A
grindhouse is an American term for a theater that mainly shows exploitation films. It is named after the defunct
burlesqueBurlesque is a humorous theatrical entertainment involving parody and sometimes grotesque exaggeration. In 20th century America, the form became associated with a variety show in which striptease is the chief attraction.-Etymology and early history:...
theatres located on
42nd Street42nd Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, known for its theatres, especially near the intersection with Broadway at Times Square. It is also the name of the region of the theater district near that intersection...
in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
, where 'bump n' grind' dancing and
stripteaseA striptease is an erotic or exotic dance in which the performer gradually undresses, either partly or completely, in a seductive and sexually suggestive manner...
used to be on the bill.
In the film
Lady of BurlesqueLady of Burlesque is a 1943 mystery film starring Barbara Stanwyck and Michael O'Shea, based on the novel The G-String Murders written by famous strip tease artist Gypsy Rose Lee...
(1943) one of the characters refers to the burlesque theatre on 42nd Street, where they are performing stripteases and bump and grind dances, as a "grindhouse".
The introduction of
televisionTelevision is a widely used telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images, either monochromatic or color, usually accompanied by sound. "Television" may also refer specifically to a television set, television programming or television transmission...
greatly eroded the audience for local and single-screen movie theatres, many of which were built during the cinema boom of the 1930s.
Discussion
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Doctor Block: I'm gonna eat your brains and gain your knowledge.
And Nicolas Cage...as...Fu Manchu! If you're gonna hire Machete to kill the bad guy, you better make damn sure the bad guy isn't YOU!
He knows the score. He gets the women. And he kills the bad guys.
They just fucked with the wrong Mexican. If you... were thinking... of opening... that door... DON'T!
A
grindhouse is an American term for a theater that mainly shows exploitation films. It is named after the defunct
burlesqueBurlesque is a humorous theatrical entertainment involving parody and sometimes grotesque exaggeration. In 20th century America, the form became associated with a variety show in which striptease is the chief attraction.-Etymology and early history:...
theatres located on
42nd Street42nd Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, known for its theatres, especially near the intersection with Broadway at Times Square. It is also the name of the region of the theater district near that intersection...
in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
, where 'bump n' grind' dancing and
stripteaseA striptease is an erotic or exotic dance in which the performer gradually undresses, either partly or completely, in a seductive and sexually suggestive manner...
used to be on the bill.
History
In the film
Lady of BurlesqueLady of Burlesque is a 1943 mystery film starring Barbara Stanwyck and Michael O'Shea, based on the novel The G-String Murders written by famous strip tease artist Gypsy Rose Lee...
(1943) one of the characters refers to the burlesque theatre on 42nd Street, where they are performing stripteases and bump and grind dances, as a "grindhouse".
The introduction of
televisionTelevision is a widely used telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images, either monochromatic or color, usually accompanied by sound. "Television" may also refer specifically to a television set, television programming or television transmission...
greatly eroded the audience for local and single-screen movie theatres, many of which were built during the cinema boom of the 1930s. In combination with
urban decayUrban decay is the sociological process whereby a city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude, with depopulation or changing population, economic restructuring, abandoned buildings, high local unemployment, fragmented families, political disenfranchisement, crime, and a desolate,...
after
white flightWhite flight is the sociologic and demographic term denoting the trend wherein white people flee desegregated urban communities, and move to other places like commuter towns; although an American coinage, “white flight” denotes like behavior in other countries. In the U.S. the Brown v...
out of older city areas in the mid to late 1960s, changing economics forced these theatres to either close or offer something that television could not. In the 1970s these theatres were put to new use as venues for exploitation films, either adult
pornographyPornography or porn is the depiction of explicit sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual excitement.Over the past few decades, an immense industry for the production and consumption of pornography has grown, with the increasing use of the VCR, the DVD, and the Internet, as well as the...
and sleaze, or
slasherSlasher film is a sub-genre of the horror film genre typically involving a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a chainsaw or scythe...
horror and dubbed
martial artsMartial arts or fighting arts are systems of codified practices and traditions of training for combat. While they may be studied for various reasons, martial arts share a single objective: to physically defeat other persons and to defend oneself or others from physical threat...
films from
Hong KongHong Kong , officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, is a highly autonomous territory of the People's Republic of China, facing Guangdong to the north and the South China Sea to the east, west and south...
.
Grindhouse films characteristically contain large amounts of sex, violence or bizarre subject matter. Quality varied, but low budget production values and poor print quality were common. Critical opinions varied regarding typical grindhouse fare, but many films acquired cult following and critical praise. Double, triple, and "all night" bills on a single admission charge often encouraged patrons to spend long periods of time in the theaters.
Some drive-ins screened grindhouse material, but by definition a grindhouse is an indoor theatre.
By the 1980s, home video threatened to render the grindhouse obsolete. By the end of the decade, these theaters had vanished from Los Angeles's Broadway and Hollywood Boulevard, New York City's Times Square and San Francisco's Market Street. By the mid-1990s, these particular theaters had all but disappeared from the United States. Very few are in existence today.
The concept of the grindhouse film has made several reappearances in modern popular culture. For example, the films,
Planet TerrorPlanet Terror is a American action/horror/sci-fi/thriller written and directed by Robert Rodriguez, about a group of people attempting to survive an onslaught of zombie-like creatures as they feud with a military unit, including a go-go dancer searching for a way to use her "useless talents." The...
and
Death ProofDeath Proof is a 2007 film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film centers on a psychopathic stunt man who stalks young women before murdering them in staged car accidents using his “death-proof” stunt car. The film is a tribute to muscle cars, exploitation, and slasher film genres of...
were created as an homage to the lost genre. The 2009 video game,
The House of the Dead: OverkillThe House of the Dead: Overkill is a first-person rail shooter video game developed by Headstrong Games and published by Sega for the Wii. It is the fifth game developed in the The House of the Dead series, a prequel to the original House of the Dead chronologically and the first in the series to...
also serves as a parody of the old grindhouse horror movies, with each specific level lampooning a particular genre.
External links