"Grindhouse" Contest Unleashes Rash of Sex and Violence Online

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By Anthony Kaufman March 04, 2007

Thanks to Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and the South by Southwest Film Festival, the crudest, rudest, zaniest (and entirely sexist) of short movies are currently flooding the Internet. As part of a contest in honor of the duo's upcoming release "Grindhouse," filmmakers had until Feb. 12 to submit their own "grindhouse trailers." Many of them are now online.

While Rodriguez will pick the best of the bunch of B-movie tributes as part of a special presentation next Sunday in Austin, Texas, a number of favorites have already risen to the surface of YouTube and other sites, such as Ain't It Cool News.

A YouTube search for "SXSW" and "Grindhouse" yielded 137 entries; one of the most popular is clearly "Maiden of Death,"
a wild, blood-gushing clip about a heavy-metal guitaress out for revenge. The filmmakers say they made the glossy short for $1,400 and were inspired by "Heavy Metal," "The Wraith," and other "classics of the genre" like "Female Convict Scorpion Jailhouse 41," "Coffy" and "old chop-socky flicks."

"Dead Noon" is another highlight. About an outlaw who goes to hell and returns with his posse of undead gunslingers, the clip features lots of exploding corpses, scantily clad women, and rapid gunfire (think "Sam Raimi meets Sam Peckinpah" says the narrator.)

One of my personal favorites is "Cong of the Dead," a "Vietnam War movie… with zombies." The cleverly stop-motion animated short is made entirely with army figurines. "Shogun Torture" also deserves a shout-out for originality with its sadistic mix of Dario Argento and "In the Realm of the Senses." And "Snuff's Enough" about a porn-queen (who also returns from the dead to get her revenge) is put together with a gleeful B-movie flair.

But after awhile, all the trailers start to look the same, whether "Tetas de Muerte" ("Death Tits") or one of the most disgusting of them all "The Dead Won't Die" -- as the voiceover says, "If you're upset by extreme violence and explicit sex, than this film is not for you." That kind of sums it up right there.