Gods of Grindhouse: Interviews with Exploitation Filmmakers

by Andrew J. Rausch, Christopher Wayne Curry (Foreword)

"Grindhouse" is a term that refers to theaters that primarily showed exploitation films. There were a handful of these theaters on 42nd Street in New York City. These theaters showed a variety of films that generally featured sex, violence, and bizarre subject matter. These included slasher films, X-rated movies, badly-dubbed Hong Kong chop socky pictures, blaxploitation, and general exploitation films. The period most generally associated with these types of movie houses stretches from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. Since the demise of these theaters, and with them certain types of film, an enthusiasm and appreciation for them has developed. Hollywood films such as Black Dynamite, Machete, and Hobo with a Shotgun have since payed homage to them. Gods of Interviews with Exploitation Filmmakers contains conversations with a variety of filmmakers associated with such films. The book contains interviews with key figures such as Roger Corman, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Larry Cohen, David F. Friedman, William Lustig, Ted V. Mikels, and others. It also contains interviews with Bill Rebane and Russ Meyer that have never appeared in print before! This is a one-of-a-kind collection of interviews that gets as down and dirty as the films themselves.

Genres: Film

172 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 2013

About the author

Andrew J. Rausch is a film critic, author, and celebrity interviewer, as well as film producer, screenwriter, and actor. He had written or co-written nearly 20 books on the subject of popular culture, including Turning Points in Film History, Making Movies with Orson Welles (w/Gary Graver), and The Films of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. He is the screenwriter of the motion picture Dahmer vs. Gacy and the author of three novels, The Suicide Game, Riding Shotgun, and Elvis Presley, CIA Assassin. He can be reached at cruelkindgom@gmail.com.