All language subtitles for American Grindhouse-English

When I hear the term “grindhouse,”
what I think of is Hollywood Boulevard

in the ‘70s—very much like 42nd
Street New York in the ‘70s.

42nd Street, in its heyday, was a
collection of about a dozen cinemas,

all contained within one block.

When you would go into these theatres,
there was an ever-present feeling of danger.

There was a murder there, one night, and
so people, there was a big pandemonium

and I'm still sitting there, I wanna
see the movie, I don't wanna leave.

I did I stayed, the police came in,
they never turned on the house lights.

"We're at the Bijoux Theatre, where
it's reported that a man has gone beserk

while watching a
double-feature horror program.

If you ever saw the movie
Midnight Cowboy, that probably had

the best depiction of 42nd
Street I ever saw in a film.

Because that really was
what it was all about;

it was either people watching movies,
or having their own party in the theatre.

Grindhouse? It's like did you ever
see Pinocchio, Disney's Pinocchio?

There's a wonderful thing in Disney's
Pinocchio where Pinocchio is kidnapped

and goes off to this
island-Pleasure Island

and there's this guy with a derby
and a cigar, and he's barking.

He's at a podium and he's
saying, "The rough house!

Go inside, boys,
it's the rough house!"

And that's what I like about
it, it's sheer hucksterism.

A grindhouse is a
theater that never closes.

Are grindhouse films and
exploitation the same? Ahh, not really

Some theaters would show all day and
all night and they weren't showing,

questionable marginal material,
they were showing regular films.

In the late 40s there were
probably only about 100 theaters

in the United States that you
could classify as "grindhouses".

And so I think it's in the 1960s and
the 1970s that you begin to see that

association with, inner
city urban theaters

aka grindhouses and exploitation.

Exploitation basically means; there
is an element that you can exploit.

Now whether it’s nudity, or
sex or violence or a monster

or just an idea, a lot of exploitation
it's just how outragreous is the idea.

It's something to take
advantage of in promotion.

It's, it's a hook to get
them into the theater...

"No one admitted except
at the beginning!"

I'm happy to join the
management of the this theater.

"YOU will take an unforgettable journey
down deep into the dungeons of hell!"

Why was this girl
chosen to be tortured?

This motion picture is a vicious
expose of a part of a young generation.

Im gonna give you the
time of your life, baby.

Scenes ofsuch brutal honesty will be shown
on this screen. Attention hungry housewives.

A mixture of tender romance
and pornographic realism.

If you were smart, you'll keep
away from prostitutes and pick-ups.

They're not safe.
And they can't be made safe.

"That's a good shot. - "Knock-out!"
- I'm a woman! And I'll do as I please!

"The shocking scenes that you are about
to see, are not suggested for the weak.

Soon at this theater.
They'll be coming together.

"Here's your chance
to see all the bad…"

"Ask not what your
country can do for you…"

#AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE#

And remember: Get more out
of life. Go out to a movie.

#IN THE BEGINNING
FROM EDISON TO FREAKS#

You could say that exploitation
is as old as the movies themselves.

Thomas Edison's company was making films
around the turn of the 20th century.

So there's always been this sort of
element of exploitation in the film business

from its very earliest days.

You know the old joke goes that as
soon as the movie camera was invented,

expliotation started like 5 seconds later,

somebody said to his girlfriend, Would you
mind taking your clothes off for the camera?

That is the story of
exploitation in the cinema.

Now that we have a way to make a
permanent record of all of this.

What is it what we want to record.

And by and large that they wanted
to record was stuff that was taboo.

Exploitation and the dawn of the
motion picture went hand in hand.

Many of Thomas Edison's films from
the beginning of the 20th Century

were widely considered excessive,
salacious, and prurient in content.

Thomas Edison's company helped pave
the way for the exploitation film

by simply catering to audience’s tastes.
- You know PT Barnum was a genius.

Part of his genius was just
giving people what they wanted.

Combining the sensationalism of
PT Barnum and the innovation of

Edison's moving picture camera, the
first feature length exploitation film

was released on November 24th, 1913.

Traffic in Souls, in
a lot of ways, sort of

established the prototype
for exploitation films.

During the time around
1910, 1911, 1912,

there were these tremendous
scares in the United States,

in big cities, about the
so-called "white slave" traffic,

prostitution, forced prostitution.

These tracks usually
found-universally found

that this traffic didn't really exist,

but it captured the popular imagination,
and eventually George Lone Tucker

a director who was working at Universal put
together this film called Traffic in Souls,

which traded on the sensational
aspects of the white slave scare.

Traffic in Souls was made for $57,000.

It would gross a staggering
$450,000 during its theatrical run,

and would place Universal
Pictures firmly on the map as

one of the major players in
the blossoming movie industry.

The film was one of the first feature
films made in the United States.

It promised tremendous
things in its advertising:

hundreds of scenes and a
cast of thousands and so on,

plus this really sensational topic,
none of which it really delivered on.

In, you know, good old
exploitation fashion.

Exploitation movies
flourished in Hollywood

during the transition from
Silent films to Talkies.

In the Pre-Code Era, the
motion picture industry

was often viewed as a
hotbed of moral depravity.

Even today, it's easy to see why
many of these films raised eyebrows.

Pre Code Hollywood in the 1930s.

When you discover them it's kind of
like discovering exploitation films,

because you're seeing things that
you can't believe you're seeing.

There were always woman changing, taking
their clothes off, you can see nipples.

To me they're not really
like exploitation films.

To me, they sort of like realistic
depictions of what was going on

in American life because
people were really screwed up.

People want to see these things
on camera they want to see sex,

they wanna see violence,
they wanna see drugs.

You know, I think it's important
to remember that in the late teens,

the early 1920s, movies had only
been around twenty, twenty-five years.

They were a very young industry.

They were very susceptible to
all sorts of public pressure.

In 1920, Hollywood begins to go
through this series of scandals.

So by 1922, there's tremendous pressure
on Hollywood to clean up its act,

that people are thinking this is just
a Sodom and Gomorrah on the west coast.

And so finally, the
heads all get together,

and they decide that they're
going to bring in Will Hays.

Will Hays is the Postmaster General,
he's kind of a Republican stalwart,

he's an elder in the
Presbyterian church, and they say,

"Will Hays, come out here, come to work
for us, and help us clean up our image."

"To the Warner Brothers to
whom this due credit, for this,

the beginning of a new era
in music and motion pictures.

I offer my solicitations and
my sincerest appreciations."

This had to be like the cushiest job
in the entire film industry, right?

Something like $100 thousand
dollars a year during the depression!

"Service is the supreme
commitment to life.

It can be argued that the day the
Hollywood Production Code was established

the real exploitation
film industry was born.

The Code really did create exploitation
films much like Prohibition created

speakeasies so you really had to go
of your way to find these pictures.

The Hays Code created

all of these sort
of carnie "shysters".

