Of the exciting elements that collide in Dimension Films’ upcoming Grindhouse (opening April 6th), the faux trailers directed by a trio of guest hotshots are generating plenty of hype all on their own. Rob Zombie (The Devil’s Rejects), Eli Roth (Hostel) and Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz) are all contributing two to three-minute trailers for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s love letter to ’70s sordid filmmaking.
It has already been reported that “Machete” – Rodriguez’s action-packed trailer starring Danny Trejo as the sharp and deadly titular character – is being developed as a feature (more on that below). But what are the chances of seeing Zombie’s “Werewolf Women of the S.S.,” Wright’s “Don’t” and Roth’s “Thanksgiving” fully fleshed-out?
“Our whole thing is that we were actually going to let the fans dictate that,” Tarantino explains to us while out promoting Grindhouse this weekend. “Machete could genuinely be done grindhouse[-style]. About a half-hour is already put together and [Rodriguez] could expand it and literally show up for just another six or seven days and just wrap it up. That’d be extremely New World Pictures style.” (For those not up on the Tarantino reference, New World was established in the ’70s by leading voice of independent genre filmmaking, Roger Corman, before changing hands in the early-’80s.)
Tarantino adds that bringing the filmmakers on board involved very little arm-twisting. With “Machete” completed early on, he says, “Edgar Wright and Eli Roth, both friends of ours, were at my house and I showed them ‘Machete,’ I even had the lobby cards Robert made. They really got what we wanted to do and they’re just as knowledgeable when it comes to cinema and it just seemed like a perfect fit. Rob Zombie came aboard because of [Dimension Films’] Bob Weinstein – and he brought it up to Zombie because he’s doing ‘Halloween’ for Dimension and I thought it was a really good idea.”
“Werewolf Women of the S.S.” – starring Sybil Danning, Sheri Moon Zombie, Udo Kier and Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu – wound up filling a void Tarantino and Rodriguez had not originally considered for Grindhouse. “It’s got a Jess Franco sleaziness that’s not in the other movies. It was a vein we hadn’t really hit on and we knew we had to go in that direction!”
Except more horror news than you can handle when ComingSoon.net launches ShockTillYouDrop.com early next month!
