From the onset of the ‘70s, New York was on the verge of collapse; crime rates were exceedingly high, the economy was weak enough to the point where the city was nearing bankruptcy, and political corruption ran rampant. Vietnam vets had come back from the war only to face poverty and drug addiction, those with mental illnesses were given inadequate care and housing, and serial killers were taking root in the American consciousness. It was hell for everyone who couldn’t afford to go anywhere else, but that sense of scorched earth living proved to be ground zero for the next evolution in psychotronic film. Injustice and vice were filtered through the lens of the low-budget filmmakers of the time, since nobody in Hollywood was willing to show the reality of it all. The honesty, brutality, and often dark comedy of these films that were made during this time came to premier in what were termed as “grindhouses”: old husks of ‘40s/’50s movie palaces that were abandoned and decrepit, and were bought up for cheap in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s to show low-budget films. These independent films were often deemed as “exploitation,” due to the fact that they would often “exploit” their subject matter to make a quick buck. The films in question were often lurid, perverse, sexual, and grimy; but in their harsh veneer they tended to show deeper truth through allegory or example, and the medium became just as important as the message it conveyed. The grindhouses were located on a strip called 42nd Street, infamous for being one of the sleaziest streets in New York. Plenty of rough, gruesome, and outright bad films were shown, but two films in particular helped to both cement and advance the reputation and evolution of grindhouse cinema: Blood Feast (1963) and Night Of The Living Dead (1968).
After working with David Friedman on an exploitation flick centered around naked women being abused (a “roughie”), low-budget savant H. G. Lewis needed something novel to shock the audiences of Americana. Lewis was no stranger to the exploitation genre, having worked as somewhat of a huckster and a showman for the films he made. His posters were able to display his marketing acumen through garish displays of sex and violence, and his trailers showed all the best bits of his tantalizing films. Lewis was able to pinpoint the id of his audience, and he always used that sense of sick curiosity to hook his viewers. But his recent pictures weren’t quite cutting it, and H. G. Lewis needed something more: another taboo to break. Part of Lewis’ and other exploitation churners’ success was that the Hollywood big-budget studios couldn’t touch them. The Hays Code, implemented in the ‘30s, dictated certain rules for “good-natured” cinema, which were all antithetical to the slick sickness Lewis and co. provided in their trashy films. However, because directors like Lewis didn’t work in large studios like MGM or Universal, and thus didn’t distribute his films in “legitimate” theaters, his films weren’t subject to the Hays Code. See, you could theoretically put anything you wanted in the film, but if the theaters saw that your film didn’t adhere to the Code, you couldn’t show it anywhere. Being free of restriction, Lewis took the idea of a roughie a little further. Instead of just some blood, he decided he would add gore to his witches’ brew of cinema, marking a pivotal moment within the development of film history. Embarking on a trip to Florida, armed with offal from a butcher’s shop, Lewis was the first to bring gore into American cinema with his landmark feature Blood Feast. Though the acting was far from palatable and the actual film rather dull, the allure of the film’s landmark splatter firmly placed it as a cult classic signaling a revolution in entertainment for years to come.
Although gore had seeped into the silver screen and stained the celluloid, it would still take a little less than a decade for the possibilities of bad taste to be fully explored with the slasher and splatter subgenres. Lewis continued to crank out gimmicky gore films for a couple more years, but his pictures are pretty tame by today’s standards. H. G. Lewis’ films, though important, don’t have the same longevity or staying power that films such as Star Wars or Jaws held decades after their premier. But in 1968, another independent filmmaker would craft a monolithic piece that had such a tremendous impact after its release that it changed the rules of cinema, with an influence that can still be felt to this day. George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead has stood unwaveringly both as a time capsule of the ‘60s and as the template for cinema to come, ushering in the end of the Hays Code and the birth of modern cinema. With its bleak, modernist tone, Romero tackled race relations, politics, nuclear threat, and generational divide, framing everything within a zombie invasion. Not only was this mature and brooding film a portent for things to come, but its approach to the modern zombie (and its later sequels) was revolutionary; Romero dispelled the classical Haitian voodoo mythology, instead infusing the modern archetype with a darker sensibility. Zombies could no longer be controlled by some type of master or be utilized as slaves. They shambled, rot, and ate people on their own volition. Though they were weak in smaller numbers, the larger masses could prove to be terrifying. The threat became more existential; a slow, painful death, being torn limb from limb by nonhuman husks of your friends, family, and loved ones. Horror was no longer fun and campy, like a ‘50s monster movie. Nor was it a classical struggle against good and evil, like a Universal Monsters film; horror had now evolved into something else entirely, something as nihilistic, bloody, and bleary as the times it grew up in.