But before the Production Code
would be strictly enforced,

one more major Hollywood film would
test the boundaries of acceptable tastes

and would ironically, become
one of the most infamous films

ever released on the
exploitation circuit.

MGM, after Dracula and Frankenstein they
said we have to make a horror picture.

And you know, we're Metro,
we're the best so therefore

we will make the best horror picture.

And they hired Tod Browing who
made Dracula and he made Freaks.

Freaks is an MGM picture
it's well produced.

It is a really good movie but they
got more than they bargained for.

Freaks may be the most
shocking and controversial film

ever released during
the pre-Code era.

Browning's choice to cast real life
circus oddities caused an outrage

resulting in a backlash that cost
the studio $160,000 in ticket sales.

Although today, it is widely considered
to be the director's masterpiece,

the release of Freaks effectively put an
end to Tod Browning's prosperous career.

It was released during the
so-called "Pre-Code" period,

before the production code
was really being enforced.

And MGM sort of immediately cans
it, you know puts it on the shelf

but some years later,
exploitation entrepaneur

Dwain Esper got the rights to Freaks

and gave it a second life during
the 1940s and into the 1950s

by releasing it on the
exploitation circuit.

#LET HE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN...
SEE OUR MOVIE#

Before licensing Freaks from MGM,

director Dwain Esper made the
early grind house film, Maniac.

Loosely inspired by Edgar
Allen Poe's The Black Cat

and taking various cues from
Universal horror films of the time,

Maniac was written by
Espier's wife, Hildegard,

and produced during
the summer of 1934.

A benchmark in the
evolution of exploitation,

Maniac represents the classical
age of exploitation films

which prospered during
The Great Depression.

The exploitation filmmakers,

they weren't showing in
Hollywood owned theaters.

They existed completely
outside the law.

with its emphasis on sex and violence,
maniac also established a blueprint for

subsequent exploitation films
in which it's production quality

took a back seat to the required
doses of graphic content.

Dwain Esper was interesting
because the films

that he made were
really amazingly awful.

But they were movies
that drew audiences.

The films of Dwain
Esper and others like him

represent a group of nomadic
independent filmmakers and distributors

who traveled the country
in the 1930s and peddled

the virtues of cinematic sin
to thrill seeking audiences.

Affectionately known as The 40
Thieves, these carnie road show men

had little regard for
proper business ethics

and stopped at nothing
to make a quick buck.

Grind house movies and exploitation
movies were the domain of

kind of fly by night independents
who swooped in and gave the public

what they really wanted, but they
had to do it in marginal little cracks

in cities and rural areas where
they'd find a place to show this stuff.

Just pitch a tent or find a theater
that wasn't part of the Hollywood system

where they could just grind away.

One of the key things about
exploitation movies during this time

was thay they were virtually
always shown for Adults Only.

Hollywood films were for everyone, but
these films by having that "adults only"

told people that this was something
different this is something

out of the ordinary. This was
something that I'm not going to see

when I go down to see that MGM
film or that 20th Century Fox film.

There's going to be something you know
maybe a little special in this movie.

Many of the exploitation films
released by The 40 Thieves

reveled in the
sensationalism of true crime.

Take for example police
sherrif Louis Sonney.

After achieving nationwide
publicity for his apprehension of

train robber Roy Gardner in 1921,
Sonney was convinced to re-create

the capture of Gardner for his
first film,You Can't Beat The Rap!

"Well, goodbye Roy.
- Good luck"

Sonney was the sherif of
Centralia Washington and actually

tracked him down, caught him,
arrested him in a hotel up there.

"Mr Sonney, I don't how to begin
to thank you for all you've done…"

They initally started
with live appearances,

where he and Roy Gardner
would appear together.

This established this wonderful
tradition in exploitation of;

it's okay to talk about all
this stuff that's off limits,

it's okay for crime to pay and long as

in the end everyone
gets their cumuppins.

So as long as in the end,
Roy Gardner is in shackles and

is testifying to never get
involved in crime it's all okay.

"I paid the hard way…"

But in the mean time you can exploit
all the stuff that's off limits.

That was essential to
how these things opperated

and Louis Sonney was the
guy who originally did that.

And that became the way
exploitation filmmakers

got around the criticism
of what they were doing.

But we're mearling offering
lessons in morality.

Some people did go hoping
to learn something about

either drug use or child birth, or
whatever the case happened to be.

#IT'S NOT VULGAR...
IT'S EDUCATIONAL#

"It happens to the rich. It happens to the
poor, perhaps to your own son or daughter!

When a girl faces disgrace, many
times the parent are at faulty.

Trying to keep today's teenagers
innocent through ignorance,

it simply will not work!
Too many learn the hard way.

Your girl or boy could be the
next victim of unwed motherhood

or VD bring them to see the truths and learn
facts, facts, facts before it's too late!

At that point in history and maybe even
today, alot of guys didn't stand in the room

when their wives gave birth and if they did,
they didn’t stand down on the business end.

You know, guys used to pace in
the waiting room, waiting, waiting,

waiting for somebody to tell
them what kind of kid they had.

And you're, your're right it was
just something that most people

even people who had
children had never seen.

"Love may be the most beautiful or
most dangerous thing in the world.

But it is never a thing to be gigled
about or fouled with dirty stories.

Child birth is a sacred thing.

Exploitation films during this sort of

classical era were obviously
selling titilation on the one hand,

but on the other hand they
were also selling education.

This is the why a lot of these
films, kind of got a way with it.

Now lets consider that
other public enemy, gonereha

an arch criminal with a half dozen
vulgar alias' such as "The Clap",

"The Dose", "The Gleet", "The
Strain" or "The Running Range"!

This was information that was
hidden away from a lot of people and

these movies were providing that
information at least to some extent.

So, particularly of the sex hygeine
films often the audience was

largley made up of women who had no other
way of getting this kind of information

The birth of a baby stuff, you had
almost a protective shield around you.

You know Dave Friedman used to call tent
evangelists they called them 'sky grifters'

because they'd get a big tent and
it was almost just like a carnival.

The guy was using God to fleece
you of whatever your money was,

he had a perfect cover. And that's
what the birth of a baby movies

and stuff was, it was the perfect
cover for people who might be

a little seedy to come
in and be respectable

and still show you something that

had they approached it in
a different factor they,

they probably would have been
run out of town on a rail.

Perhaps the most infamous
of all "birth of a baby"

films was 1945's Mom and Dad.

Produced and distributed by Kroeger
Babb, the film was direeted by

William "One Shot" Beaudine

in just six days and
on a budget of $63,000.

It would go on to become the third
highest grossing film of the decade.

Mom and Dad had a lecturer,
named Elliot Forbes

the eminant hygience
commentator Elliot Forbes

who would travel with
the roadshow units,

now this of course meant
you had like 15 Elliot Forbes

in the United States criss-crossing
the nation at any given time.

"See Mom and Dad. You'll be glad you did.
Children under 16 must be in adult company.

