The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas, regularly
screens some of the raunchiest, craziest exploitation flicks ever made,
and two of its main instigators, Lars Nilsen and Zack Carlson, are
bringing their collections of 35mm prints on a four-city West Coast
tour. On Wednesday, April 22, the Hollywood Theatre will see Trailer
War!, a joint program with Dan Halsted of Portland’s Grindhouse Film
Festival, who says to expect “kung fu, no-budget horror,
blaxploitation, spaghetti westerns, Filipino weirdness, and
indescribable sleaze. These are the two top exploitation film
collections in the country going head to head.”
Of Thursday, April 23’s “hicksploitation” double feature of Gator
Bait (1974) and Psycho from Texas (1975) at the Clinton
Street, Halsted says, “These movies came right after the fall of the
production code. Everyone was pushing the limits of what they could get
away with in a movie.”
We also spoke to Nilsen and Carlson about
what to expect.
MERCURY: Why did you decide to take this show on
the road?
CARLSON: It’d be selfish of us to only screen films
like Psycho from Texas and The Six Thousand Dollar Nigger in our own city. It’s a moral imperative to get movies like these in
front of as many eyeballs as possible.
What’s the process of selecting the trailers for Trailer
War!?
NILSEN: We’ll probably just bring whichever box is
nearest the door on our way out.
CARLSON: He’s referring to the box labeled: “R.I.P.—Dan
Halsted.”
NILSEN: Most of these movies are worth seeing on their
own.
CARLSON: What gets a viewer’s blood boiling in a trailer
will remain compelling in the feature itself. Admittedly, there are
people that enjoy exploitation trailers but don’t have the attention
span to endure entire films of the era. These people are called
“dipshits.”
Are you gonna mop the floor with Dan’s trailers?
CARLSON: I’ll mop the floor of the theater if Dan will let us sleep
on his couch.
For more info, see Movie Times and grindhousefilmfest.com.