It’s October, the month when even dilettantes and fair-weather fiends dip their sensitive tootsies into the well of horror. But if you’ve got the guts (literally and metaphorically), the Grand Illusion Cinema begins their headlong, month-long march to Halloween with a bloody bang tomorrow night.
Seattle’s most venerable indie theater turns into the seediest grindhouse this side of 42nd Street with The Portland Grindhouse Film Festival’s Night of Exploitation Mayhem, hosted by Dan Halligan, programmer and mastermind at Portland’s Hollywood Theatre. Halligan’s more than earned his stripes as a preacher on the schlock cinema pulpit: He’s unspooled horror and exploitation movies of every stripe at the Hollywood for years, and his previous Grindhouse Trailer Spectacular screenings have broiled brains here and in Portland for the last half-decade. Given Halligan’s rep, this latest Grindhouse Trailer Spectacular should be astonishing.
The promos on display will draw from the 1970s and ‘80s, a wild and woolly time when trash-film merchants pushed the envelope ‘til it split. Back then, the boundaries of good taste took an extended backseat to psychotic hillbillies, monsters, pimps, vengeful cops, raw action, cannibals, kung fu battles royale, lurid sex, stomach-lurching violence, and overbaked insanity. The best coming-attractions trailers of the era were speedballs of sensationalism that rivaled a ride on the most rickety and dangerous rollercoaster, so expect one heck of a trip.
The 65-minute trailer loop should provide an effective warm-up for The Gates of Hell, the 1980 shocker that follows. Gates begins with a priest committing suicide in the town of Dunwich, opening up a portal to (you guessed it) Hell. That act provides a springboard for all manner of mayhem, including but not restricted to death by power drill and skull-splitting, scabby-faced zombies, and a scene in which the phrase “Irritable Bowel Syndrome” takes on penultimate meaning.
Italian splatter auteur Lucio Fulci built an enduring cult with horror movies that combined spooky atmosphere, wild-eyed absurdity and over-the-top gore. Like most of Fulci’s output, The Gates of Hell’s liabilities — stilted dubbed dialogue, lapses in logic, an utter dearth of restraint — wind up being warped strengths that add to the nightmarish quality of the end product. It’s the crude horror-movie equivalent of a straight shot of industrial-strength bootleg moonshine. If you can endure it, most modern fright flicks will seem like foofy designer cocktails in comparison.