See Mom and Dad"

While films like Mom and Dad continued
to appear on Grindhouse cirquit

adult themes were still being addressed
in the studio films of the 1940s.

The Production Code forced
filmmakers to creatively depict

sexuality and violence in
a much more subtle approach.

The result was a style of motion
pictures known today as film noir.

Have'nt you tried to buy my
loyalty with money and nothing else?

What else is there
that I can buy you with?

I've thought about whether
there was any kind of connection

between grindhouse cinema and
film noir and in reality there is.

What's the matter, aren't
you going to kiss me?

Both of these type of films
specialize in adult themes.

The difference of course is that in
film noir the artists making these movies

had to find creative ways
to express all this stuff

within the constraints
of the Production Code.

The grindhouse guys, just showed it.

Grindhouse theaters flourished in
red-light districts and skid row sections of

major cities by the mid-20th century;

an image that was illustrated
in this film from 1941…

Probably the best representation
of a grindhouse in a

mainstream Hollywood film
is in "I Wake Up Screaming".

You know it doesn't seem very well mainted,
people are in there because they're sleeping,

they are spending the night in the theater
becuase they have no place else to go.

It's a very interesting
depiction of what a grindhouse is,

that you didn't see too
often in a mainstream movie.

The depiction of a grindhouse theater
in "I Wake Up Screaming" may have been

a sign that the Production Code was
loosing touch with American audiences.

By the 1950s, the
portraial of adult themes

in mainstream movies
would change once again

In 1948 you finally had the prosecution that
had been brough by the Justice Department.

It ends with a Supreme Court decision
known as The Paramount Decision.

That meant - for the Majors - that they
no longer had a garanteed place to show

their movies, they bassically had to begin
to compete in a much more open market place.

And that's when I think
the exploitiers thought:

Our days may be numbered here.

If they start letting Hollywood do
these movies, what are we going to do?

The Paramount decision bassically
means that the Production Code,

begins to fall apart because there is
really no way to enforce it any more.

Once the Production Code
begins to fall apart that means

Hollywood begins to gradually take on

these more adult suject matters.

This is the 19 year-old Baby Doll.

She wouln't let her
husband come near her.

She wouldn’t let the stranger go away.

Why Mr. Vicarro. You
certainly are getting familiar.

For the sort of old line
exploitiers and The 40 Thives,

that was bad news, because a
lot of the topics that they had

pursued for years, gradually
become the province of Hollywood.

#PERVERSION...
FOR PROFIT#

After World War II, sex became
a little more acceptable.

It was recognized that at
least pin-up and cheesecake art

and all of that was really a big
moral booster during the war.

And so burlesque became a more
acceptable form of entertainment

I don't think people realize just prevelent
striptease and burlesque was in our country.

We are in such a prudish, puritanical
moment right now I think people forget that

there's always been the grind,
theres always been strip,

there's always been this side
of American showbusiness.

The term bump and grind' was
lifted from the burlesque stage and

as many of the nation's red light
districts burlesque houses made

the transition to movie houses
the term grindhouse came with it.

This change in venues paid off
handsomely for the theater owners,

but it was another story
for the stripping starlets.

And then a lot of producers in grindhouses
understood that the economic benefits

of filming burlesque acts and

finding venues in which
they could show the films

was a lot cheaper then sending
women around on the circuits

That was just you know,
mana from heaven for

the exploiters because they could
get Lili St. Cyr and Tempest Storm

and all these popular burlesque
artists to do a film.

And quite frankly I think
these women undersold themselves

because they didn't understand

this new quote en quote technology an
issue that still exists to this day;

where they said yeah, ok fine you
wanna film me doing my act, so what?

And they didn't understand
that, that was going to cut

deeply into their ability to
make money as a live performer.

And then little by little,
once burlesuqe was acceptabe,

then it just became
the inevitable flood.

I mean how long the the damn
going to hold at that point.

Kiss me quick

And it was like, how much
skin can you actually show?

Besides adapting the tradition
of burlesque to exploitation,

many of the grindhouse
filmmakers turned to the

world of men's magazines
as a source for insperation.

And as the 50's progressed with
relaxed attitudes toward sex,

there was serious opposition from
concenred organizations as evidensed

in this propaganda film produced by
The Citizens for Decent Literature.

And then we come to nudist magazines.

If they were printed only the
nudist cult, they would never exist.

Group exposure is a
hallmark of these cultists.

However it's been
well stated that very

few blind people join
the nudist colony.

Nudist camp movies hit their
peak in the post war era

with Walter Bibo’s The Garden of Eden.

Released in 1954, the film stirred up
a considerable amount of controversy.

When The Garden of Eden appears in
the mid 1950s, it was also during

this much more, seemingly
conservative and buttoned down period.

It drew a lot of attention,
it also drew

a fare amount of censorship activity.

Eager and ready to challenge the
censorship issue that faced his film,

Bibo took his case to the New
York court of appeals and won.

What that meant was you could
show people naked on screen,

they just couldn't be engaged in sex.

Encouraged by Bibo's
court room triumph,

exploitation filmmakers
jumped on the bandwagon

and pumped out a plethora of nudist camp
movies, each more cheeky than the last.

It was a very innocent sort of film
where people just kind of walked around,

threw a ball here and
there and this and that.

And again, much like the
birth of a baby films,

they promoted it as
a healthy lifestyle

you know sunshine and
fresh air, people with a high

moral fiber who just happend
to be walking around naked.

But what you really buy is a
ticket to see a bunch of people,

walking around naked
and mostly girls I hope.

#TEENAGE...
RAMPAGE#

And so another job, for
the police and the courts.

Johny Marvin is now in
the hands of the law.

This is the first time he's been caught, but
his delinquent tendancies began long before

in the conflicts of an unhappy home and in
the hangout of the gang which was his refuge

By the mid 1950s, teenagers
were growing up in a world

with more progressive
attitudes toward sex.

I love you, Jim.
I really mean it.

As the American teenager clashed with the
conservatiove morals of the older generation

their stories of anger and rebellion
found their way to the silver screen.

Teen movies have always been
around, if you go as far back as

Wild Boys On The Road from the 1930s.

Ahh, heck.
- Hey whats the matter?

Somebody stole our gas, c'mon!

But they didn't really
explode until the 1950s.

And I think a lot of it had to do
with teenagers living in the suburbs,

they had disposable
incomes, they had cars.

Rock'n'roll certainly
had a large part of it.

Say, they ain't made are they? - No, that's
just the ways kids are dancing nowadays.

They call it rock n rolling,
or bop or something like that.

You know generally it was that you
were not understood by your parents,

you were not understood
by your school.

I suppose you're going out
again tonight? - Yeah, so what?

You were an outcast in someway.

Johnny and two hundread thousaned other
youngsters who are arrested each year,

are America's number
one crime problem.

In the post war era
when things changed,

people started
thinking of young people

differently and there
also was a lot of crime.

Young people and crime became
a Blackboard Jungle kinda thing.

Blackboard Jungle was a
tremendously influential movie.

