Exploitation Cinema

My introduction to the slum of cinema, the exploitation genre, came with Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's double feature Grindhouse (their homage to the campy B-movies from the 70's they grew up watching.) I ended up liking Tarantino's Death Proof more, but both sparked my interest in the genre.

The reason why people went to see those movies was to be shocked and thrilled, because sometimes a raw experience like that is just more entertaining. If you take a peek through some of the old exploitation films you shouldn't be surprised to find lots of violence and lots of nudity - They're movies made for adults, that aren't pornography.

Death Proof, my choice of the newest double feature to have a wide release in years, is built like any Slasher film you may have seen in a 70's theater. It also has the components of other exploitation films. It has one of the greatest car chases I've ever seen, which was probably Tarantino seeing if anyone remembers the classic 1971 action/car chase movie Vanishing Point. There's even a Dodge Challenger in both movies.

A couple other aspects of Death Proof that are reminiscent of early exploitation films are its uses of violence and sexuality, and its role of women.

Firstly, exploitation films are never humble when it comes to violence. The bloodier the merrier. It may not always look real but there's usually some limbs hacked off, someone getting raped, blood-spewing stabbings, or in some cases cannibalism. Also there tends to be more sex and nudity than you'd expect to see. Sexuality was used a great deal to entice more audience members.

Secondly, female characters were usually given the same roles for all movies. Most of the time they were put in for being remotely attractive because if they showed some skin the film would get more viewers. However, the component that Death Proof recreates is a type of revenge plot which was frequently used in exploitation films, where a woman (or in this case a group of them) are in distress but rise up, kick ass, and get back at their male enemies.

One of the most infamous exploitation movies to come out of the 70's was the oh so disturbing I Spit On Your Grave. This film captures the extreme violence and sexuality, as well as having the female revenge plot line. The first half of the movie involves one woman being raped 4 times, but the second half is her time to get back at the men who violated her, killing them in such creative ways as boat motor mutilation, and castration. The famous critic Roger Ebert calls the film a "vile bag of garbage" he also adds, "at the film's end I walked out of the theater quickly, feeling unclean, ashamed and depressed." So, if you feel you're a sensitive film-goer you might want to stray from the exploitation genre, or at least from I Spit On Your Grave. Even Ebert let his emotions get to him with that movie.

One thing I found easily when I dove into this gritty genre of films is that sometimes they can just be really, really dumb, and hilarious in a dumb way. For instance, the movie Blood Feast, which is hailed as the first "splatter film" (a movie with a tremendous amount of graphic violence and gore) is awfully funny when it shouldn't be. With acting worse than Stephen Baldwin, some really fake looking internal organs, and a lousy plot-line, Blood Feast is probably the campiest movie I've ever seen. At least I got a laugh from it though.

I thank Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez for making Grindhouse and introducing me to the sewer of American film-making. If you're reading this and aren't familiar with many exploitation films, I'll give you my top 3, so you can have a place to start if you're interested.

3. I Drink Your Blood - This movie is hilarious in its stupidity and its outrageous violence. When a group of satanists come into a peaceful town and start to terrorize the people there, a boy transfers the blood of a rabid dog into meat pies and serves them to the satanists. The result - Lots of killing and foaming at the mouth.

2. The Last House On The Left - Extremely scary, and truly shows how awful violence is. It gets disturbing to the point where you feel a little depressed about being human, so quite obviously it's a very powerful film. A group of killers have fun with and then kill 2 girls, then they naively stay in the house of one of the murdered girls and her parents take their revenge. Btw, these bad guys don't seem like actors, they seem more like real psychopaths that were put in front of a camera.

1. Coffy - After finding out her sister has become a heroin addict, a nurse takes the law into her own hands by personally taking down all the drug dealers and pimps. That nurse is played by Pam Grier, and she is one of the coolest and sexiest ladies to ever have been on screen. As the original film poster explains she's, "the baddest one-chick hit-squad that ever hit town." Having a real hip lady as the hero really empowers women and evidently also happens to form my favorite exploitation film.

The Matrix - A True Classic

Over a decade old and the Wachowski brothers' sci-fi, action phenomenon is still relentlessly awesome.

When I was younger The Matrix was the pinnacle movie of the entire action genre. I must have watched it at least 20 times. My brothers and I were so fascinated by it we even started to choreograph and script out our own sci-fi action film. It also made me want to become a stuntman because I wanted to hang from wires and look cool like Keanu Reeves.

Re-watching it again after at least 5 years I was content to find that it hadn't really lost its charms. Sure there are a few parts where Keanu butchers his dialogue, but all in all it's still one of the greatest movies of my generation.

One thing that sets it apart from so many other action movies is its plot line - it has one, and a really damn good one at that. Not that I really think a movie has to suffer if its plot is hard to define, otherwise I wouldn't be a fan of the Rambo series, but it makes The Matrix that much better that it has an engaging story. Isn't it kinda scary to think that this may not be the real world, and that we're all just part of some computer program? Well, I think it's interesting.

The movie was in the right hands. In 1999 the Wachowski Brothers really were masterful directors. I was happily surprised to find out now that I've matured and become more sophisticated in my film-viewing that they really did make a great movie, with great cinematography. The final product is that dark look, de-saturated from all colors except green. It was very original at the time and has had its fair share of copycats since.

Enough of all the technical stuff, the movie is just ridiculously cool at parts. The kung-fu and shoot out scenes are really exceptionally put together. Plus, how cool was that part when the security guard tells the main character Neo to remove all metallic items such as keys and loose change and then he opens his trench coat and he happens to be carrying a full arsenal of firearms on his person.

