March
29
Grindhouse Trailers
There are four trailers in Grindhouse. One, whose director is uncredited (it's Rodriguez) is in front of Rodriguez's Planet Terror, and three more from Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright and Eli Roth, are between Terror and Tarantino's Death Proof. The trailers were where the action was with the MPAA. Here's more on the trailers from the LAT's Mark Olsen:
The filmmakers enlisted the likes of Rob Zombie ("The Devil's Rejects"), Edgar Wright ("Shaun of the Dead") and Eli Roth ("Hostel") when it became clear they were too bogged down with finishing their features to take on the trailers as well.Rodriguez recalled Zombie's pitch: "He goes, 'It's called 'Werewolf Women of the SS.' I said, 'Say no more. Go shoot it.' "
And shoot he did. While all three trailers were shot in just two days apiece, Wright and Roth essentially shot only what ended up on screen. Zombie estimates that he had enough footage to make a solid half-hour movie and was particularly pained to whittle it down.
Zombie assembled quite a cast for his mini-movie, including Udo Kier and Sybil Danning, B-movie character actors Bill Moseley and Tom Towles, and his wife, Sheri Moon Zombie. Best of all, however, is an appearance by Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu.
How exactly one gets from Nazi scientists to topless superwomen, machine-gunning werewolves to Fu Manchu remains delightfully obscure in the trailer, and that confusion is not only intentional but, as Zombie explains, a tip of the hat to exploitation convention.
"I was getting very conceptual in my own mind with it," he says. "A lot of these movies, they would be made cheaply. The real famous Nazi-type movie, 'Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS,' was made on the leftover sets from 'Hogan's Heroes.' That's why that movie, for a cheap exploitation film, it looks pretty nice.
"A lot of times these movies would be made like, 'Well, you know, I've got a whole bunch of Nazi uniforms, but I got this Chinese set too. We'll put 'em together!' They start jamming things in there, so I took that approach."
Wright created a trailer that is a pastiche of English haunted house pictures and super-stylized European horror films. The very title of Wright's faux film is the central punch line for the trailer (and so it will not be revealed here).
Viewers with a deep knowledge of British acting talent will be able to spot not only "Shaun" stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, but also such faces as Jason Isaacs, Matthew Macfadyen, Georgina Chapman, Lucy Punch, Stuart Wilson and Katie Melua. The uproariously paced narration was done by "Arrested Development" star — and voice of GMC truck ads — Will Arnett.
To get the necessary 1970s look, Wright used vintage lenses and old-style graphics. During editing, he scratched some of the film with steel wool and dragged it around a parking lot to make it appear neglected by wayward projectionists.
While growing up in Massachusetts, Roth loved the holiday-themed slasher films — "Silent Night, Deadly Night," "Halloween," "April Fool's Day," "My Bloody Valentine" — but there was always one day that seemed to be overlooked. The result: "Thanksgiving."
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Fu Manchu?! Awesome.
Though anyone who needs to ask how you can connect Fu Manchu with nazi scientists, topless superwomen, and gun toting werewolves. Has never alternated reading the adventures of Nayland Smith with the writings of Jeff VanderMeer and Chris Roberson. Or read the Shadowmen series of books.
Not that these are exactly mainstream pop culture, but they are geek culture.
Posted by: Christian Johnson | March 29, 2007 at 03:20 PM