It was not made as an exploitation film
but it performed the same functions.

Dragstrip Riot! Leading to a fight
fought with all the fierce fury of youth.

Dangerously angry one minute!
Rockin and rollin the next!

The teen exploitation movies
would take a teenage diliema

and AIP really knew
how to do this well.

AIP was a company, James
Nicholson and Sam Arkoff.

They would make posters
and come up with titles.

These were pictures that
peoples parents wouldn't go see.

Here's 50 thousand dollars
go give us that movie!

They did a lot of crime pictures, they
did a lot of juvveile delinquent pictures,

they did a lot of horror pictures,
science fiction pictures.

All the sort of
disreputable genres.

I think a lot of us who came out of
the American Independent Movement.

That was the basis
for a lot of our work.

It preceeded punk rock and the DIY
spirit and they were put together

almost the same way punk rock
records put together, you know.

Very fast, very cheap, down and dirty,
lets get it out there kind of thing.

By the mid-60s, teen
exploitation films temporarily

diverted their attention to the beach

and traded in their pompadours and leather
coats for swimming trunks and boogie boards.

The beach movies are so bizarre.

They were really odd.

How do you like this title:
The Behavior Patern of

the Young Adult and its
Relation to Primitve Tribe.

I've got a shorter title.
- What's that? - Teenage sex.

The whole point of them was to see tits
and ass. But wholesome, tits and ass.

Teen exploitation films represented a
major movie market during the 50s and 60s,

even though they were not, solely restricted
to the confines of Grindhouse theaters.

Teens needed a place that they
could see these films, alone,

without adults, and the drive in
theater provided the perfect escape.

The drive in theaters also showed a lot
of the same product, exploitation product.

But they weren't nessesarily
grind, I don't consider those grind.

What they were interested
in was the teenage market.

By the time of the drive in movies and
films like I Was A Teenage Werewolf.

He turns into this monster!
Talk about hairy palms.

They specifically were gearing for
adolescent, hormonal, horny boys and girls.

So they wanted to go after
them and they went after them

with whatever was popular at the time

Now they make Hostel, they make these
torture porn movies for kids, but then…

These pictures all have a lot to
say and they're all very interesting.

Most of them are shit, but
every so often theres a good one.

Along with the proliferation
of teen exploitation films,

new ways of depictions of sex

in exploitation cinema were also
finding their way into the market place.

But upon closer investigation,
it would appear that both

of these markets may have
shared a common audience.

How many times have I
told you not to walk around

the house like that!
- But dad, it's only a slip.

You heard what I said! No go upstairs
and put something on. - But dad.

You know, I'm not really sure how
many people actually went to go the the

Beach Party movies, because when I was
a kid we all thought they were square.

I think they were actually aimed at
adults! You know Sam Arkoff was the guy.

No, no, it's the teenage market we don't
need money in these old tired stars.

And what do you see Buster Keaton! All
of a sudden, the Beach Party movies,

they were supposed to
be aimed at kids and they

started bringing Silent
Film stars out of retirement.

Please?
What kid would go see that?

But my father might?
- Papaya Surprise - Papaya Surprise?

Lord Love a Duck with Tuesday Weld.

Have you seen this movie?
No? Oh my God!

She's a High Schooler is is
trying on sweaters with her father,

who is getting sexually while
she's saying things like

Perrywinkle Pussycat.

Don't you just love it!
- Masterpiece film.

#SEXPLOITATION
FROM NUDIE CUTIES TO ROUGHIES#

In 1959, director Russ
Meyer took the sex film and

the celebration of female
nudity onscreen a step further.

Both voyeuristic and comical,
Meyer's The Immoral Mr. Teas

was the incarnation of a critical though
short lived style of exploitation movie.

Russ invented the Nudie Cutie

Besides placing naked
women in a contemporary

setting outside of the nudist camps,

The Immoral Mr. Teas featured something
that nobody else had ever thought a plot.

The Immoral Mr. Teas had a plot and in that
plot there were situations with naked girls.

The nudit cuties were
very, very innocent and

they were basically like pin
up calendars come to life.

Russ is very influential to
that he made a movie with a plot.

Kinda like The Great Train
Robbery, Edwin S. Porter.

These movies and their importance to the
history of cinema and narrative filmmaking

Russ is that way to the history of porno,
because he made those Nudie Cuties.

Nudie cuties were unashamed in
their depictions of nudity on screen.

The girls were plentiful and the
storylines equally ridiculous.

But as the cycle of “nudie
cuties” continued to proliferate,

a darker and more sinister style
of film was also about to emerge.

Get up!
- Get away from her!

When the violence was added,
they were later called roughies

“Roughies” were just that:
rough, violent, and raw.

These films offered a
startling and uncompromising

view of the battle between the sexes;

a dramatic contrast to the
sexual revolution that lay ahead.

You can certainly see elements of what
are often referred to as the Roughies

in movies as early
as Violated from 1953

and The Lonely Sex from
later on in the 50s.

Like nudist camp magazines
that inspired those films,

the “roughies” were adapted
from men's pulp magazines.

Take a look at what they are reading.
Go on, they won't even know you're there.

You had Men's Magazines,
you know that kind of fixated

on these notions of women in
danger; tied up and lashed.

It's pulled from the dark ressess
of peoples minds, ya know.

And predominetly men.

No please, no.

That these were the male fantasies
that were turned into movies

When these kinda pictures started to
play, again when I was in Philidelphia

there were always at theaters
that would run pictures

like Olga's House of
Shame and stuff like that.

These pictures were they had a
clientele, they were pretty popular.

The Roughies grew out
of the Nudie Cutie.

And they're ugly, they're
ugly movies really.

Discovering a squeeler
amoung her girls,

Olga cuts out a part of a girls
tongue as a warning to the others.

More than just the next
phase in sexploitation films

the “Roughies” represented a deeper
shift in the nation's subconscious.

You could say that roughies developed
because the culture got really violent.

1963 was really the end of the 50s.

In the grindhouse come these
movies, the Roughies where no

longer are the women on a
pedestal as objects of adoration.

They're things to be beaten
and whipped into submission.

That kind of product as it was
called was just not thought of in

the same breath as the kind of
things that played in normal theaters.

Films like The Lusting Hours,
directed by The Amero brothers,

helped to establish New York City as a major
player in the sexploitation film industry.

Featuring the likes of husband and
wife team Mike and Roberta Findley

and Doris Wishman the roughies
that emerged from New York

during the 1960s offer a glimpse
into the world of Times Square,

42nd Street and the
grindhouse theater lifestyle.

The movies coming out of New York
were cranked out like sausages.

They were being made by
people who were just going out,

making a movie maybe over the
course of a few weekends or so.

They, they really have this kind taste,
this sort of flavor of New York in the 1960s

Once in a great while,
a sensational and starkly

realistic motion picture
comes to the screen.

This whole different type of film
developed where the sex was really intense.

And a huge part of the
reason for this, I believe,

is because you could
not show sex on screen.

