Take it all for what it’s worth, the whole genre. Here’s the story of a film world with no sacred cows, no taboos, very little taste, and many would argue no reason to exist. Unless of course you consider that people want it. American Grindhouse tells the story of the whole damn thing and doesn’t bother shooting at explaining the why.

Bravo!

I could get into explaining it, but I should probably just add this list of the movies referenced, and mention that I’ve seen a large number of them, and some of the sequels not mentioned. This isn’t even a complete list (there are brief clips of others). This is just a list of those included in the commentary:

• The Great Train Robbery (1903)
• Traffic in Souls (1913)
• Dracula (1931)
• Frankenstein (1931)
• Freaks (1932)
• Maniac (1934)
• You Can’t Beat the Rap! (1936)
• I Wake Up Screaming (1941)
• Mom and Dad (1945)
• Because of Eve (1948)
• Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
• Blackboard Jungle (1955)
• I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957)
• The Tingler (1959)
• The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959)
• Psycho (1960)
• Scum of the Earth! (1963)
• Blood Feast (1963)
• Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964)
• Olga’s House of Shame (1964)
• The Wild Angels (1966)
• Lord Love a Duck (1966)
• The Lusting Hours (1967)
• The Trip (1967)
• She-Devils on Wheels (1968)
• Easy Rider (1969)
• Midnight Cowboy (1969)
• Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971)
• The Corpse Grinders (1971)
• The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971)
• The Tormentors (1971)
• The Big Doll House (1971)
• The Big Bird Cage (1972)
• The Last House on the Left (1972)
• Night of the Lepus (1972)
• Deep Throat (1972)
• Schlock (1973)
• Black Caesar (1973)
• Coffy (1973)
• Truck Turner (1974)
• Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975)
• Jaws (1975)
• Eaten Alive (1977)
• Piranha (1978)
• Alligator (1980)
• The Passion of the Christ (2004)
• Hostel (2005)
• Grindhouse (2007)
• American Gangster (2007)
• Hell Ride (2008)
• Black Dynamite (2009)

I can’t even explain my own fascination so there’s not going to be any social commentary here. My brain doesn’t work all that much differently than anybody else’s. The grindhouse genre is just a rabbit hole I went down with everybody else at some point back in the 70s and we were all following a previous generation. Don’t judge… well you know what? Judge all you want. I don’t care. There’s a kind of freedom in watching grindhouse, so I’d imagine it must be freeing in some sense to make it. It feels like letting go for a bit. It’s escape.