Once horror grew up into its uneasy adolescence, the movies that were being produced from 1968 onward generated a unique sense of angst and anguish relative to the period they inhabited: Deathdream (1974) was a scathing remark on Vietnam as a soldier, who was presumed to be dead, walks the streets of his town once more, reduced to a mere shell of a man. The Last House on the Left (1972) took inspiration from the Manson Family and had a roving gang torture and rape two girls, with their family hellbent on plotting their gruesome and torturous revenge. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), while not the first giallo film, popularized the bloody Italian murder-mystery subgenre and inspired gorier films in its wake, which in turn helped to inspire the American slasher. These were films that directly or indirectly held a mirror to the true horrors that existed in the world, and their release reflected the nihilistic outlook of the times. Slashers would begin to crop up after Plumage, acting as often grittily realistic depictions of crime and murder that took place in the past, with The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976) acting as a pseudo-documentary for a fictional killing spree. The Zodiac Killer (1971) was made right when the Zodiac crimes were being committed, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) went for a horrifying dramatization of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein, stating in the beginning that the film was based on a true story.
Slashers, gore films, low-budget action and sci-fi, and other such films would continue to find their audience within grindhouses up to the late ‘70s, until perhaps the most influential low-budget film came from a California film student looking to make his next feature: Halloween (1978). Halloween was a watershed in the slasher genre, as John Carpenter’s auteur camerawork, tensely minimalist synth score, and fully fleshed-out characters (along with the iconic boogeyman) propelled the slasher genre into something that wasn’t merely misanthropic and ugly. Most importantly, Halloween was the film that made horror successful, generating an enormous profit from its measly budget, which in turn made the big-budget Hollywood studios take note. The Hays Code had ended in 1968, so the usual stalwarts of mainstream cinema were free to make their own exploitation, but it wasn’t until a decade later that things would finally change. Splatter and sleaze were still a risk for well-known directors, and they needed definitive proof that this “slasher” subgenre (which was famously derided by film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel) could properly generate a decent cash flow. Halloween proved the now universal idea that low-budget horror could be both scary and profitable, which set off a wave of change throughout the industry. Friday the 13th (1980) and Terror Train (1980) were among the first studio efforts, and slashers would soon become franchise-based, with the Big Three of Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), and Halloween reigning as studio darlings. Roger Corman famously said, once such films as Star Wars and Jaws came out, “They finally figured it out!” Hollywood had captured the allure of exploitation and was reusing the same kinds of beats to make safer, more profitable films that could appeal to a universal audience.
The independent filmmakers were now being cornered by the big wigs running the massive studios, and that kind of competition nearly snuffed out the flame of low-budget auteur cinema. Because the American independents couldn’t churn out their own films like they used to due to fines and other legal expenses, foreign imports became necessary to sustain the already-dying grindhouse industry. Italian cannibal and giallo films flooded the market, and such movies as Cannibal Holocaust (1980), Eaten Alive! (1980), and Zombie Holocaust (1980) provided the most disgusting and exploitative shocks and thrills by breaking perhaps the ultimate taboo: cannibalism, which was partially what Blood Feast’s plot was. Exploitation had now come full circle. But before New York City would be subject to a thorough cleaning, and its image restored to that of modern Times Square, grindhouse cinema would have one last moment of greatness before being completely extinguished. This moment would come in the form of a trio that could possibly be the best (and most influential) N.Y.C. auteurs to come from the scene: Larry Cohen, Bill Lustig, and Frank Henenlotter.