So you had to show a substitute.

And violence was the substitute.

#GORE-GALORE#

Following their production of a
series of nudist camp movies, two men

Hershell Gordon Lewis and Dave
Friedman produced what is now

often regarded as the archetypal
“Roughie”, Scum of The Earth.

That same year, the duo stumbled
upon an idea for a new kind of movie

and the world of exploitation
would never be the same again.

Scum of The Earth
was a transitional picture.

It was the last picture I
ever shot in black and white.

Well it became clear after a while that
this particular kind of motion picture

that was getting into a field
that was terribly crowded because

the number of theaters that would
play it, that number was quite limited.

And the number of competitors,
well they were beginning to swarm

I began to think they
could fill Yankee Stadium.

The question then became the standard
question that I ask throughout my

what we might laughingly
call my feature film career.

What kind of motion
picture might there be

that the major film companies
either will not make or cannot make,

but a theater will play and somebody
might plop down in a chair to look at.

I was watching some ancient
gangster movie on television.

The police shot this fellow
full of bullet holes and I said

wait a minute
as his eyes closed.

I said, that's not right.

And that gave us the
idea for that marvelous

four letter word
G- O-R-E.

Well the next questions was, what?

And so was born, Blood Feast

We were terrified. I was cutting this
thing in my little cutting room in Chicago,

and it was to use a euphamism ghastly.

So, we decided to open that movie in Peoria,
figuring if we die in Peoria, who will know?

Instantly, it was a gigantic smash.

So Dave and I looked at each other and said
What if we made a decent one?

With Blood Feast and it’s
follow up, Two Thousand Maniacs

Friedman and Lewis unleashed a
maddening onslaught of lacerated limbs,

dismembered maidens and
blood hungry hillbillies.

It's really hard to remember, or to
imagine for those of us who were not alive.

What it must have been like to
see people be eviserated in movies.

Herschel is the genius
who first did that.

Oh my God.

And whether you think that his
movies are exciting or not exciting.

Great or terrible, they're
incredibly fucking important

because nobody had
ever thought to do that.

I'm not a big fan of Herschel Gordon
Lewis as a filmmaker, but wonderful posters

The campaign is more
important than the film itself!

You know, he had this
extreme gore but grand

I'll mispronounce it grand
guingold how do you say it?

But Grand gingold I'm embarassed.
The french word.

I cannot pronounce grand
guignol but I know what it means!

There used to be a theater in Paris
for many years, that would stage plays

where there were
murders and executions

and battle scenes with explicit gore.

So the idea of the gore movie, or the
gore piece has always been with us.

The key scene in Blood Feast, he reaches
into a girls mouth and pulls out her tongue.

And that became that watershed
scene that to this day

has been, its, its the one
that every film biographer

who cares about this kind
of movie singles out as

the scene that changed the
course of motion pictures.

The cultural impact of Blood Feast's
excessive violence is debatable,

but what is clear is the history of
contemporary violence in American cinema

owes a debt to different film that
debuted three years before Blood Feast,

was directed by the premiere film artist
of his day and released by a major studio.

Well I think the movie would be the
movie that changed violence was Psycho.

Everybody after that had
the liberation to do what

was in their minds based on the
success and acceptence of Psycho.

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock's
Psycho was released.

Utilizing similar marketing tactics
that would make The 40 Thieves proud,

much of Psycho's success had to do with the
advertising methods used to promote the film

offering further proof that the
distinction between Hollywood

and exploitation films boils
down to little more than

the cost and quality of
the individual productions.

So the question begs to
be asked is there really

much of a difference
between these two films?

Other than the fact that somebody using
a knife on another person and they're

both shot on a motion picture film, I
don't see too many great similarities.

In terms of exploitation, I
see great similarities between

a film like Blood Feast
and a movie like Psycho.

Hitchcock's film was pure ballyhoo.

I mean he had a brilliant
marketing campain for that.

The entire motion
picture indusry knows that

Psycho is being exhibited a
special presentation policy.

A creation of Paramount
Pictures showmanship!

Alfred Hitchcock when he makes Psycho,

truly he wants every single person
in America to see that movie.

I believe that his motivations are almost
exactly the same as Friedman and Lewis.

What do these movies have in
common? Quite a bit actually

See the movie version that TV
didn't dare show! Uncut! Intact!

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho
- Ballyhoo, PT Barnum you know.

It's all about getting the suckers in.

#THE TIMES...
THEY ARE A CHANGIN'#

As the 1960s ended, so would
The Hollywood Production Code.

Spanning over thirty years
and countless motion pictures,

the views of The Production
Code had clearly grown out

of touch with the changing
times and societal views.

In order to adapt, the studios
introduced a new rating system.

This seal is a part of the self-regulation
of the Motion Picture Association.

It means that the film
displying this seal is within

the creative boudries of
reason and good judgment.

And that the theaters showing
this film, supports the code

And with the changes in the ratings
system, came a new and expanded audience.

Orgy, orgy! Have an orgy!

This period in American
film history was the most

exciting and liberating
since the pre-Code era.

I blinked in 1965 and
suddenly the 60s appeared.

When I left everybody had short hair,
when I came back everybody had long hair,

they were smoking dope, the Beatles
had just played The Hollywood Bowl.

And everything changed overnight.

With the 1966 film The Wild Angels,

American International
Pictures took the conventions of

the previous decade's youth market
films and embelished them with

a contemporary view to reflect
America's growing counter culture.

Just what is it that you want to do?
- Well we want to be free.

We want to be free to, to do what we
want to do. We want to be free to ride.

We want to be free to ride our machines
without being hassled by The Man

And then of course when the
sixties came, there were some really

intersting political movies. All these
movies about the youth generation.

Individual against the collective
conforming society and all that.

And in these movies they
condemn drugs, drugs are bad.

Unless you're in the movie
and then they're pretty good!

During this time, you would
see drug movies everywhere.

There's nothing wrong with
blowing a grass! - Yeah!

You can do it a thousand times
and never go to harder drugs!

I think, the only time
I think I've ever been

able to understand myself
was on an acid trip.

So even outside of what you were getting
in legitimate exploitation cinema,

you were getting
in your classroom.

If you become a pothead, you risk blowing
the most important time of your life

Im Peter Fonda. We've just
come back from making a movie,

dealing with the most talked
about sujects of the day; LSD

Drugs were always around.
Psychadelics didn't really arrive

until the late sixties even though

there are little traces of psychadellia
in The Tingler for instance.

Dave, that drug you brought?
- It's not a drug, it's an acid

The trip he has in that movie is
not that interesting to me

The walls! The walls!

The walls!

The exploitation films produced for
the youth market during the late sixties

featured a mind-numbing array
of anarchistic attitudes,

sexual freedom, and graphic violence.

Not even the Godfather of Gore himself could
resist the allure of a rumbling motorbike.

American International
was making biker movies,

but their biker movies
were all of a pattern.

