Tales from the Last Grindhouse

Holy shit, the Psychotronic Encyclopedia! I remember my dad having that book -- he wrote this biography of Ernie Anderson, P.T.'s dad and a local Cleveland TV personality that he bought that book as research for -- and not being allowed to read it. Ah, the memories.

Anyway, stories like this always make me a little pissed that, like most people my age, we don't have the same experiences available today that folks like Devin and Beaks did. As many interview subjects on this site have pointed out, the fact that you can get pretty much anything -- from softcore porn to the complete works of Ingmar Bergman -- off Netflix or the internet these days dilutes the experience, and I think I agree with that. Had I grown up in the days of the grindhouse, I think my interest in the trash film would be a full out fan/obsession today. As it stands, my one experience that reminds of what the article describes is going to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time at a shitty rundown piece of crap theatre in Barberton, Ohio.

I dunno, I get what you mean and agree to an extent, but at the same time, I feel glad to have the resources I have. No video store I know carries Battleship Potemptkin, and if it weren't for blockbuster online, I would never have seen it.

Yeah, I'm sorry/grateful for the whole thing. I think it has to do with my interests being more on the "great trash/cult" side of film, especially in recent years, and a lot of those films demand a communal experience to get the full effect. It's why I love Joe Bob Briggs so much, and why I really enjoyed Harry Knowles's early stuff -- both those guys knew that it wasn't so much about the content of the film but the context in which you saw them.

The example I bring up from my own filmatist days is seeing Evil Dead II on my laptop alone in college, and going "okay, cool movie, what's the big deal?", and then seeing it in a packed house on a double bill with the first Evil Dead on Halloween weekend. There was about two galaxies worth of difference between the chuckles I got from the hand giving Bruce the finger at home and the feeling of collective joy that erupted when he said "Groovy" in the theatre. So while I'm grateful to have the access to these films, I'm disappointed that I don't have to go through just a little bit more work to find them. At least in my own experience, it's encouraged a bit of laziness on my part -- why make an effort to see these films now when you have every opportunity to see them? Hell, I've been watching movies as an adult for the last five years and I'm just now getting into Robert Altman in a big way. That's unforgivable.

That second article = Fucking hell. He went thru all that shit, and no LADY TERMINATOR (which is pretty spectacular, btw - thank you Dave Davis).

Kinda reminds me of the time my brother and I mistakenly wandered into a sleazy yakuza-run hostess bar in Japan, when all we wanted was some ice-cold Sapporo. 2 beers for 20,000 yen ($200 US). The beers cost less than $20, I think. The rest were "companion fees" for the 5 or 6 gals who poured our drinks and fed us edamame during those very uncomfortable 10 minutes.

$15 admission? Gah!