WI: Mainstream 'grindhouse' movies

[Caravels of Portugal]

For those who don't know or too young to remember, exploitation films were films that attempted to churn a profit by using sensationalist, titillating content or riding on current trends. These films tended to be low-quality B-movies, suffering from terrible print quality and considered disposable and disreputable. They were mainly shown in drive-in theaters and grindhouses, which they were played in double, or even triple features at low ticket prices.

The films thrived during the 1970s, where the introduction of theaters, white flight from the cities-induced urban decay and the proliferation of independent studios forced movie theaters, mostly built during the 1930s-40s, to show content that television couldn't offer due to content restrictions, to keep themselves financially afloat. The main traits of exploitation films are:

• Low-budgets
• Lurid content
• Unknown actors, with an occasional character actor or fading star
• Raw style
• Cheap thrills

Since then, many exploitation films garnered infamy and fame such as Cannibal Holocaust, I Spit on Your Grave, Fight for Your Life, Mad Max, Vanishing Point, Gone in 60 Seconds, Starcrash, Pink Flamingos, Mondo Cane, Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, Blood Feast, Night of the Living Dead, and many others. Aside from a instances which are Mandingo, Caligula and Showgirls, major studios don't produce exploitation films in fear of alienating the mainstream audience and attracting negative reception.

I know it's an improbable, near-ASB scenario, but what if major studios decided to make its own exploitation films, or other words, grindhouse and drive-in films, aimed at the mainstream audience? Is it possible to create exploitation films, albeit sanitized and respectable, marketed at the average, mainstream film viewer? Or is it just a highly implausible scenario?

 

[overoceans]

I think the Hollywood films of John Waters would fit the bill. Lurid content and fading stars, but also featuring popular actors, and backed by major studios.

Mind you, there's also an argument to be made that Waters was never pure grindhouse to begin with, since even in his early films, the trashiness was a deliberate effect, with the audience being in on the joke. Whereas I think part of the idea of grindhouse(as a genre) is that the audience is expected to take it seriously.

 

[overoceans]

By the way, I'm not sure if Gone In 60 Seconds really belongs on your list. I'd say it's a pretty standard Hollywood action flick. Cheezy, but not particularly lurid, and Nicholas Cage certainly wasn't obscure or fading at that point.

 

[overoceans]

Mondo New York, produced by Cineplex Odeon Films some time in the early 90s, might count, but suffers from the same snag as Pink Flamingos. The film is a documentary about performance artists in New York, so the director was looking for people who were DELIBERATELY trying to shock conventional sensibilities by acting in a strange manner.

Whereas I think the idea of a mondo is that it's supposed to show scenes of people behaving in a weird manner, because they think that's the normal way to live, eg. cannibals in Africa supposedly eating human flesh.

 

[Caravels of Portugal]

By the way, I'm not sure if Gone In 60 Seconds really belongs on your list. I'd say it's a pretty standard Hollywood action flick. Cheezy, but not particularly lurid, and Nicholas Cage certainly wasn't obscure or fading at that point.

I mean the original version, the one from the 1970s. It was considered an exploitation film because of its low budget and its lurid contest, which was seeing the novelty sight of a lengthy car chase followed by the destruction of several real vehicles.

 

[overoceans]

And it could be argued that grindhouse has always been mainstream to begin with, albeit on the seamier end of the mainstream. A middle-aged guy who went to see Death Wish in the 1970s, for example, probably classified it in his own mind as just another crime thriller, of the kind he'd been watching since he was a teenagernin the 1950s.

But that same guy would probably have viewed Pink Flamingos as a buncha goddam hippies trying to make a mockery of everything. (Though I will admit that the two films might have played in the same venues back in the day.)

EDIT: Thanks for the clarification on Gone In Sixty Seconds. Never saw the original.

 

[Sam R.]

exploitation films were films that attempted to churn a profit by using sensationalist, titillating content or riding on current trends

Mad Max

The problem here is that you're imputing a purpose of production to films received as grindhouse by american audiences.

If you're Australian Mad Max reads like a serious drama in a line of films such as Sunday Too Far Away, Wake in Fright, or Stone, about the impossibility of intimacy due to the super-determination imposed by the landscape. A later film of the same type is Lantana.

Americans may have appreciated it as exploitation, but it was produced as a serious work.

Unlike the cars that ate paris.

 

[theg*ddam*hoi2fan]

Actually... @Caravels of Portugal ...by the criteria you provide above, would you class the original The Terminator as exploitation? I mean, it had a fairly small budget, its stars were fairly minor at that stage - it was Biehn and Hamilton's first big successful movie, and IIRC it was still at the early stage of Arnie's acting career - it had some fairly lurid content in the form of the violence...

