by Spencer Hawken

Created on: June 21, 2007

Amid a wave of controversy Quentin Tarentino and Robert Rodriguez released their movie Grindhouse to American audiences. This star studded spoof of 60's and 70's low budget movies (which became known as "Grindhouse" back in their popularity heyday) tries to replicate a popular genre of movie history. Two action packed movies are sandwiched in between a variety of spoof trailers for movies that will quite frankly never exist.

In America this movie bombed, and it's looking that its incredibly likely that upon UK release the format will be trashed by splitting the movie into two parts making two separate movies, and in respect of the trailers they will possibly never be seen by UK audiences. On a plus side it's looking incredibly likely that we will see the movie as it was meant to be seen with trailers upon release of the DVD.

I should point out I hate Tarentino with a passion, all his ideas are always stolen from Italian Cinema, and even then his remake attempts are far inferior to the original Italian cousins, Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, and Pulp Fiction are all re-hashes of several different Italian movies. However this time he and his buddy Rodriguez have not stolen anything, what they have done is paid silent homage to the Italian classics. And sad as it is to admit, for the first time ever I actually feel privileged to have seen something that bares the Tarentino name.

So without further ado, it's on with the show (please be warned this is likely to be a lengthy review)

Machete

This great trailer (obviously for a movie that does not exist) offers the tale of a Mexican called Machete (Danny Trejo) who is hired by rich businessman to carry out a hit, but this actually transpires to be a trick and Machete is shot and left for dead, having recovered and seeking help from Padre Benicio Del Toro (Cheech Marin) the two prepare to exact revenge on those that tried to illuminate Machete.
This great little trailer was directed and written by Rodriguez and it really does show a clear vision of the sort of movie American cinema audiences were going to see in the 70's. Over here these movies never saw the light of day till 1982 during the video boom, most of which ended up on the VTC, Intervision and Alpha Video labels (for anyone over 30 that remembers them).

Just prior to the first feature presentation we are greeted by a great advisory notice warning us that the movie is ideally for people over 17 years old, this logo is presented by a tiger. Over here we did have similar

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