Grindhouse movies: 8 films from the cut-rate theater circuit

A grindhouse was a theater before it was a kind of film. The name comes from the "grind policy" of continuous showings at cut-rate prices, a practice historian David Church dates back to the early 1920s. The screens ran low-budget horror, exploitation pictures and imports, one after another, all day.

New York's 42nd Street was the best-known strip, where double, triple and all-night bills ran on a single ticket. Home video and cable emptied those theaters, and by the mid-1990s they had all but disappeared. The films outlived the buildings.

This list covers eight films from the cheap end of that circuit: rip-offs, drive-in fillers, a lawsuit and a censorship fight. Each one has a production story as strange as its plot.

What makes a grindhouse movie?

• It was cheap and fast. Weeks, not months, and a budget a studio would spend on sets.
• It sold on a promise. A title, a poster and a hook, often borrowed from a bigger hit.
• It pushed further than the studios would. More violence, stranger premises, less polish.
• It survived anyway. Late-night TV and home video gave many of these films a second life.

Which grindhouse movies have the strangest stories?

The Last Shark (1981)

Enzo G. Castellari's Italian shark film was first announced in a Weekly Variety ad under the title The Last Jaws. Universal noticed. Retitled Great White, it opened in about 300 American theaters on March 5, 1982.

Universal sued, and a month later a federal judge ordered the film withdrawn, its advertising cancelled and its prints recalled. The Boston Globe had already noted that the shark sometimes looked like a Macy's parade balloon. It is the rare grindhouse picture whose biggest problem was being too close a copy.

Action/Adventure

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The Sadist (1963)

James Landis was the first to put the Charles Starkweather murders on film, years before Badlands. Arch Hall Jr. plays a killer who holds three people hostage at a desert junkyard, and the story plays out in real time.

The camera belonged to Vilmos Zsigmond, credited as William Zsigmond, shooting his first feature. He later won an Academy Award. The film was reportedly shot in about two weeks for $33,000.

Thriller

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The Wasp Woman (1959)

Roger Corman's first film for his own company, The Filmgroup, was made in under two weeks, mostly on one set, on a budget he quoted at $50,000. Corman swapped bee royal jelly, then sold as an anti-aging product, for a wasp serum because it sounded more exciting.

Susan Cabot plays a cosmetics boss who tests the serum on herself to keep her company. When it went to TV, Jack Hill shot an 11 minute prologue among the beehives to pad it out.

Horror

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Terror in the Crypt (1964)

Antonio Margheriti was meant to direct this Italian take on Carmilla, but he was busy, so the job went to Camillo Mastrocinque, a director best known for comedies. The script came together fast. Co-writer Ernesto Gastaldi said it took 24 hours, while Tonino Valerii said three days.

Christopher Lee plays Count Karnstein, father of the haunted heroine. In the United States American International Pictures sent it straight to television, and it has gone by Crypt of the Vampire and, in Britain, Crypt of Horror. The Italian title is La cripta e l'incubo.

Horror

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The Doll Squad (1973)

Ted V. Mikels directed, edited, co-wrote and co-produced this story of female agents taking down a master criminal. The cast includes Tura Satana of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, and Sissy Spacek tested for a part and was turned down.

Aaron Spelling was on the premiere's guest list, and the squad's leader is named Sabrina. Critics have traced a line from here to Charlie's Angels, though the link is arguable. The machine guns in the night finale were reportedly a single gun on loan.

Action/Adventure

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The House of Seven Corpses (1974)

A film crew shoots a horror movie in a house where a whole family died badly, then reads from the Tibetan Book of the Dead on camera. TCM's Nathaniel Thompson called it an early version of the meta-horror that Scream made mainstream.

It was shot at the former Utah Governor's Mansion in Salt Lake City, and it was the last film for Faith Domergue, star of This Island Earth. It became a staple of late-night TV in the 1980s.

Horror

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Devil Times Five (1974)

Four children escape a wrecked hospital van with a nun and take shelter at a snowbound chalet near Lake Arrowhead, and the adults start dying. Leif Garrett and his real-life sister Dawn Lyn play two of the children, and their mother plays one of the victims.

The film played as People Toys, as The Horrible House on the Hill at a Tucson drive-in, and then as Devil Times Five. Chicago's police film board later refused it a general permit as excessively violent, and a judge barred minors from seeing it.

Horror

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Mako: The Jaws of Death (1976)

William Grefe shot this one on location in Key West, one of the wave of films that followed Jaws. The twist: the sharks are the heroes. Richard Jaeckel plays Sonny Stein, a loner with a telepathic bond to them who goes after anyone who does them harm.

Its home video release bills it as shot with real sharks and no cages, and Harold Sakata, Oddjob from Goldfinger, co-stars. Among the people Sonny crosses is a strip club owner who wants a shark in a tank behind his bar.

Action/Adventure

Where to go next

• For the studio system that turned out cheap pictures in bulk, see What Is a B Movie?.
• For films that found their audience only after they were dismissed, see Cult Classic Movies That Found Their Audience Years Late.