I thought we could brake that mold by having
female bikers who in fact became dominant.

Man Eaters, get those ugly mothers!

There's no question who ran
the show in She Devils On Wheels.

And that's why its so funny when someone
says some of my movies were sexist,

that we take it all out on women and I say
"Ever see She Devils on Wheels?"

In 1969, inspired by the financial
success of American International Picture’s

earlier biker movies, Columbia
Pictures released Easy Rider.

A film that would eventually
come to symbolize the era.

Easy Rider is a picture that exists
because of exploitation pictures.

I don’t think that itself it is,
because I think it's a message movie.

It does not have a
clear western like plot.

It's basically an odyssey.

America's growing opposition to
the Vietnam War inspired a number of

low budget filmmakers who sprang
into action with their own responses.

The result was a handful of
angry and nihilistic pictures

that now depicted
America’s youth as victims.

Here's the first motion picture
two offer, to the daring,

a look into the final, maddening
space between life and death.

The Last House On The Left.

To avoid fainting, keep repeating:
Its only a movie; Only a movie

You see Last House On The Left is
interesting because it is so nasty.

I want you to take the gun. And
I want you to put in your mouth

and I want you to blow your
brains out! Blow your brains out!

And just in your face sick.

That a studio would
have never made that.

You would have never seen that
in any way except exploitation.

Growing up in the sixties,
nothing was holy anymore.

We were growing up as
Americans and I think probably

were experiencing our own
history for the first time.

As the 1960s counter culture
movement evolved and expanded,

evil was no longer restricted to the
conventions of low budget monster movies.

Now, in the wake of the
Manson Family murders

and Vietnam, the face
of fear was human.

I wanted to poke your eyes out
while you were feeling it in your gut.

Ya know.

And to cut your dick off
while you were smelling roses.

With 1972's The Last House on The
Left, Wes Craven used Swedish director

Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring
as a source of inspiration for

his first film and as an indirect
response to an raging and unpopular war.

I had a subway car empty out on me
once, when I was just sitting there.

And this was because all of the
posters were up in the subway so God

of course people were going to
look at the posters and see me there

with a fucking knife like this,
ya' know and they're gonna go

I gotta get outta here!
Ya' know.

But even an exploitation film with a
social message needs a bit of ballyhoo.

Last House's infamous marketing campaign
proved successful, if not wholey original.

The promotional tagline "Its Only a
Movie" had in fact alrady been used to

market Herschel Gordon Lewis' "Color
Me Blood Red" released 7 years earlier.

You must keep reminding yourself:
It's just a movie; It's just a movie.

The counter culture movement
of the late sixties had been

immideitly proceeded and inspired
by the Civil Rights Movement.

Even before the so-called black
exploitation boom of the 1970s,

low budget filmmakers had been
quick to exploit racial tension in

a series of politically charged
potboilers, which often remain

overlooked when re-counting the
evolution of exploitation films.

Movies are reactionary,
people don't understand that.

Movies are certainly infuential. But
the reality is, its called the business.

They want to sell tickets,
so they will make anything

Hitler Eats A Baby they will
make anything, if it makes money.

#BLAXPLOITATION
YOU DIG?#

Shaft! Hotter than Bond.
Cooler than Bullit!

They started making a lot of
movies for a black audience.

To exploit The Civil Rights movement
and the trouble in the country.

C'mon run! Run!

Melvin Van Peebles, who was an
avant garde artist and playwright;

he made a movie called Sweet
Sweetback's Baaaad Assss Song.

And it was made down and dirty.
It was made the same time I was

making Schlock we shared equipment,
I don't know if you knew that.

According to legend, only
two theaters in America

would agree to play 'Sweet
Sweetback's Badasss Song.

On it's opening night in Detroit,
the film broke theater attendance

records and would eventually
gross over 4 million dollars.

The film's success inspired both
exploitation filmmakers and mainstream

studios alike to make films that depicted
inner city life from a black perspective.

At a time of racial division in
America, inner city audiences rushed

to the theaters to see movies that
portrayed them in a heroic light.

Eventually the movie industry was
forced to sit up and take notice.

And the era of the
black hero had arrived

Oooo, Super Fly! Success of
the new notion picture Super Fly

had brought Ron O'Neal to
sudden nation wide attention.

Here he talks about how they made the
film in which he takes the title role.

Above all I think we wanted to
make a, a film that was realistic

in content, realistic in nature.

A black man becomes a
hustler, because he is forced

into it or led into it
by socio-economic force.

Because being a hustler
is not a fun thing.

In the days of the chitlin
circuit, where you'd make

black westerns or whatever it was.

This suddenly, was for
black and white audiences.

Hey, what kinda talk
is that soul brother?

Don't you know that black is beautiful?
- It was something to be proud of.

I mean to see the black audience
seeing their super heros on screen.

It was just amazing. It was
just a great time for the

black audience because we
weren't used to seeing that.

Blaxploitation may have been popular
among audiences of all colors,

but some critics suggest that these films
contributed to cultural stereotypes and,

in some cases, even
promoted reverse racism.

People criticized Coffy
and Foxy Brown for being

almost racist from the
black point of view?

And my feeling was well why not?

We've been watching racist
movies all our lives.

Why not see what it looked like
from the other side and enjoy it.

And I thought it was fun.

One actor whose image transcended
the characters associated with

blaxploitation stereotypes was former
AFL Defensive Back, Fred Williamson.

Never a pimp, never a
pusher and always a hero.

Williamson's acting career went well
beyond the exploitation market of the 1970s.

Damn brother, you have
become one violent dude!

What we needed at
the time, were heroes.

We needed physical hereos.

We didn't need, we didn't need
creative heroes, we didn't need actors.

We needed somebody saying:
You spray that water on me

If you put those dogs on
me, I'm killin' them and

when I'm done with them,
I'm gonna kick your ass.

I don't do no singin; I don't do no
dancin' and you aint kilin' me and

I'm winning my fights and I'm gonna
get that girl - that's it - bottom line.

People like movies about
the wrong side of the law,

so I didn’t see that Black
Caesar for example was

anything different than
Little Ceasar or Pulic Enemy.

When I was a kid, sometimes I liked the
second features better than the first ones.

Those pictures meant more
to me than the big lavish

MGM movie that played
as the main feature.

I liked the second feature better.

So I set out to make a couple
of good second features.

Well known for his guerilla style filmmaking
Larry Cohen's productions are notorious

not only for their content
but also for the bold and

occasionally illegal ways
in which they were made.

Larry Cohen is a shamless filmmaker.
It was shameless.

It was just to hear that certain
audience on 42nd Street go Yeeeeeeah!

From crowded Times Square to the
LAX baggage claim, Cohen rarely

if at all sought proper shooting permits
to make his movies in public places.

I learned a lot from Larry
Cohen. I learned how to

steal shots and how to do
big scenes without permits.

When we did the scene in Black Ceasar
when I get shot coming out of Tiffany's.

