8 posts categorized "Grindhouse"

October 20, 2024

LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT — SHOCKTOBER!

ColeSmithey.comColeSmithey.comColeSmithey.com

Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Punk heart still beating.

ColeSmithey.comGet cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

ColeSmithey.com

ColeSmithey.comColeSmithey.comColeSmithey.com

ColeSmithey.comWes Craven's debut film is everything wrong with exploitation cinema. Mean spirited to its core, this film's overriding theme seems to be that society is broken up into three categories: killers, victims, and witnesses.

Amateur filmmaker Craven switches tone between horrific sexual abuse, lighthearted comedy, and hippie crushing thriller.

Schlock.

Just ugly.

ColeSmithey.com

Actor David Hess's folk guitar songs point in a dead-end direction. Hess takes a piss at Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" with a too often repeated song that states, "And the road leads to nowhere."

I suppose it is fitting for such a piece of shit movie.

ColeSmithey.com

David Hess plays Krug, a cigar-chomping killer living out his perverted obsessions on two hippie girls that Krug and his "family" kidnap to torture. 

Wes Craven reworks Ingmar Bergman's significant "Virgin Spring" into something cruel and disgusting.

The specter of the Viet Nam War only hangs over the movie with the thinnest of threads.

ColeSmithey.com

The sexual abuse and murder scenes are treated without regard to any meaningful subtext. This is a movie without a soul.

There is no social commentary to be found. This is exploitation for exploitation sake.

ColeSmithey.com

Gene Siskel put it succinctly in his review of the movie.

"My objection to The Last House on the Left is not an objection to the graphic representations of violence per se, but to the fact that the movie celebrates violent acts, particularly adult male abuse of young women ... I felt a professional obligation to stick around to see if there was any socially redeeming value in the remainder of the movie and found none."

Rated R. 84 mins.

Zero StarsZERO STARS

ColeSmithey.com ColeSmithey.com ColeSmithey.comCozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

October 30, 2023

GRINDHOUSE — SHOCKTOBER!

ColeSmithey.comColeSmithey.comWelcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

ColeSmithey.com

ColeSmithey.comColeSmithey.com

Two For the Price of One

Tarantino & Rodriguez Wang It Up Old-School
By Cole Smithey

ColeSmithey.comThe palpable cinematic elation and hip vibe that wafts from the screen is more than contagious; it’s stupefying. In their overzealous double bill homage to the cheap grungy urban cinemas of yore, that featured an ever-changing orgy of back-to-back exploitation B-movies, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have created an unparalleled irreverent concoction of dueling films.

Loving attention is given to recreating the grindhouse experience of damaged film stock, melting celluloid, missing reels and trashy trailers that distorted the experience of watching something like 1974’s "Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry" coupled with "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" beside an audience of snoozing bums and pot-smoking teenagers.

ColeSmithey.com

Rarely did the movies live up to the promise of their tantalizing posters and outrageous tag lines, but the experiences were nonetheless unforgettable. Here, the movies go far beyond anything you could imagine. It’s all about the pay-offs, and there are many.

ColeSmithey.com

The auteur directors share a proclivity for pulling out all the stops, and while Tarantino is famous for his take-no-prisoners approach it’s Rodriguez who pushes the limits of how many gross-out gags he can squeeze into every frame. Inspired by movies like "Zombie" and "Dawn of the Dead," Rodriguez’s "Planet Terror" leads off the set as a zombie thriller born of toxic green vapors released from a Texas military base. Cherry (Rose McGowan) quits her go-go dancer job before running into her former beau Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) at a local barbecue roadhouse.

ColeSmithey.com

Already, wedded doctors William (Josh Brolin) and Dakota (Marley Shelton) have been overrun with sicko patients (read: zombies) suffering from bubbling facial boils, repulsive skin lesions and marinated flesh that only momentarily disguises their bent for annihilation. Juicy fake-blood-bloated zombies explode under endless rounds of ammunition as Cherry is elevated to humanity’s salvation Queen after Wray replaces her freshly amputated leg with a machine gun that she inexplicably fires without the aid of pulling a trigger.

ColeSmithey.com

Tarantino appears briefly in "Planet" as a recently infected sadistic soldier who takes Cherry prisoner in the lower depths of the army base. There, he attempts to rape her with his less than kosher member. Wikipedia might discover a new definition for the term over-the-top from this groan-inducing scene alone. Ravenous movie fans will appreciate cameos from Maveen Andrews ("Lost"), Michael Biehn ("Aliens"), and makeup artist Tom Savini ("Dawn of the Dead") who gets his ring finger bitten off before he’s tossed upside-down against the broadside of a police cruiser.

