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Grindhouse Trailer Classics Volume One
Released by: Intervision Picture Corp
Released on: August 12th, 2014.
Director: Various
Cast: Various
Year: Various
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The Movie:
The first entry in Nucleus Film's ongoing Grindhouse Trailer Classics line of trailer compilation DVD releases makes it to North American shores thanks to the efforts of Intervision Picture Corp. No plot, no feature - just a solid couple of hours of trailers, some common and some not so common. Here's how it all plays out…
Things start off right with the fairly vicious trailer for the killer hippie fest that is I Drink Your Blood in a trailer that double features it with I Eat Your Skin though doesn't actually use any footage from that old black and white picture. It's a fun spot that leads right into the double feature spot for Blood Splattered Bride & I Dismember Mama. This has got to be one of the most overused trailers ever, having appeared on all sorts of compilations over the years, but yet any time that guy opens his mouth and that weird crazy duck laugh comes out, you can't help but laugh at the stupidity of it all.
From there we get a couple of trailers for tough gal chicks, Switchblade Sisters, which was released years back on DVD by Rolling Thunder Releasing and the fantastic Caged Heat starring the lovely and talented Erica Gavin. Trashtastic? Hell yeah! From there we bounce around between genres, heading to Italy for a killer spot for Umberto Lenzi's giallo Eyeball and then back to the States for the Ed Gein inspired Deranged. This is followed by Filipino based chicks in chains classic The Big Doll House. Follow this up with Bury Me An Angel and then the infamous The Last House On The Left (it's only a movie… it's only a movie…) and you're definitely on the right track and Hell, why not chase that with a serious dose of Sonny Chiba starring mayhem with the U.S. theatrical trailer for The Street Fighter?
Moving right along, we head face first into the furious filmic filth that is Ilsa: She Wolf Of The SS, the notorious Nazisploitation classic starring the iconic Dyanne Thorne and her equally iconics breasts of stone. Sleazy! Giving us a bit of a reprieve after that one, we get goofy with the really fun trailer for Dr. Black And Mr. Hyde, a blaxploitaition picture that is every bit as silly as it sounds. Up next? Don't Open The Window, a more serious horror picture (better known in certain territories as The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue) followed by more Blaxploitation wackiness with the absolutely killer spot for Rudy Ray Moore's The Human Tornado. If there's a trailer out there that crams as much jive talking, bad rhyming and horrible kung-fu into its running time, we want to see it.
Heading back to Europe we get the trailer for Caged Virgins, the US re-edit of Jean Rollin's classic Requiem For A Vampire. This is an interesting take on the movie as it really does up the sex and violence factor quite a bit, misrepresenting Rollin's fairly somber picture in fascinating and entertaining ways. Keeping with the theme of ladies you won't want to mess with we get a promo spot for Ebony, Ivory & Jade, an entertaining mix of kung fu, sexploitation and Blaxploitation elements, followed by more iconic breasts of stone with the trailer for the notorious Deadly Weapons starring Chesty Morgan and Harry Reems.
We head back to Italy with a trailer for Sergio Martino's beloved giallo Torso and then to Sweden for the slow-motion heavy trailer for They Call Her One Eye (a.k.a. Thriller a.k.a. the one where sexy bomb Christina Lindberg gets an eye patch and a shotgun)! Good stuff. We head back into creepy territory with the genuinely tantalizing spot for the George Kennedy starring Death Ship and then to China for the only time on the disc with the amazing trailer for Jimmy Wang Yu's Master Of The Flying Guillotine. From there, more horror with a triple thread of David Cronenberg's They Came From Within (a.k.a. Shivers), the AIP cult classic The Thing With Two Heads and the infamously nasty rape/revenge classic, I Spit On Your Grave. Those assholes rape poor Camille Keaton to Hell and back, but watch out - she's gonna cut off a dick or two!