If you would, then arguably there's your example.

 

[overoceans]

@Sam R.

Yeah, I think that part of the issue might be that, at one time, genuine grindhouse would have played in the same theatres as experimental art films.

For example, one of the grindhouses in my hometown used to show stuff like Harry And The Hookers(sexploitation aimed simply at parting lechers from their money) alongside Eraserhead and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The latter films, while superficially similar to the exploitation stuff(mostly as a result of having a low-budget) did possess a seriousness of purpose and vision that was lacking in Harry. But they were all playing in a venue we would describe as a grindhouse.

 

[overoceans]

Gene Siskel's review of The Betsy sums up what I think is the defining feature of a grindhouse viewer...

An advertisement for the film claims that "the most dynamic, sexy, powerful people are Harold Robbins people." That's a polite way of saying that Robbins books, and the films upon which they are based, serve up super soft-core porn in luxurious surroundings.

How else do you explain the following tasteless scene, which inexplicably occurs in the middle of a saga of an automotive scion's attempt to build one last great car. In action that lasts one minute, the scion's 5-year-old grandson watches his homosexual father blow his brains out in a car. Then the crying kid runs upstairs to his mother's bedroom only to discover that Mom is shacked up with Gramps!

It would be easy to laugh off that scene as just so much tastelessness, yet I can't help but think that some of the upright folks who patronize "The Betsy" for scenes like that are the same people who also complain about the horrible language their children are exposed to in a fine film like "Saturday Night Fever."

As per the last paragraph, the people who go to a grindhose flick are supposed to think that they are watching something that fits the category of a respectable, conventional film.

(And they wouldn't have to all be the implied conservative suburbanites in Siskel's takedown: some wannabe hipster who thought Faces Of Death was a serious documentary would qualify as well.)

link

 

[overoceans]

Oh, and for a film that would fit the definition of "mainstream grindhouse"...

8MM

(Spoilers)

From 1999. Basically, Death Wish with pornographers instead of muggers. As with all anti-permissiveness films worth the celluloid they're filmed on, manages to simultaneously condemn and revel in its subject matter. Heavy-handed script bolstered by laughable overacting(in a Nicholas Cage film. Imagine!) Originality points for the sex-killer being a mama's boy still living at home well into adulthood.

 

[Mark E.]

It would be easy to laugh off that scene as just so much tastelessness, yet I can't help but think that some of the upright folks who patronize "The Betsy" for scenes like that are the same people who also complain about the horrible language their children are exposed to in a fine film like "Saturday Night Fever."

Actually, Saturday Night Fever started out as a very low-budget film. It is mostly shot on location in New York. It had no big-name actors. It was the launch point for John Travolta, whose previous claim to fame was that of a non-serious adolescent in a TV sitcom. Can you name any other actors? Does anybody know the name Karen Gorney (the leading lady on the record album)? The plot was un-eventful. The movie came from record producer Robert Stigwood who happened to have the “right” recording artists under contract: The Bee Gees, Tavares, Yvonne Elliman. Paramount pictures thought it should do better than break even and attract a cult following. It was the sound track that made it. By mid-1978, it had to be completely re-mastered to remove the vulgar language so its rating could go from R to PG.

 

[Nivek]

Didn't SAW was for a while?

 

[overoceans]

@Mark E.

Thanks for the info on Saturday Night Fever. I didn't know it had been re-edited for the rating.

I don't think in either a low-budget or big-budget version SNF woulda qualified as grindhouse. Siskel, I think, was just referencing it to make a point about the kind of people who liked The Betsy, ie. they will enjoy things that they would normally find unacceptable, if it's presented in the guise of a respectable genre.

FWIW...

When I finally watched SNF a few years back, in my early 40s or so, I actually WAS impressed by the depth and complexity of the plot. But then, I came of age during the Disco Sucks era, and had been led to believe that the film was nothing but mindless dancing by hairspray-addicts in bad clothes. So in my case, it probably benefited from the lowest of expectations.

 

[overoceans]

It occurs to me that the James Bond films might qualify as mainstream grindhouse, at least in their heyday from the early 60s to about the mid-70s. Lurid subject matter(fig-leafed by muscular patriotism), generally obscure or has-been performers(the leads only partly excepted), and thrills that could pretty easily be described as cheap.