Starting in 1972 with his debut Bone, Cohen was no stranger to the weird, wide world of psychotronic cinema but didn’t actually frequent the grindhouses his films played at. Instead, he devoured classic ‘50s sci-fi and monster movies at the safer cinemas as a child, which helped him devise his own genre-fluid blend of satirical horror later on in his career. His most influential films started with God Told Me To (1976), which centered around mass hysteria caused by seemingly random killings by civilians, who, when asked for a motive for their crimes, simply replied, “God told me to.” This particular film was inspired by the wave of serial killings happening in New York City at the time, such as the Son of Sam murders. Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) followed up on the religious/cult identity explored in God Told Me To, and The Stuff (1985) provided a darkly comedic take on American consumerism with a product that threatened to consume the consumer. William Lustig made his debut with the bleakly horrific slasher Maniac (1980); the police paranoia procedural Maniac Cop (1988), which likewise reflected the abuse of authority cops wielded over innocent civilians; and the tongue-in-cheek take on nationalism-bordering-on-fascism Uncle Sam (1996). H. G. Lewis devotee Frank Henenlotter was the last of the auteurs to come on the scene with his Cain-and-Abel-esque tale of mutant sibling melodrama Basket Case (1982), the drug-addiction fable of Brain Damage (1988), and the perhaps feminist rehash of the Frankenstein story Frankenhooker (1990) that campaigned for bodily autonomy for women and ended in a unique reversal twist. Henenlotter’s arrival as the last of the three was prophetic in the sense that his coming ended the grindhouse era and ushered in the age of the video store. In fact, Basket Case’s VHS release was massively successful, and arguably propelled his career after its release.
The video store was the next rational step in cinema; you could directly choose the film you watched instead of having to see what was on the television or in the theaters, you could watch the tapes from the safety of your own home instead of risking your life or your wallet to go to the famously sleazy grindhouses, and you were able to rewind and pause at your leisure. Film had finally been democratized for the consumer, and cinema would continue to exist within the walls of mom-and-pop tape stores everywhere as an alternative to the big screen. But the impact of the grindhouse era was never to go unnoticed, and many contemporary filmmakers and directors everywhere have claimed inspiration from the cult classics that have been projected across 42nd Street: Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, and Quentin Tarantino all openly profess their love for the nastier days of cinema, with all three taking direct notes from all the flavors of exploitation. Eli Roth’s Green Inferno (2013) is a lovingly messy homage to Cannibal Holocaust, House of 1000 Corpses (2003) is Zombie’s neon-soaked Texas Chain Saw Massacre copy, and in just about any Tarantino film you can find a few sequences plucked straight from the classics of sleaze. And those are just the most outspoken proponents of grindhouse cinema today. Hundreds upon hundreds of indie, micro budget, and no-budget filmmakers have been following the template laid down by the grindhouse purveyors of old, and for many, the old films of Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, and George Romero are like gospel when it comes to creating their own damn movie.
Though the original run of those decaying low-budget schlock theaters was ultimately fated to collapse in on itself, the films, directors, and those in the scene will live on forever in the hearts of those who have, and will, experience the magic that was (and still is) psychotronic auteur cinema. The gore revolution’s impact can be felt and seen just about anywhere, and the modern period of cinema continues to blossom further into various facets reminiscent of its vast influences. Without the independent filmmakers pushing the envelope for cinema back then, it’s debatable whether movies would still be the same as they are today. The late ‘60s and ‘70s Wild West of film will always be a cornerstone for some of the most experimental and daring minds of the future, and will continue to inspire and challenge those who seek out some of the most authentic films cinema has to offer.