ColeSmithey.com

An intermission between the movies comes complete with a restaurant spot featuring glimpses of remarkably unappetizing food. Edgar Wright ("Shaun of the Dead"), Eli Roth ("Hostel"), Rob Zombie ("The Devil’s Rejects") and Robert Rodriguez each directed their own faux movie trailers with titles like "Werewolf Women of the SS" and "Thanksgiving" to elaborate on the ‘70s era mood of raunchy low-budget movie-going. The astonishing previews are glorious models of decade-accurate atmosphere, but with added touches of outrageous ironic humor. Gratuitous nudity and decapitations are punctuated with flashes of familiar faces, as with Nicholas Cage appearing briefly as a gleefully diabolical Dr. Fu Manchu.

ColeSmithey.com

"Death Proof," the fifth of Tarantino's deliberate career, draws on Richard C. Sarafian’s "Vanishing Point," and H.B. Halicki’s "Gone In 60 Seconds," as much as it does from the director’s personal predilection for slasher films and hot girls talking like splintered versions of himself. Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) quietly invades Austin’s real-life Guero’s Taco Bar where a cluster of badass gal-pals (Sydney Poitier, Jordan Ladd and Vanessa Ferlito) get their weed and drink on in preparation for a weekend getaway.

ColeSmithey.com

A nasty scar on Stuntman Mike’s face foreshadows events when he agrees to give lone hippie-chick Pam (also played by Rose McGowan) a ride home, but abruptly changes character once she gets in the passenger bucket of his skull-emblazoned "death proof" stunt car. What follows is the most horrific car crash ever intentionally committed to film. Mike is a deranged stalker who lives to mangle the bodies of pretty girls with his car. But he more than meets his match in the third act when he attacks a trio of film industry women driving a white Dodge Challenger, just like the car that Barry Newman’s Kowalski drove in "Vanishing Point."

ColeSmithey.com

Real-life New Zealand stunt woman Zoe Bell (Uma Thurman’s stunt double in "Kill Bill") shows off her best daredevil skills in a car chase unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. As Tarantino has pointed out in interviews, he has officially thrown his hat into the ring of famous movie car chases.

ColeSmithey.com

The result is a white-knuckle experience that validates the stretches of goofy dialogue-heavy scenes that came before. It’s clear that Russ Meyer’s "Faster Pussycat, Kill!…Kill!" played into Tarantino’s version of "belted, buckled, and booted" female characters. In "Death Proof" alone, Tarantino gives more roles to female actors than three Hollywood films put together.

ColeSmithey.com

Say what you will about Tarantino’s functional embrace of the n-word in his characters’ ever-spicy dialogue; this do-it-all writer/director/cinematographer knows how to up the stakes on bad girls with fast cars. Haaruumph!

Rated R. 191 mins.

5 Stars SF SHOCKTOBER!

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

October 12, 2023

EVIL DEAD — SHOCKTOBER!

ColeSmithey.comColeSmithey.comWelcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

ColeSmithey.com

ColeSmithey.comColeSmithey.com

ColeSmithey.comThe most shocking aspect of this homage horror movie based on Sam Raimi’s campy 1981 cult classic is its utter lack of wit or humor for which the original is famous.

For a movie that’s nothing if not a bloodbath, “Evil Dead” is as dry as the Sahara. That Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell share producing credits seems to speak more to economic concerns rather than any regard for artistic merit.

ColeSmithey.com

"The Evil Dead" felt like a well thought-out prank for its audience to share in; "Evil Dead" feels like an eversion therapy punishment for some undeclared sin against the State — drug use perhaps? Written as is — by Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues — there is no place for the iconic B-movie sensibilities that Bruce Campbell brought to his character in the 1981 version.

ColeSmithey.com

Although it stays fairly true to the skeleton plot outline of the original, “Evil Dead” lacks panache. Where the imaginative special effects of Raimi's movie elicited smiles, there is no such pleasure to be had here. Gone is any remnant of the slapstick humor that filled the film's far superior inspiration. There's no character to root for. You just keep looking at your watch, waiting for everyone to finally die, die, die.

ColeSmithey.com

The irony is that “Evil Dead” adheres to modern day horror clichés adhered to by the likes of hipsters such as Rob Zombie. It's as unoriginal as they come. Sure, there are plenty of gory displays of dismemberment and flesh-puncturing episodes, but without a sense of fun and excitement “Evil Dead” is a morose throwaway exploitation flick. A few Exorcist-inspired lines of twisted demonic dialogue is as close as “Evil Dead” comes to delivering the cheap and goofy thrills that fans of the first movie will come to see. Don't come looking here for fun; you won't have any.

Rated R. 91 mins. 

3 Stars SHOCKTOBER!!!!!!Cozy Cole

Cole Smithey on Patreon

Featured Video

SMART NEW MEDIA® Custom Videos

COLE SMITHEY’S MOVIE WEEK

COLE SMITHEY’S CLASSIC CINEMA

Throwback Thursday


Podcast Series