We head to the drive-in next for the enjoyably sleazy trailer for Sweet Sugar followed by a spot for Girls For Rent. After that, it's time to get some Cameron Mitchell in your life with the trailer for The Toolbox Murders followed by what could possibly be the greatest trailer of all time, Duke Mitchell's The Executioner (a.k.a. Massacre Mafia Style). Pete Walker's infamous House Of Whipcord takes us to jolly old England for some anti-Catholic fun and then things take a decidedly urban turn as we watch the late, great Isaac Hayes kick ass in Truck Turner and then check out the trippy spot for the New York City based Larry Cohen cult classic, God Told Me To.
At this point, the disc turns up the dial on the gore with the U.S. trailer for Zombie Holocaust under its Doctor Butcher M.D. title followed by Bob Clark's insane Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, the Mexican gore classic Night Of The Bloody Apes and then the notorious Joel Reed classic, Blood Sucking Freaks. Dyanne Thorne returns, as do her breasts of stone, in the trailer for Ilsa: Harem Keeper Of The Oil Sheiks followed by more sexy, crazy fun with a trailer for The Single Girls and then the cat food horror classic that is Ted V. Mikels' The Corpse Grinders. Continuing to bounce between genres (it's more fun that way) we get more Italian undead action with the trailer for Lucio Fulci's classic Zombie - WE ARE GOING TO EAT YOU! Pam Grier kicks all kinds of ass in the trailer for her iconic Coffy and then Just Jaeckin brings us
The Perils Of Gwendoline, Tawny Kitaen's finest moment (Whitesnake video notwithstanding). Not done yet, we barrel through The Legend Of The Wolf Woman (also known as Werewolf Woman), the biker trash fest that is Satan's Sadists, more Rudy Ray Moore madness with Disco Godfather (put your weight on it!) and then Doris Wishman's sex change shockumentary, Let Me Die A Woman!
With the end now in sight it's time for more Ted V. Mikels' nonsense with his curvy Bond inspired actioner, The Doll Squad, the slasher film Secrets Of Sweet Sixteen, the David Carradine starring Cannonball, the grisly horror of Autopsy and the race hate film Fight For Your Life. Necrophilia takes the spotlight in the wonky trailer for Love Me Deadly and closing things out are classic trailers for sci-fi sexploitation stalwart Wham! Bam! Thank You Spaceman, the fantastic Lone Wolf And Cub re-edit that is Shogun Assassin and last but more certainly not least, the seriously underrated and far too hard to find Three On A Meathook (yeah it's around but it needs a good release). There's a ton of fun to be had here and this disc truly provides something for everyone, providing everyone is eighteen years of age or older. Great stuff!
Video/Audio/Extras:
Intervision presents the different trailers on this compilation in their respective aspect ratios in anamorphic widescreen. Expect scratches and print damage throughout, it's all part of the deal here. These trailers look like the marginally beaten up film sourced promo spots that they are, but you'll still notice decent detail and texture. Quality varies from one spot to the next and compression artifacts are pretty common (possibly because we were sent a DVD-R to review?) but overall, yeah, this stuff looks fine on DVD so long as you don't mind a bit of grit with your trailers.
Audio chores are handled by a Dolby Digital Mono track that is on par with the video, so you could probably guess it isn't quite crystal clear but it sounds good for what it is. The various narrators are always easy to understand and the levels are properly balanced. If there's a bit of hiss here and there and the odd pop in the mix, that's okay.
The main extra on the disc is an eighteen minute featurette entitled Bump And Grind: Emily Booth Explores The World Of Grindhouse Cinema. This is, as it sounds, a piece in which Ms. Booth provides a pretty decent overview of what a Grindhouse Cinema was and how and why they came to be and show the type of material they became known for showing. Outside of that we also get a menu offering trailer selection, a still gallery and trailer selection.
The Final Word:
If you're into trailer compilation discs, this is a good one. Yeah, there's some repeat here between this disc and similar releases from other companies but there's a fair bit more uncommon material to more than make up for it. The presentation is pretty decent and the featurette a welcome supplement. Recommended.
