Time To Die? Time To KILL!

I have to admit that I never watched the Hobo With A Shotgun trailer, Jason "Treevenge" Eisener's winning entry in that promotional contest for Grindhouse. I do remember seeing a still of the logo and being impressed by how authentic it looked, more so than the faux trailers in the actual film.

When it was announced this year that Rutger Hauer had been cast as the titular bum in a feature-length version, my interest was piqued. I'm a big Blade Runner fan, and despite the fact that I think Hauer's post '80s career never lived up to the potential displayed in his earlier films (particularly his frequent collaborations with Verhoeven), I still take an interest every time I hear his name mentioned. That's a lot more than I can say for Harrison Ford, who I stopped giving a shit about a long time ago.

Now, with the release of the Hobo trailer my passing interest has turned into keen anticipation. I love the look and feel of the trailer, from Hauer's earnest monologue to the tough looking practical grue FX. The thing that really grabbed me though, is the cinematography and lurid colour palette, which immediately made me think of James Muro and David Sperling's gorgeous work on Street Trash. The Hobo trailer also seems to echo that film's awesome production design - a sort of larger than life urban environment that is simultaneously grimy and fantastically unreal. I hope the film is as aesthetically pleasing as this trailer teases:



So, despite the total financial failure of Grindhouse, this revival of the "style" (however artificial and contrived it may be) seems, if anything, to be gaining momentum. On the one hand, we've got "big" movies like Piranha and Machete chewing and hacking their way into fans' (and critics') hearts and cult notoriety. On the other, we're seeing a resurgence of genuine low budget sleaze and gore fests like Hobo, Bio-Slime (where have you gone?) and Slime City Massacre. Not to mention the unstoppable tsunami of weird fetishistic gore pouring out of the fertile talent pool of Yoshihiro Nishimura & Noboru Iguchi et al in Japan. Hell, we've even got Henenlotter back (another one soon, please Frank).

May this cinematic sleaze-disease spread, fester and flourish!

GRINDHOUSE

A red band trailer that actually delivers the goods? Most definitely. Or is it just spoiling every gag in the movie? If not, then Machete really is looking like a satisfyingly bloody movie. Another possible gripe is the amount of CG blood splattering around. The whole point of Grindhouse is to relive the '70's aesthetic, so hopefully this has it's share of fun practical gags too. I have to admit that I like the idea of having Machete and Thanksgiving sitting next to Planet Terror and Death Proof on the DVD shelf.

Stuffed & Basted

It's been said before and I'll say it again: Grindhouse only really worked when seen in it's entirety, in a packed theatre with an appreciative crowd. I saw it twice that way and it was a blast. Taken out of context and in their longer cuts, Death Proof and Planet Terror are still a good time for lots of reasons (mostly for Kurt Russell in the one and rivers of gooey splatter in the other), but I just find them both to be a bit disappointing on their own. In the end it comes down to the fact that the four fake trailers in Grindhouse completely eclipsed the two movies. If Rodriguez and Tarantino had made a movie consisting of nothing but trailers, each one from a different guest director, it probably would have been an instant cult classic.

What I've got for you here is the unedited 7-minute "intermission" sequence (with the trailers by Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright and Eli Roth), ripped from the awesome (and expensive) 6-disc Japanese Grindhouse DVD. It's a really good quality 150MB .avi file and looks perfect. Please click on the roasted corpse.