I'm going down the street and
everybody they're slowing down and

they're looking at me like they don't wanna
be involved, who is this idiot down there?

And they see blood. Now for sure
they don't want to be involved.

And then I went across the
street and I fell on garbage can,

I fell up against the wall;
and people just look at me.

Nobody, nobody came by. Finally after
all of this which they didn't get on film

a cop came by and he says:
Hammer, whachyou doin'?

You shootin a movie here? You gotta
a permit. He said, I'm not asking.

I'm walking around the block. I'll
be back in 15 minutes. Be gone.

I said, ok but would you mind moving over cause
you're in my shot. Just move over a little bit.

As this era drew to a close, many
of the black exploitation films

moved to parodies of the genre.

These films began to turn away
from the social statements that had

been incorporated early on and
featured more outrageous storylines.

Hide your mamas.
Big brother is comin'.

Well, I feel two ways
about it. Its ashame that

African American artists had

this small window, into film.

That this was where the majority
of African Americans got to work.

And they were all, sort
of exploitation movies.

I think it was an incredibly creative time.
So. I found that I had more freedom,

within that context. You see thats
the other thing about exploitation.

If you deliver the elements of
exploitation that's all they care about.

So you're not dealing with
people who are cutting you

and re-cutting you
and casting, you know.

Bassically, he delivers the
action, he delivers the nudity,

he delivers the gunfight, the, the
fist fights, the chases leave him alone.

Within the context of delivering the
exploitation, you get to be incredibly free

#THEY CAED THEIR BODIES...
BUT NOT THEIR DESIRES#

Women, locked behind
walls of concrete and steel.

Guarded by barbed wire and
guns in a tropical hell.

They call it: The Big Dollhouse

In 1970, director Jack
Hill made The Big Dollhouse.

Capitalizing on a decade of civil
unrest, the Philippines set action'er

transported the tride and true
formula of women in prison films

to an unnamed banana
republic, where forced labor,

prostitution and jungle warfare
was the name of the game.

Well it was the first real big huge
major hit of that type of movie,

it wasn't the first film
made on that subject matter.

Watch out for her,
she likes to wrestle.

Women in prison films have
been around a long time.

And those films are pretty sympathic
towards women in prison.

Each day the crimal courts
condemed scores of unfortunate girls

to prisons that need reforming
more than the prioners

So when I got back to the states.

Everybody was really
excited about the movie.

Which was great because when I read the
script I thought it was just horrible

I couldn't, I thought all God
what am I going to do with this?

Truthfully when you look at
that movie now, it's very sophomoric.

Well, you don't look like
a hardened ciminal to me

I don't want to do things for Greer any
more. I'd like to do something for you.

And at the same time in a naïve
way it was ahead of it's time,

The triumph of The Big Dollhouse
was it's depiction of women

not only as the central characters,
but also the as aggressors.

Get it up, or I'll cut it off

These women confronted Freudian
complexities and shed the shackles of a male

dominated society albeit while wearing
minimal clothing and taking group showers.

Well, well, I have to say
that I like naked sweaty women.

So I guess Women In
Prison films, are, are.

I enjoy Women In Prison films.
I don't watch them frequently

but if there was a Women
In Prison film playing

on 42nd st I'd make
a point of seeing it.

Women like to watch other
women naked and doing things.

I'm sorry, its something
that women like.

Women don't have a problem with it.
Women like it.

Women get turned on by it too.
Wha, what?

Well I wrote The Big Birdcage
as a sequel to The Big Dollhouse.

And during the year after The
Big Dollhouse came out it was

so widely imitated everybody rushed out
with copies of it and even on television

and so the only thing I could
do was to kinda do a spoof on it

and to make fun of the genre
in a way but still serious.

In The Big Birdcage, Hill turned the
Women In Prison Film convention on its ear,

by having his characters break
into the prison and placing

the caged women under the
watchful eyes of gay prison guards.

Don't play coy with me missy,
you don't have anything

I would be interested in
anyway - Hi there, Rocco.

You big stud. What's up?
- Nothing's up for you!

We had talked about doing another sequel
and I had the idea of a movie called

The Pirate Women of Zambowanga,
but the genre kinda cooled off

and I didn't want to go back
to the Philippines again.

#THE SCHLOCKY...
SEVENTIES#

The Corpse Grinders.

Do you know what this is?
It’s a corpse grinding machine.

I think that probably The Corpse Grinders is
the most famous at least in this country.

Corpse Grinders was a big
thing here in the United States.

The plot of the film was these
two guys that decided that

they wanted to make cat food and
they couldn't get ingrediants.

Couldn't get enough grain and so
on. So they decided well cadavers.

Directed by Ted V. Mikels,
The Corpse Grinders typifies

the filmmaker's love for
the absurd and ridiculous.

Completely devoid of any
socio-political subtext of the time,

most of the horror films from the 1970s
reflected the true spirit of exploitation;

if an audience is curious enough
to see something outrageous,

then there will always be
someone to take the ticket.

A title like Corpse Grinders
is something different, unusual.

The Indredible
Two-Headed Transplant!

Written by James Gordon White, The
Incredible Two Headed Transplant

mixed the element of carny
freak show monstrosities

and the Frankenstein mythos
for modern horror audiences.

The Incredible Two Headed Transplant
was really a send-up of Frankenstein.

At least that’s what I thought,
when I was writing it.

It was meant to be just a
lite, little horror movie.

Yet everyone just seems to
think it's just terrible.

People will sit through most movies.
No matter how shitty.

People will actually.
Well I'm here now!

Dracula Versus Frankenstein!

It'll get better. We've been here an
hour and a half, it will get better.

Most of the exploitation films
of this era share one simple goal

to entertain audiences
and therefore, make a buck.

The motion picture industry
has always prospered during

times of social turmoil and
the 1970s was no exception.

Americans will always look for an escape
during dark days and storytellers like

Mikels and White prove that the carnie
spirit of exploitation will never change.

Overall my movies, I, I never wanted

to make the great American movie.

I wanted to entertain and

entertain myself while I
was working on the script

and then hopefully entertain an
audience so when the saw the movie.

If you're going to entertain people
you've got to grab their attention.

More spine tingling thrills.

More bone crusing
terror, terror, terror...

#SEND IN...
THE NAZIS#

The first phase of our operation
will be to remove The Messiah

Written by, co-produced and
co-starring James Gordon White,

The Tormentors a Nazi
versus Jesus action thriller

is a rarely mentioned
foray into the curious

sub-genre of grindhouse cinema
known as Nazi Exploitation.

You will have a hard time
convincing a lot of people of

the inherint Entertainment
Value of Nazi Exploitation films.

The Nazi Exploitation movies to me,
the image is of a semi-clad girl,

tied to a post being whipped.

And although there was
some of that in the 40s,

it didn't really take
off until the 60s and 70s.

As the years go on and the
pictures get more and more graphic,

you really start to get beyond any
kind of concept of taste, whatsoever.

