Grindhouse Theater: Fighting Mad (1978)

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Fighting Mad (1978)

Fighting Mad (aka Death Force) concerns a trio of Vietnam vets who smuggle a fortune in gold back to the States. After selling it, they set off for the high life. Unfortunately, two of the "friends" betray the third man named Doug Russell. They stab him and dump him into the ocean. Miraculously, Russell survives and washes up on the shore of an uncharted island. Doubly miraculously, it is inhabited by Japanese soldiers who don't know WWII has been over for decades! Back home, Russell's two "friends" are taking over Russell's turf, torching his businesses, and killing his business associates. Luckily, the soldiers train Russell in the art of combat, especially combat involving karate and the samurai sword. Once his training is complete, Russell is ready for revenge.

♆ The Wonderful World of Grindhouse ♆

A grindhouse is an American term for a theater that mainly shows exploitation films. It is named after the defunct burlesque theaters located on 42nd Street in New York City, where 'bump n' grind' dancing and striptease were featured.

In the film Lady of Burlesque (1943) one of the characters refers to the burlesque theatre on 42nd Street, where they are performing stripteases and bump and grind dances, as a "grindhouse".

The introduction of television greatly eroded the audience for local and single-screen movie theatres, many of which were built during the cinema boom of the 1930s. In combination with urban decay after white flight out of older city areas in the mid to late 1960s, changing economics forced these theatres to either close or offer something that TV could not. In the 1970s these theatres were put to new use as venues for exploitation films, either adult pornography and sleaze, or slasher, horror and dubbed martial arts films from Hong Kong.

Grindhouse films characteristically contain large amounts of sex, violence or bizarre subject matter. One genre of film featured were "roughies" or sexploitation, a mix of sex, violence and sadism. Quality varied, but low budget production values and poor print quality were common. Critical opinions varied regarding typical grindhouse fare, but many films acquired cult following and critical praise. Double, triple, and "all night" bills on a single admission charge often encouraged patrons to spend long periods of time in the theaters. The milieu was largely and faithfully captured at the time by the magazine Sleazoid Express.

By the 1980s, home video and cable movie channels threatened to render the grindhouse obsolete. By the end of the decade, these theaters had vanished from Los Angeles's Broadway and Hollywood Boulevard, New York City's Times Square and San Francisco's Market Street. By the mid-1990s, these particular theaters had all but disappeared from the US. Very few exist today.