Steven Friedman: Grindhouse in the European grinder

Grindhouse in the European grinder

0 Comments Published by Steven Friedman on Saturday, March 31, 2007 at 3:52 PM.

Yeah, it sucks to be a movie geek in Europe sometimes. Well, most of the time actually. The latest installment of cinematic stupidity over here concerns the European release of Quentin Tarantino's & Robert Rodriguez' exploitation-fest Grindhouse.

Now, like most film enthusiasts, I've been looking forward to this experience for quite a while. Two raunchy, gory, deliciously campy exploitation flicks back-to-back, accompanied by faux trailers for even weirder and raunchier flicks... I mean; what could go wrong, right? Well, of course, everything can go wrong over here. In all their wisdom, Harvey and Bob Weinstein have decided that Europeans just won't 'get' that particular Grindhouse-vibe, calling for a downright slaughter of the film and a seperate release for Tarantino's Death Proof and Rodriguez' Planet Terror.

Ridiculous doesn't even begin to describe the level of idiocy that's gone into this decision. Releasing Death Proof and Planet Terror seperately undermines the entire concept of the film. And yes, I said 'the film', because that's exactly what it is: one single film, consisting of three elements; Planet Terror, the faux trailers and Death Proof.

I mean, I don't even understand this split from a marketing point of view. The lion's share of ticket buyers will consist of the fans, who have known about this project since its conception. I know, I'm one of 'em. Now taking away the entire 'raison d'etre' of this film and releasing the two films seperately will - and I have no doubt about this - lead to angry fans who are going to wait for the R1-DVD or worse, simply download the real thing off the internet and organize a Grindhouse-night of their own.

I know I'm not writing anything new here (I even started a Dutch petition against this split a couple of weeks ago), but with the first reviews coming out, and reading about this film being more of an 'experience' than an actual film-film... well, it angers the living shit out of me. Luckily enough though, today the entire faux trailer for Thanksgiving (by Eli Roth) came online. You can watch it here and wonder why it'll never grace Dutch cinema screens.