The Joy of Blaxploitation
Ok, think run-down dive single-screen theaters, converted strip clubs. Think urban decay. Think grainy screens and mismatched audio and video. Think Shaft meets Machete.
You know the whole Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez Grindhouse double-feature experiment back in ‘07? The strange movie event with Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof sandwiching a handful of fake trailers for things like Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of the SS and Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving? Well, this is what they talking about. Exploitation films, the cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap ’70s b-movies that had to be hyper-exaggerated and hyper-ridiculous for anybody to pay attention to them. And not being tied to any major production companies, these guys were able to do just about anything they wanted. And hey, who cared? It wasn’t like they were really competing with the big guns. It was basically a whole different market–unpolished and anti-highbrow entertainment. These were movies about–not with, about–gratuitous sex, violence, car chases, racism, gore and gratuitous gratuity. Whatever. If you can’t compete with TV and major studios, you don’t join ‘em, you just offer something that they can’t: Cheap one-admission-charge double and triple features, sometimes all-night marathons. Complete political in-correctness.
And then home video had to come along and ruin everything…
But you don’t care about the why or history. The point is that there’s been an almost resurgence in the exploitation film. First Grindhouse in ‘07, then the news that Rodriguez is developing a full-feature Machete film (trailer attached at the foot, below BD’s) and that him and Tarantino are considering a Grindhouse 2–and now this, Black Dynamite. Could it be that the exploitation film is actually coming back??? …Er, probably not.
Grindhouse did so not great when it came out that they ended up splitting the double-feature into separate billings in Britain and the other parts of the world. And that was with the coveted Tarantino brand stamped onto it. But so what? Black Dynamite knows kung-fu and he’s a badass with a score to settle. And of course the ladies love him. His name is “Black Dynamite” for Christ’s sake! So exploitation films may not be “coming back,” per se, but they’re definitely fun while they last. Check out the trailer below and tell me what you think.
BD comin’ at ya October 16th…Sucka!
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 13th, 2009 at 3:32 pm and is filed under film, trailers/news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
