GRINDHOUSE 2

(featuring the new western horror epic "Valley of the Starving Fleas")

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For fun, I imagine this brutish American exploitation distributor who has two scratched barely functional copies of movies he wants to make a few bucks on at his Grindhouse theater. So takes both film cans home and uses his old film bed in basement to recut both movies into a single film, hoping his audience might not care. You see, he was a failed filmmaker, so he actually enjoys the opportunity to play producer here. But also he needs movies to show at his nearly bankrupt theater, so he takes this risk, cutting the movies down almost to the point of incoherence. Cutting the "Hateful Eight" part down to the bone, and taking all the fat off it to see if it could still exist, and after a couple of successful screenings with the stoner kids he's relieved that it works. Even makes him feel like he's not quite the failure he thinks he is.

++OBJECTIVE++

A hybrid of "The Hateful Eight"(2015) and "BoneTomahawk"(2015) which both feature Kurt Russel, who is reimagined as the same character in both, and the movies are re-edited into a SINGLE epic western film that plays like a western gothic "From Dusk Till Dawn"(1996) (i.e.with the tonal shift from the first half to the second in terms of genre and themes).

I enjoyed the challenge here, as I am NOT a big "Hateful Eight fan". The one Tarantino movie that never conjures Tarantino’s joy. The extended slow-poke stagecoach ride that gets things rolling seems to be planting the seeds for a tricky drama of one-upmanship, but once the film arrives at a giant log cabin in the middle of the wintry nowhere, it turns into a variation on “And then there was none" that’s more malevolent than clever, with characters so ill-tempered that you’re only too happy to see them knocked off. Tarantino grew fixated on the film’s 70mm cinematography, but that has to go down as an irony of film history, since the visual “largeness” is lavished on a single claustrophobically gloomy set, resulting in what feels like the world’s most lavish episode of “Gunsmoke.”

Then, literally the same year "Hateful Eight" was released, we have "BoneTomahawk" which no one saw but felt like the movie that "Hateful Eight" wanted to be! It is underrated AF. Good storytelling there. But maybe it lacked the grand Hollywood vibe that "Hateful Eight' promised, and sorta delivered at least in terms of production value and star power. So perfect for a fan edit!

I figure that a good western epic has to be one part bushwhacking "outlaws" with gory and stylish shootouts, and the second half about cowboys vs. native Americans. The Hollywood west treated Native Americans with all the dignity of b-movie zombies. Director S.Craig Zahler went early Wes Craven and in giving us his version of "The Hills Have Eyes", he gives us the movie-monster caricature of "Indians" as if were living spirit of malevolence in the same vein as Freddy Krueger. That's a great concept.

+++SOME HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE+++

So I decided to cut down "Hateful Eight" into a short film more or less, treating it as the film's first act. Which meant ruthless editing to make Russell's characters in both films to be the same. He's no longer "John Ruth The Hangman". He's just an a-hole Sheriff committing the sins and atrocities common of fascist lawmen in the Wild West. 

So when we fast forward to several years later, Russell's character is now the more subdued character from Bone Tomahawk, which has the effect of us now feeling like he's this broken man haunted by his sins, and preparing (and knowingly) entering into a karmic hell for them. So, using a nifty flashback or two later on from "Hateful Eight", it really completes his character's arc nicely.

With all the celebrities now from BOTH movies, gives the overall film here a nice all star cast-- which great Westerns from yesteryear in the John Ford age were known for.

Also, given the literal controversial pornographic violence later on in the movie, I also upped the ante on the sexploitation element here too. So of that may turn off some of you, but it's meant to evoke the era of Grindhouse movies from the 70s. It's also for effect, so we can pay off that later aforementioned brutal scene that makes "Bone Tomahawk" so powerful, yet hard to watch.

Also using the film scratches effect from Grindhouse (2007) and some intentionally degraded audio here and there, gives the overall picture a nice bootlegged film. By making some moments a little harder to see, I think it adds to overall mystery of the events.

Other highlights also included are some fun western Grindhouse trailers to kick this off, including "A Fist Full of Machete" and more!

This is PART THREE, and the gripping conclusion to my Grindhouse fan edit Trilogy!

ENTER THEATER!