 

[Caravels of Portugal]

Actually... @Caravels of Portugal ...by the criteria you provide above, would you class the original The Terminator as exploitation? I mean, it had a fairly small budget, its stars were fairly minor at that stage - it was Biehn and Hamilton's first big successful movie, and IIRC it was still at the early stage of Arnie's acting career - it had some fairly lurid content in the form of the violence...

If you would, then arguably there's your example.

It occurs to me that the James Bond films might qualify as mainstream grindhouse, at least in their heyday from the early 60s to about the mid-70s. Lurid subject matter(fig-leafed by muscular patriotism), generally obscure or has-been performers(the leads only partly excepted), and thrills that could pretty easily be described as cheap.

I'll have to elaborate on the traits of exploitation films:

• Low-budget: Most exploitation films were made on a shoestring budget backed by independent or self-financed, usually costing below one million. This often created a grimy, gritty and generally low-production value feeling to the films, which had to recoup its budget by using subjects explored by exploitation films. There's a reason why they're considered B-movies of a lower merit.
• Lurid content: Many exploitation films focuses on morbid, bizarre elements, utilizing sensationalism and riding on current trends. Topics such as cannibalism (Cannibal Holocaust), incarceration of women (Caged Heat), Nazism (Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS), adolescent pregnancy (Teenage Mother), zombies (Hell of the Living Dead) and many more. These films tend to be extremely disreputable and often chased off major studios and A-list actors from starring them.
• Unknown cast, with an occasional character actor or fading star: The low budgets and lurid content of exploitation films caused directors and producers to cast unknown, no-name actors, even to the point of recruiting non-actors, friends and family members. Occasionally, some exploitation films managed to cast character actors. John Carradine would be a notable example. Most fading stars starred themselves in exploitation films because they needed the money after their bankable roles ran out.
• Raw style: Exploitation films were cheap, pumped out at a high rate in order to cater to grindhouses and drive-ins that usually ran those films until the films degraded badly, combined with their low budgets and lack of studio backing. Many of those films were made unprofessionally, resulting in badly-photographed, poorly-acted and generally sleazy films.
• Cheap thrills: The main target audience for the exploitation films were usually youth who watched them in drive-ins and grindhouses as a minor thing done for entertainment. They did not watch those films for masterful storytelling or great cinema, but rather excitement induced by the lurid content and entertainment from the grit itself.

In conclusion, The Terminator and the early James Bond films doesn't fit the definition because it looks professionally made, and did not rely on lurid content as a selling point.

 

[overoceans]

Caravels...

Okay, but I think it unlikely that a major studio would start regularly producing movies that check all the items on your list. If John Waters had pitched Crybaby to Imagine Entertainment as something with the budget and aesthetics of Pink Flamingos, what incentive would there be for Imagine to produce that?

 

[Caravels of Portugal]

Caravels...

Okay, but I think it unlikely that a major studio would start regularly producing movies that check all the items on your list. If John Waters had pitched Crybaby to Imagine Entertainment as something with the budget and aesthetics of Pink Flamingos, what incentive would there be for Imagine to produce that?

That's a reason why I consider an 'What If' scenario about major studio-backed exploitation films technically implausible. There's no way for high budgeted, studio-backed grindhouse movies to be exist without a degree of sanitization so that it looks respectable to the mainstream audience.

 

[overoceans]

That's a reason why I consider an 'What If' scenario about major studio-backed exploitation films technically implausible. There's no way for high budgeted, studio-backed grindhouse movies to be exist without a degree of sanitization so that it looks respectable to the mainstream audience.

Sure, but what I am saying is, once you factor in the "sanitization", you essentially end up with mainstream sex-and-violence thrillers as we know them IOTL.

As a loose comparison, Cronenberg's The Fly is basically what Cronenberg's Rabid would be, with a more honourable pedigree, less grainy film, and Jeff Goldblum instead of Marilyn Chambers on the marquee.

 

[Deleted member 90563]

Actually, Saturday Night Fever started out as a very low-budget film. It is mostly shot on location in New York. It had no big-name actors. It was the launch point for John Travolta, whose previous claim to fame was that of a non-serious adolescent in a TV sitcom. Can you name any other actors? Does anybody know the name Karen Gorney (the leading lady on the record album)? The plot was un-eventful. The movie came from record producer Robert Stigwood who happened to have the “right” recording artists under contract: The Bee Gees, Tavares, Yvonne Elliman. Paramount pictures thought it should do better than break even and attract a cult following. It was the sound track that made it. By mid-1978, it had to be completely re-mastered to remove the vulgar language so its rating could go from R to PG.

I've only ever seen the R-rated version, but that was a lot deeper than you make it out to be. It's a drama about the mostly empty lives of young working class people with a disco soundtrack.