander). This film embraces the pure fun of any previous Grindhouse film. Oh, and a life lesson I learned from this movie is that any stripper that becomes a zombie gets super powers.

Then there is Bad Girls From Mars. This is an example of a badly made and barely-thought-about Grindhouse flick. Its whole purpose was to exhibit female breasts. That was it! There were no zombies, no monsters, no plot, nothing. Just a line of girls showing their assets. It was absolute shlock from beginning to end and made me feel terrible that I had watched such a thing. The purpose of a Grindhouse-esque film is to promote fun, not boredom. And besides being just bad, it was demeaning to everyone involved. This is, without a doubt, the worst film I have ever seen and everyone with a brain should stand clear.

So I guess my point is that in watching any sort of cheap, exploitation flick, you have to be careful. Some films are so bad that they are fun and some are so bad that they are really bad. And of course, if the film is directed by two directors who love the source material, the prepare for one heck of a ride. Planet Terror is one of my favorite movies! Now lets Go, Go not Cry, Cry.