By Keri O’Shea
I’ve heard a new term being used recently – on Twitter, as you might expect – and that term relates to the new wave of retro-styled trailers and movies we’ve been seeing so much of lately, those projects which hark back to a seedy, insalubrious, straight-to-video heyday. That term, folks, is ‘rewindhouse’, and yes, I am ashamed of myself for spreading it any further. That said, the fact that someone, somewhere felt the need to coin it at all surely says something; there’s evidently enough of this around now that we can make some generalisations. Perhaps it’s even – eek – a new sub-genre. But there’s very little point in getting wrapped up in that for the moment; what we want to know is, are the films themselves any good?
Well, yeah, they certainly can be. The style allows filmmakers to play around with excess whilst delving into themes and language which just wouldn’t fly in a conventional setting – but, if you care to make it retro, you can get away with murder (and a lot more besides). How much you enjoy this experience depends a) on how much you can keep your tongue in cheek and b) how much you know and enjoy the films which have inspired the new wave of homage. Which brings me onto The Can-Cannibals Double Feature, directed by Matt Ragsdale. This follows in the footsteps of the fake trailers which people seemed to enjoy a hell of a lot more than the Rodriguez/Tarantino Grindhouse back in 2007…
The Can-Cannibals Double Feature (Grindhouse Trailers) from Matthew Ragsdale on Vimeo.
Well, first things first, this is rather different fare to what we’ve been covering in the Horror in Short section over the past few weeks, and as they say – variety is the spice of life. That said, any film which is emulating films with had microscopic budgets with an even more microscopic budget of its own is at risk of certain problems, and this double-feature trailer feels raw even when perhaps it isn’t meant to be – there are some issues with post-production, which you might expect, and this is rather a long trailer, when it might have been snappier if it was shorter.
But, what you do get is a sense of fun from proceedings and of a cast enjoying the experience of filming. Hell, I’d have been happy to see the girls (a real-life burlesque troupe) going even more over-the-top in their performances than they did, and I was happy that they got some good old-fashioned lo-fi gore in there. A grindhouse trailer ain’t complete without some blood and guts. Of the two ‘trailers’, I think Rebelle’s Revenge is the superior one for me: one big reason for this is that Courtney Cipriani as Rebelle brings the right sort of sneering attractiveness to her role. She looks the part and talks the talk, and we get the best lines of the film in this half of the reel.
I’d be lying if I said this was a film without any problems, sure: but the fact that it got made on 200 bucks and a tonne of goodwill shows the type of bloody-mindedness which surely helped bring us the grindhouse material we’re now so often seeing revisited and extolled. With a better budget and armed with more experience, who knows? If it in any way features hot women with scars and guns, you can bet there’ll be a market for it.
With thanks to Matthew Ragsdale