Review by Ben Bussey
An hour and a half of non-stop trailers might not sound like the most entertaining way to spend an evening. However, when the trailers in question are for some of the most ridiculous looking films you’ve ever seen (or, more likely, never seen), plumbing the far reaches of Z-grade horror, ultraviolence, sexploitation, blaxploitaton, hicksploitation, rape revenge, chop-socky and more besides, some of us might just take a second glance. And so, Nucleus Films gives us the Grindhouse Trailer Classics, a series of DVDs featuring nothing but the best/worst trailers from the best/worst era for the best/worst schlock cinema the world has ever seen. The series has now reached Volume 3, but don’t worry if, like myself, you haven’t seen the first two; I get the feeling there isn’t much in the way of narrative continuity here. Smirk.
Nostalgia is a curious impulse, especially when it’s for an era that you didn’t actually live through yourself. I get that there’s a great deal of nostalgia for a cinema experience that is now lost; Marc kind of touched on it recently in his tribute to New York’s 42nd Street. For myself, being a child of the 1980s – i.e. the home video era – I never had the dubious pleasure of the grindhouse experience, and it seems that with each decade that passes entertainment becomes that bit more oriented toward an individual experience, as opposed to the shared experience that grindhouse cinema offered. I get the impression that this sense of unholy communion is the key thing that the new grindhouse revival is trying to achieve, or at least in part. Still, while the the likes of Run! Bitch Run!, Hobo With A Shotgun, and of course Planet Terror and Death Proof have gone to pains to recapture the vibe of that bygone age, I don’t think any of them have been entirely successful. Perhaps it’s impossible to do so; perhaps the grindhouse experience is (or was) contingent on being in an actual grindhouse environment, and that to attempt to recreate that atmosphere in the digital age, in the multiplex or more likely the living room, is ultimately an exercise in futility.
However, we can say this of our neo-grindhouse pioneers Joseph Guzman, Jason Eisner and co: they have made films that most agree play considerably better with a large audience, preferably a raucous and intoxicated one. They are not intended to be viewed with the same critical scrutiny as other kinds of film; the audience is expected to cast aside all sense of good taste and mainstream sensibility, and indulge ourselves on a sensual, lustful, visceral level.
Hmm. Did I just go off on a self-indulgent pseudo-academic tangent there? Quite possibly. Come on, you can’t exactly expect a conventional review here; this is a compilation of obscure 70s film trailers we’re talking about. Anyway, I should hope you get my basic point; grindhouse expects us to abandon our intellectual faculties and sink into a frenzied, horny, bloodthirsty mob mentality, if only for a little while. So it is with Grindhouse Trailer Classics 3. Indeed, the fact that it’s quite literally an extended montage of nudity, violence, absurdity and distastefulness makes it even easier to adopt the preferred mindset. And if for your viewing experience you can get a roomful of likeminded individuals under the influence of your preferred illicit substances, then all the better.
I won’t delve too deeply into the specifics of the trailers; with a great many of these, most of the entertainment value comes from the surprise laugh you get when the inevitably absurd title and/or concept is revealed. Some titles are less obscure than others, such the Pam Grier vehicle Black Mama White Mama, Ivan Reitman’s Cannibal Girls (released by Nucleus earlier in the year and reviewed here), and the British proto-slasher Beware My Brethren (which is refered to here as Beware of the Brethren, and was also released to DVD this year as The Fiend; once again, see my review here). There are also more than a few familiar faces: besides the aforementioned Ms Grier (and inevitably her frequent co-star Sid Haig) we have Peter Fonda, Robert Shaw, Martin Landau, Ursula Andress, and perhaps most surprisingly Veronica Lake in what turned out to be her final role. But as a general rule of thumb, the more obscure the film, the more entertaining the trailer; those are the ones with the most horrendous dialogue, obvious dubbing and imagery so ridiculous you can’t quite believe what you’re seeing. All of it looks as messy, scratchy and discoloured as I should think it possibly can on DVD; I’d say it’s safe to assume no digital remastering took place.
The main question that may come to mind about Grindhouse Trailer Classics is whether or not people will be willing to part with cash for a DVD of nothing but trailers, when nowadays such things can easily be found on Youtube. Of course, it’s unlikely Nucleus would be releasing a third volume if the first two hadn’t sold. And as I’m one of those old-fashioned types who has no intention of getting a Kindle, prefers CDs to iTunes, and refuses to download films, I’m glad to see physical artefacts of this kind are still being produced. They make for a nice little time capsule and, given that we find the contents so bizarre barely four decades after they were produced, who knows what future generations will make of them? Now there’s an idea. Buy Grindhouse Trailer Classics 3, bury it in the back garden, leave instructions for your grandkids to dig it up, and if by good fortune you’re still around then, watch their reaction. Wouldn’t that make for a healthy family bonding experience?
Also featuring an introduction and interview with Kim Newman, offering his personal reflections on the grindhouse era, Nucleus Films release Grindhouse Trailer Classics 3 to DVD on 5th December.