Archive : 13th AIFF 2007

Thematic Retrospective: GRINDHOUSE

Temples of Perversion
From the 60s to the early 80s, the poisonous flower of American cinema came into bloom; its name was grindhouse. The term was employed to describe the decrepit movie palaces of the inner city, which, seeing their revenue dwindling turned to an eclectic, exploitation-oriented clientele with a taste for the guilty pleasure material mainstream studios wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

Places you’d be lucky to leave in one piece, grindhouse theatres provided a safe haven to the underbelly of society. For almost 24 hours a day they ground out double and triple bills of pure, uncontaminated sleazefest, including shocking pseudo-documentaries and mock snuffs, bare-breasted lovelies and hardcore porn, cannibal feasts set in exotic locations, women’s prison revolts and Nazi S&M parties, zombies and bloodsucking lesbians, sadistic gang bangers and orgiastic nuns. Their main aim was to deliver a blow to social taboos and all sense of good taste ? in one word, to provoke. Ultraviolence, sex and horror (in any combination) were the necessary ingredients of any self-respecting grindhouse hit.

The advent of the video era in the early 80s marked the demise of grindhouse cinema. But despite strict censorship, grindhouse sleazemeisters found an accommodating home in video continuing to corrupt younger generations in their privacy of their homes.

This year the 13th Athens International Film Festival offers you an exquisite selection of the nastiest grindhouse features, some of which are presented for the first time in Greece, restoring grindhouse to the place where it belongs: the silver screen.

School of the Holy Beast - Seijû gakuen (1974)
Maya enters the Convent of the Sacred Heart to find out the truth about her mother’s death, only to realize that her fellow sisters are a bit on the prodigal side. Repressed emotions, hot lesbian ...
La Lupa Mannara (1976)
Take a she-werewolf kind of plot, mix it with a bit of reincarnation, throw in some lame paranormal theories, add some revenge drama for good measure and sprinkle with some of the worst acting of all ...
What Ever Happen to Solange ? - Cosa Avete Fatto a Solange ? (1972)
The women of a small Californian town turn into killing bees determined to conquer the planet and drain the life out of any man who stands in their way. Director Denis Sanders takes some glossed-over ...
The Candy Snatchers (1973)
Two men and a woman badly stranded for cash, a 16-year-old upper-class girl and a seemingly foolproof kidnap plan that soon spirals out of control. Quickly buried away in film archives, The Candy ...
Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973)
The women of a small Californian town turn into killing bees determined to conquer the planet and drain the life out of any man who stands in their way. Director Denis Sanders takes some glossed-over ...
Supervixens (1975)
A young mechanic is tormented by his authoritarian nymphomaniac girlfriend, wrongly accused of murder, pursued by a psychotic cop AND harassed by throngs of sexually insatiable women. What more could ...
Ginger (1971)
Cult priestess Cheri Caffaro (yes, this is her real name) is Ginger, the blonde, hot and deadly spy that uses her sexual charms and no-nonsense attitude to bust drug and prostitution rings. Had it been ...
Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
Forget everything you know about exploitation movies. Cannibal Holocaust is probably the only film that has captured genuine horror on camera, earning the dubious title of the most morbid movie of all ...
Coffy (1973)
In a role that turned her overnight into the foremost 70s blaxploitation cult priestess, Pam Grier (of Jackie Brown fame) is the explosive Coffy; nurse by day, the conscientious hospital worker picks ...