The Exploitation of Grindhouse
By
Timothy Braun

“Boom, Swagger, Boom.”
-The Murder City Devils

The Austin art scene gyrates toward the sensational and never asks for forgiveness. This town features a progressive theatre scene, anchored by the avant-garde darlings The Rude Mechanicals, a music field littered from alt-country-elite to post-punk princesses some ramped it’s pointless to name just a few. However, with the independent film trade, one of the preeminent between the coasts, Austin has become the Paris of the cowboy states.

Last week, in anticipation of the April 6th release of Grindhouse, a double bill salute to exploitative romper ‘70’s flicks from directors Quentin Tarantino and Austinite Robert Rodriguez, the historic and notorious Alamo Draft House held a screening of two classic Italian slasher reels, Torso and the gruesome Zombie. The two films where blasted onto a thirty-foot inflatable screen in the middle of Republic Park, a hop, skip, and jump west of downtown Austin for an audience of hundreds.

These films are school bus accidents, or midgets fighting the mud, you don’t want to see them, you don’t want to watch them, but my God you can’t take your eyes off of them. They are appalling, fun, and surprising all in the same moment, viewed best with warm beer and day old nachos dripping with processed cheese pudding. The audience at this double feature laughed and cheered and even tossed objects at the air-filled screen while actors where chopped to pieces, spouting ludicrous dialogue, and getting naked for no apparent reason. These films are about “boom” and “swagger” and make no apology for the attitude.

Why do this? Why see these films? The exploitation film, or “paracinema”, is a communal experience. Folks see these films in large groups that laugh together, scream together, and partake in catcalls aimed at the celluloid creatures that can’t holler back. There is a “shaudenfraude” at work with a “grindhouse” film; we are thankful we aren’t the characters, or the poor bastards that made the movie, and we are thankful to witness all the delicious misery as one large group of strangers. In the new age of the x-box, satellite dishes, and the internet, a group outing smack dab in the midst of the Austin park system is the art in the art of the grindhouse pictures.

The brains behind Alamo Draft House know exactly what they are doing. They have offered the citizens of Austin an appetizer to what is yet to come, a marathon of gruesome gore and naked babes coming to a drive-in near you, for no better reason than to be together. Tarantino and Rodregieze will make waves the first week of April, with the promise of sequels, knock-offs, and bold-faced rip offs. The “grindhouse” is certain to be the pivot of the Austin art scene this summer, and maybe years to come. I can’t wait, and I know I am not alone.