Review of American Grindhouse (2011) by André D — 02 Jul 2011

Broad, Not Deep.

It is frankly impossible to do a broad overview of any film movement in eighty minutes. Especially one which stretches back pretty much as long as there has been film. As this movie so adroitly points out, it probably took little to know time at all before a guy said to his girlfriend, "Hey, would you mind taking your clothes off in front of the camera?" It's also true that there has essentially never been a time when people weren't fascinated with violence, and the idea that you could stage it once and record it for all time, replaying it whenever you wanted, and charging people to watch it at that, must have been a delightful one for a certain type of person. Few individual films really made all that much money, although there were always one or two, but if you just made enough of them, you could be quite comfortable. It's how Roger Corman made his money, after all.

From the earliest days of film unto Quentin Tarantino's attempt at a revival, this documentary examines the legacy of exploitation films. Very briefly, we run over such disparate genres as teen beach movies, blaxploitation, gore movies, and soft core pornography. John Landis is probably the best known of the handful of people interviewed, with Joe Dante second. In that they're the two I've even heard of. Unfortunately, as so many genres are identified and discussed, no one really has much in the way of detail, and the documentary chooses instead to focus on certain specific films for perhaps two minutes before moving on to the next film of the next genre. Films include everything from [i]Beach Party[/i] to [i]Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS[/i]. There's a brief shot of Bettie Page, clips from silent films, and even a few of those films intended to duck the regulations of the Code by being "educational" and therefore subject to different regulations.

Unfortunately, the film also equates pre-Code with exploitation, compares film noir and Hitchcock with cheapy slasher films, and claims that there is no important distinction. This in the same film which says the unique feature of [i]The Immoral Mr. Teas[/i] was that it had a plot. Yes, Janet Leigh is killed on camera, and yes, the "no one can enter this film after the beginning" marketing plot was used by slasher films pre-Hitchcock. However, you have to trim less than five minutes of [i]Psycho[/i] in order to take out all the exploitative elements. Many pre-Code films were intended to get people into the theatre in the hopes of seeing sex and violence--mostly sex. It's true. However, even several of the ones they show clips of, and the IMDB "movie connections" list is far from complete, have serious plots. I mean, under film noir, they go with [i]The Maltese Falcon[/i] of all things. I can name much more exploitative films than that without even really trying.

There is a lot which can be said about exploitation films in history. Unfortunately, this film doesn't really say it. It's more a list than an examination, one which doesn't really seem to consider the overlying themes it mentions. There is a casual reference at the end to the idea that exploitation films increase in popularity when there are complications in the world, but it doesn't examine what that means in relation to, say, the current popularity of torture porn. We talk some about blaxploitation and the drive to bring black audiences into the theatre, but the discussion doesn't go anywhere. Other than the blank statement that [i]Psycho[/i] is a "grindhouse" film, simply because the three people they ask can't come up with anything to refute the concept, there is no real discussion of what distinguishes studio releases from the cheap movies made to take advantage of that audience.

Oh, to be sure, I came away with a handful of movies I wanted to seek out, though I know some of them are unavailable. (What's the hold up with [i]Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill![/i], for example?) It appears to be a regrettable fact that even the most famous of exploitation films are less likely to be released on DVD, or even on streaming video, than even the worst studio releases. Oh, sure, you can get [i]Shaft[/i] in the bargain bin, even [i]Shaft Goes to Africa[/i]. On the other hand, you can't get [i]Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold[/i]. Netflix lists only three Russ Meyer movies at all, and only [i]Beyond the Valley of the Dolls[/i] is actually available. And [i]Shooting War[/i] turns out to be a Tom Hanks-produced World War II documentary about the people who actually worked those cameras which have proved so helpful to the documentary market. Roger Corman only has a few of his, most only available on Instant Play or not available at all. Naturally, this isn't covered by the film, either.