Online Exclusive: Horror Film Directors Dish About 'Grindhouse' Trailers

Quentin Tarantino

We met Quentin Tarantino in Santa Monica, where he was working on the second half of Grindhouse's double bill, the car chase/slasher film mashup Death Proof. Tarantino drank a cappuccino, which didn't seem to add any extra juice to his overcaffeinated personality, and his eyes lit up whenever he got to talk about his favorite old films. "I'm just a frustrated theater owner," he said.

Was there a grindhouse theater near you when you were growing up?
No, but exploitation movies played all over at mall theaters. I would chase films all over California -- "My god, Rolling Thunder is playing on a triple bill with The Howling in Long Beach!" My local theater was the Carson Twins Cinemthey showed all the kung fu and blaxploitation movies. This little Italian family owned and these big-ass Samoans were the ushers. If anybody tried to steal candy from a kid, they'd send the Samoans in there.

What genres did grindhouses cover?
All the exploitation genres: kung fu, horror, Italian horror -- also known as giallo -- sexploitation, the "good old boy" redneck car-chase movies, blaxploitation, spaghetti Westerns -- all those risible genres that were released in the Seventies.

So how did you settle on the slasher/car combo?
I realized I couldn't do a straight slasher film, because with the exception of women-in-prison films, there is no other genre quite as rigid. And if you break that up, you aren't really doing it anymore. It's inorganic, so I realized -- let me take the structure of a slasher film and just do what I do. My version is going to be fucked up and disjointed, but it seemingly uses the structure of a slasher film, hopefully against you. Anybody who's interested in slasher films should check out Carol J. Clover's book, Men, Women and Chainsaws, which I think is one of the best film-criticism books ever written. I got inspired to watch all the slasher films and check out the all the ones that I had missed.

Did you discover any gems?
Oh, yeah. I blew it off when it came out, but My Bloody Valentine is fantastic! Paramount needs to reissue it with all the gore intact because they cut out all the gore and its never been returned back to what it was, but it's a terrific movie. In the last year or so, I've become a real fan of Canadian horror films; almost 75% of slasher films came out of Canada, but this is the only one that really plays it as Canada. It takes place in a working-class mining town and they have the deep regional Canadian accents and with the economic depression, the way the characters are relating to each other, the sense of community, you think you're watching The Deer Hunter. It's so well done I couldn't believe it.

That's one of the things I love about Slap Shot. Everyone remembers that it's a funny hockey comedy, but --
Yeah! Slap Shot is not that different: they're drawing on the sense of community and the mills keeping them alive.

Your killer, Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), dispatches girls with his "death-proof" car. What car chase films inspired you?
CGI for car stunts doesn't make any sense to me -- how is that supposed to be impressive? You can't compare it to the chase scenes in The Driver or White Lightning or Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. A great chase scene that people might not know about is in an Italian crime movie by Fernando Di Leo: it's been released to video under a million titles, including Manhunt and Hired to Kill. And Robert Butler did a fabulous movie around 1980 called Night of the Juggler -- that has a car chase with James Brolin all through New York that is basically the first fifteen minutes of the movie.

One other really terrific car chase off the top of my head is from Strange Shadows in an Empty Room, also known as Blazing Magnums. It's an Italian movie but it was shot in Montreal. And the set-up for the chase scene is completely dumb: Stuart Whitman is a Dirty Harry-like cop who goes to question somebody and the guy just takes off. So then they have one of the most thrilling car chases ever, and when he catches the guy, he's like "Okay, I just wanted to ask you a few questions." It's like something out of Police Squad -- there's twelve people dead back there during this chase and you just wanted to ask him some questions?

I don't think there have been any good car chases since I started making films in '92 -- to me, the last terrific car chase was in Terminator 2. And Final Destination 2 had a magnificent car action piece. In between that, not a lot. Every time a stunt happens, there's twelve cameras and they use every angle for Avid editing, but I don't feel it in my stomach. It's just action.

>> EXCLUSIVE VIDEO! Check out behind-the-scenes video footage from our "Grindhouse" cover shoot, including a Web-only interview with Rose McGowan. Plus: Read Peter Travers' review of the double feature.