Watch for Exploding Heads

[April 4th, 2007] "They give you what you want, but they go so extreme that you just cannot believe what you're seeing." That's Dan Halsted's quick definition of the exploitation films that in the '70s and '80s flooded rural drive-ins and downtown flea-pits with buckets of dyed red cane syrup. With titles like They Call Her One Eye and Don't Go in the House, they turned instant gratification into force-feeding. "These were low-budget movies," Halsted says. "They didn't have any big stars. So they just went extreme with this stuff—tits and violence."

The extremism makes its way to a multiplex near you this weekend with the release of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse, a double feature (it's two-flicks-in-one, including fake trailers in between) packed with all the sleaze and blood two obsessive collectors could muster. But exactly how faithful to seedy tradition is the new twin bill? The movie wasn't screened for critics before deadline (bastards!), so we turned to Halsted—who runs the Grindhouse Film Festival in Portland and once caused Tarantino's jaw to drop by telling him about a print of Invincible Pole Fighter—to create a checklist of exploitation essentials. Over beers at the Doug Fir (perhaps the least apposite location imaginable) he obliged. Now when you venture into Planet Terror and Death Proof, you can keep score of the gore.

Exploding Heads: A specialty of Italian horror-meister Lucio Fulci, the big brain-bang was most famously used in 1981's The Beyond (as a fitting punishment for opening the Gates of Hell). Halsted says the exploding head leads to a larger Grindhouse question: "Is Rodriguez's half [of the movie] filled with the type of excessive gore you would find in the Italian horror films of Fulci and Umberto Lenzi?"

Fast Cars: "Does Tarantino's half deliver with the real-life stunts and wild car crashes that define the hicksploitation subgenre?" Halsted asks. In other words, can it live up to the standards of 1976's The Great Texas Dynamite Chase?

Arterial Sprays: No Tarantino decapitation or limb-hacking is complete without a geyser of blood spewing from the stump. These red fountains—"powered by air-compression tanks," Halsted notes—are a tribute to the Hong Kong kung-fu classics of the Shaw Brothers studio.

Bare Breasts: Naturally. (And sometimes unnaturally.) "It seems like the hicksploitation had a lot of that," Halsted says. "Girls gotta get naked."

Very Hungry Zombies: We're not talking about the domesticated, George Romero undead—these are their truly ravenous Italian cousins. In movies like Fulci's 1979 Zombie, Halsted says, "They're really chowing down—pulling out the intestines and chewing on them for a while."

Eyeball Gouging: Another Fulci house specialty: Zombie starts with a socket-stabbing, and The Beyond ups the ante with three separate instances. Why eyeballs? "I just think it's because it's so effective," Halsted says. "It makes people squirm."

Grit and Grime: Missing reels, scratched prints, cheap sets—they're all part of the aesthetic. "That's the most important thing," Halsted concludes. "Are the movies gritty and sleazy? Do they take you to places mainstream cinema would never dare go?"