One thing I happen to love about The Matrix is that it seems like it should have a cult following, but it doesn't (of course though it would be hard to be a cult classic if you have 2 unworthy box office smash sequels that came out after it.) Nonetheless it carries some qualities of other cult favorites, but instead of being unheard of by the majority of the public it actually got the recognition it deserves. I guess the people buying tickets that year were smart and didn't let a true gem get hidden.

To close I shall say, The Matrix is really a good movie, and I suggest if you haven't seen it in awhile to watch it, but just stop there. I feel like its mythology should've ended with the first movie, without creating a trilogy.

Leonard Cohen Is Your Man

The half documentary, half tribute concert for Leonard Cohen, appropriately titled Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man was by no means a great movie, but it did manage to get me into Mr. Cohen's music more.

I'm sure most people would recognize the tune "Hallelujah" because it has been covered countless times, and has been used in a plethora of movies. But have you heard the original recording, sung by the man who wrote it? Well if you have then you've heard Leonard Cohen. Before seeing this movie, that song was one of the only ones I had heard by him. Now I'm starting to understand what I've been missing out on. Leonard Cohen's songwriting puts him in the same ring with other greats like Conor Oberst, Tom Waits, and the greatest of them all- Bob Dylan.

It is a pity that the only documentary I've seen about him turned out to not be a good one, but then again it shouldn't be a big surprise because it's rare that I find a documentary I really like. I did enjoy just listening to him speak though. Leonard Cohen seems like a man who knows a little something more about life than the rest of us and that's why you really pay attention to him. I found out that he even became a monk for awhile. He is quite unique and intriguing

The other half of the movie, the tribute concert, was mostly unmemorable. There were multiple performers but only one I had ever heard of (that would be Rufus Wainwright.) He and his sister Martha Wainwright did exceptional covers of a few of Cohen's songs. It was nice to hear other people singing Cohen's music because to tell you the truth even an up and coming fan like myself, I find that Leonard Cohen's voice can be confusing. I'm not always 100% blown away by it, so other people singing his poetry is alright by me.

Two of the members of the band U2, Bono and The Edge, made appearances in the movie. They both have been greatly influenced by Cohen. The Edge describes Cohen as if he were a religious figure. Bono says he has been humbled and humiliated by him. Bono also says that his favorite song by Leonard Cohen is "Tower of Song" which contains the lyric, "I was born like this, I had no choice, I was born with the gift of a golden voice." That may seem conceited to say about yourself, but I totally agree with him when he sings it. Here is his golden voice -





I would recommend you to skip the movie Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man because anything in it that is worth seeing is already chopped up into parts and put onto youtube. However, I would recommend you to listen to the music of Leonard Cohen, because I'm starting to really get into him myself. I'm a sucker for stand-out vocalists and adept songwriters, so he really sparks my interest. Here is one of his songs that I've fallen in love with recently -

The Phantom Carriage

The Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman House is great because of its wide variety of films they screen. I considered myself lucky to get to see a silent film for the first time on a big screen this week. The movie was called The Phantom Carriage, a Swedish film by some director whose name I can't pronounce.

I have always loved silent movies and I don't understand why they have been forgotten by so many people. What's great will always be great, and that includes movies that aren't talkies. Usually my tastes in silent movies end up in the comedies of people like Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin. This time however I found myself enjoying something a little darker than gymnasts putting their bodies at risk for a good laugh. A serious drama, that's even scary at parts, about death and redemption. What I would call the Swedish Christmas Carol.

In the film, the legend goes like this - The last person to die on New Year's Eve has to drive the ghostly carriage and collect the souls of the dead for the next whole year. Each day feels like a hundred for that poor person who is forced to work for Death himself. The main character, a man named David Holm, was the last person to die that New Year's. When the previous carriage driver confronts David, instead of passing the black cloak and scythe onto him, he shows David all the mistakes he has made in the past and allows him the chance to be forgiven. By the close he even gives David another chance to live and carry on a better life.

There were many reasons I found this thoughtful movie to be good. One thing I really enjoyed was that in the actual theatre the music was being played live, the sombre piano rolls in the front of the room helped set the tone of the movie exceptionally.

One thing I was surprised by was the acting in the movie. The Swedes were apparently a bit more Brando than the Keystone Cops or some other group of people you're used to seeing from the silent screen. There was one very climactic scene that looks almost like the movie The Shining directly re-created it. The character David, in a flashback, takes an axe to the door of the room where his wife and children are hiding. Emotions run high in the scene and the acting is really marvelous and captivating.

The direction of the movie fascinated me. At that time film making wasn't really centralized around direction, but the director actually seemed to have a unique vision at parts. The special effects of the time still hold up for me. The spirit-like qualities that were given to the souls of the dead were really... Scary. Yeah, at times it almost seemed like a horror movie. I think if I was a viewer of the film in 1921 when it came out, I would have had trouble sleeping.

Now, not to make the movie sound cheap, but my favorite moment of the night at the Dryden's screening of The Phantom Carriage was the end of the movie. Not because I hated the movie and I was happy to see it be finished, but because of the Swedish word for "End" which consequently is "Slut." Yes, some of the other audience members and I got a good chuckle from that.

I would recommend The Phantom Carriage but there's not going to be a lot of chances for you to see it. So, I fervently recommend you to keep up with what is showing at The Dryden Theatre. Take a chance too, see a movie you wouldn't usually take the time to. You may end up having a pleasant experience with a real "Slut" finish.