And the Nazis simply exist as a

excuse to for images of horror
and degradation, sex and murder.

So you cannot honestly say Don
Edmonds was inspired to make

an anti-Nazi film because of
his strong political feelings.

Well that movie was a picture
that I had been directing stuff.

Again, low budget
stuff. I would shoot,

in those days you know rent was 85
bucks a month and I couldn't make it

and I had balled tires on my car and
no gasoline in it anyway so, you know.

Just a broke guy
walking around Hollywood.

So I go into the
Intercontinental Hotel on Sunset

and here's this guy very distinguished
with the grey hair with the thing

and the suit and the thing and I meet
him in the coffee shop and he says

I'd like you to ah look at our film,
you come highly recommended,

I've seen some of your other pictures.

I said 'sure'. I went home and I
read "Ilsa: She Wolf of The S.S."

And I'm reading this thing.

this is the worst piece of
SHIT I have ever read in my

you know I'm going through.
I don't know if I can do this?

I, I…nobody has ever
done a film like this.

I've never seen one! Well I said
that this is a terrible film.

You can't make it! Its a frontery
to everything and man.

And I'm looking at this fucking money
man and this guy is dealing cash...CASH!

And then the total
whore in me comes out.

There maybe some underlying things
that we can that and I signed up.

Heil Hitler!
- Well you know in the ensuing time after

I became this incredible
whore and gonna do this movie.

I started looking at it like I
bought the job, I gotta do it.

I said I'm gonna go
balls out on this thing.

If I've never seen it, than the people have
never seen it cause I've seen all this stuff

I thought Don Edomond's Ilsa She Wolf
of The S.S. was an amazing movie.

I thought the script was great. I
thought it was smart, it was inventive.

But after that, I thought that a lot of
the films were uninspired and depressing.

Because, you know, there is
only so much you can do with Nazis.

It's like Don Edmonds
created the kind of

Hogan's Heroes of
Nazi Prison Camp Movies

The otutlandish Hogan's Heroes
spirit in Ilsa: She Wolf of The S.S

should come as no surprise
while viewing the film,

it was in fact filmed on the same
sets of the popular television series.

If you're going to be
outrageous; be outrageous.

And I did.

#PORN-O-COPIA#

By the 1970s, sex in grindhouse
cinema had reached it's climax

Clearly this was all
leading up to pornography.

Right? And then it
was like, well now that

we can actually show
sex everything changed.

And then it really became
a question of now that

you can see it, what is
it that you want to see.

And the porn theaters were downtown and in
grungy areas and you felt dirty going to 'em

You gotta be kidding me?
This is a dirty movie.

Do you wann see people
happily making love on camera?

Or do you still wanna
see, the ugly stuff?

The people making the
films, the early porn films

thought they were really
doing something great.

They actually thought
there was culturally very,

very significant about
what they were doing.

That they were liberating the culture from
its stayed, old fashioned, puritan ethic.

That lasted only so long.

By the time of Deep Throat. I
mean that became a phenomenon where

it was respectable almost. I mean
everybody went to see Deep Throat.

Lets watch Deep Throat. No time to
masterbate, we've got to fornicate.

With the wide theatrical
release of Deep Throat in 1972,

the business of soft core
pornography had essentially ended.

The Amazing Transplant!

While many producers from the classic era of
sexploitation continued to produce for time,

what they knew best, these
filmmakers were eventually

either forced to adapt or
gracefully bow out of the game.

When Deep Throat opened,
it was the gold rush.

Everybody who had access to a 35 mm
camera both here on the West Coast

and the East Coast were
running out and making

hardcore porn films,
and making tons of money.

This is a culture for salesmen.

And that's what America is all about; the
bottom line America is about making money.

Because anything that makes money is good.

It's American. In the
terms of the business,

a profitable picture,
is a good picture.

#THE FINAL GRIND
...OR IS IT?#

And action! - Gun
doesn't work. - Cut!

Upon the release of Jaws in 1975,
the line between Hollywood blockbuster

and drive-in second
features had became blurred.

Exploitation and mainstream
cinema had merged as the convetions

of b-movie monster mayhem met
with massive box office success.

What I've found is whether
it's Warner Brothers, Paramount,

Universal, Fox, Columbia,
they're going to steal from you.

I mean they're all pretty
much equally dishonest,

just some are more
upfront than others.

Jaws was a phenomenon partly because
it was a terrific movie and also because

it was based on a big best seller
and it had a tremendous release,

you know advertising
and lots of play dates.

It is really just a big budget version
of The Creature From The Black Lagoon

which even Steven
Spielberg has admitted.

You make a studio picture and you have an
oppurtunity with bigger budget and enough to

you know hopefully
make a better product.

But, it's the same business

Following the astounding success of
Jaws, low budget exploitation versions of

“man versus animal” horror
movies quickly flooded the market.

It was now the exploitation
filmmakers who were looking

to knock off and capitalize
on the big studio films.

Pirannha was, unfortunately
came two years after Jaws

and right around the time that
Jaws II was going to be released

and it had ocurred to me that
maybe it was a little late

for a rip off of a picture
that was two years old.

Roll 'em! I mean action,
whatever I mean...

A Los Angeles distributor of
exploitation films named Frank Woods

who owned a small film company,
decided that he wanted to start

making films himself and a
friend of his had written a script

about a giant alligator which

I guess was to be a rip off of Jaws.

So I loved the idea, but the
script was awful I agreed to

do it if I could bring in John
Sayles to re-write the script.

With the global success of
Jaws, the major studios began

to see b-movie concepts as
a recipie for blockbusters

That seems to have baded now, ya know.
They do, do come back every so often.

I think that the giant rabbit movie
kind of put the kibash on some of it.

Now that audiences can see it
all, what is there left to see?

Have the traditional elements
of exploitation gone away

or have they simply evolved into
acceptable mainstream entertainment?

That was the best lovin' I ever had.

You're gonna wake up
the rest of the bitches.

Now with such recent homages
as Black Dynamite and Hell Ride.

The truth is clear, the
spirt of grindhouse lives on.

Quentin Tarrantino and Robert Rodriguez made
Grindhouse and I love the trailers in it.

But the only real
grindhouse movie in the last,

10 or 15 years is The
Passion of The Christ.

You know it was famously
called Texas Chainsaw Jesus.

That movie was the rough house!
That was a grindhouse movie.

It's all showbusiness.

It's all showbusiness,
they're all in enertainment.

American Gangster is a very
big budget film out now.

He's presented as a totally,
admirable and charismatic

he's Super Fly! And that, that,
that's Black Exploitation picture.

Better made. Bigger budget.
But the morality is the same.

Well I think there was something uniquely
American about exploitation cinema.

You know a lot of these little
movies were made for pennies.

But they were really striving
for something and if that's not

part of what America was all
about, they I don't know what is?

Movies, they're only a hundred years
old little over a hundred years old

but the movies have become
our contemporary mythology.

And, the grindhouse is
very much a part of that.

#AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE#