Grindhouse Slips To Number 10

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Phil Maker

Well-known member
Looks like there's no word of mouth happening for Grindhouse.
Pulling in a dismal $1, 310,000 on FRIDAY THE 13TH!!!
This officially makes it an absolute, unequivocal flop.
Damn.
:crybaby:
 
really, this movie was not aimed at mainstream audiences. Most people don't know what grindhouse films are, and if they just happened to go in they prolly left asking what the hell was that? I know a lot of people who saw the trailer and the part with the girl with the gun for the leg and thought that was stupid and I had to explain to them what everyhting meant, but they really didn't care.

For me, I loved planet terror but thought death proof was long and boring. I;d rather be shot then have to sit there and watch girls talk about stuff that was neither interesting nor shocking for 45 minutes straight again
 
Bsmith said:
really, this movie was not aimed at mainstream audiences.
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It was aimed at mainstream audiences. If it wasn't they wouldn't have (A) release it on so many screens, and (B) put so much money into advertising it. The mistake was trying to push it on the mainstream. They should have cut 30 minutes of the boring dialogue out, released it small and let it build.
 
Phil Maker said:
It was aimed at mainstream audiences. If it wasn't they wouldn't have (A) release it on so many screens, and (B) put so much money into advertising it. The mistake was trying to push it on the mainstream. They should have cut 30 minutes of the boring dialogue out, released it small and let it build.
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And not release it around easter time lol.
 
It was definitely aimed at mainstream audiences, opening in 2600 theaters with a heavy presence on tv the week it was released. I think the basic concept just failed to entice people into theatres. Why would they want to see something that's a throwback to crappy looking 70's movies? Why spend money on something that's deliberately made to look like crap? I think audiences want the perception they're seeing something new, even if a lot of what they're seeing is formulaic or a remake or an adaptation of something, if it at least LOOKS new they'll buy it. The American public is funny that way. They're more than happy to consume crap, as long as it doesn't LOOK like crap and they're not told it's crap by the people selling it to them...The concept of "recreating the GRINDHOUSE experience" just went over a lot of people's heads. To them it just looked like a cheesy piece of ****. This is not my opinion of the film, I'm just trying to figure out why more people didn't go see it and I think this is why.
 
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I think Batutta hit it on the head. I think they could have just released these as normal films and had a better reception. I mean RR's was not really any different than any other B zombie flick coming out now. But I think the whole plan of marketing it as "just like the shitty movies you thought sucked 30 years ago" did hurt them.
 
IMDB reports it as having had a $53 million budget. I just gotta ask, why? I know explosions aren't cheap, but holy crap.
 
Kennedy said:
IMDB reports it as having had a $53 million budget. I just gotta ask, why? I know explosions aren't cheap, but holy crap.
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I'm sure half of that went to actor's salaries. The rest probably went in the producer's pockets...David Mamet wrote in Bambi Vs. Godzilla that the dirty little secret about Hollywood is that all movies make money, it just depends on how close to the source of the money you are.
 
Too many mainstream people, even horror/action bluffs, missed the entire point of the film. I just about exploded, with all the people giving me crap for seeing Grindhouse "why'd you see that cheesy piece of ****?"....lol....missing the point entirely.

Anyways I bet the film does great on DVD, so even once it "flops" with maybe $40~ Million total (overseas included), it should still make moola.
 
Regardless of big names, I'm willing to bet that the actors didn't get a typical hollywood paycheck. The consensus around here seems to be that actors aren't willing to work on a project they find interesting for a reduced salary. All actors started somewhere, and at one point they didn't even get payed for doing what they loved, so why can't they give back to the audiences for the love of film?
 
Just saw it. Problem is that making an homage to a bad B-movie leaves you with...well a bad B-movie. Like trying to emulate an unfunny comedy...you end up with an unfunny movie. RR's Planet Terror sucked. Had some laugh-out-loud moments, but far fewer laughs than a Scary Movie (which at least knows it's trying to be a true parody).

Unlike some people, however, I thought that Tarantino's Death Proof was brilliant. It wasn't a parody of anything--just a really unusual, interesting story unto itself. It starts off slow, but once it gets going, it's awesome...only problem is when you're making a short movie, I guess starting out reeeeeaaal slow is sort of a no-no. But ultimately it becomes as gripping and hair-raising as it is unconventional.

I thought Grindhouse was going to clean-up at the box office, but having seen it, I see full well why it's tanking. The first movie stinks, and the second one is odd (but I loved it).
 
The problem with things like this...

...how to put it...

The original ones didn't set out to be bad films. No money and little talent made them what they were. You can't fake that with having the money and the talent.

I used to watch the Flash Gordon serials. SOmeone making a film in that style would tank as well, no matter how much I enjoyed them as a kid. The same goes for most of the TV shows they've tried as films.

No problem with using elements of your childhood faves in current works. But time moves on...give a nod to the past, but don't try to recreate it.

Stuff like this would work better as an SNL skit. At least then they'd be shorter. And funnier.
 
GenJerDan said:
The problem with things like this...

I used to watch the Flash Gordon serials. SOmeone making a film in that style would tank as well, no matter how much I enjoyed them as a kid. The same goes for most of the TV shows they've tried as films.
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Exactly. When Lucas made the first Star Wars trilogy, he just took the ideas and the cliffhanger pacing from those serials, then elevated them with as much quality whiz bang filmmaking style he could do at the time. Same with Raiders of the Lost Ark...But when Kerry Conran hewed a little too closely to the style of the source material with Sky Captain, the movie bombed.
 
Batutta said:
But when Kerry Conran hewed a little too closely to the style of the source material with Sky Captain, the movie bombed.
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I don't think the style was the problem, just that the movie sucked. They had the wrong actors, a weak plot and a fuzzy picture, amongst other things... a movie in the same style which didn't have those problems could have been far more successful.
 
sean90291 said:
Unlike some people, however, I thought that Tarantino's Death Proof was brilliant. It wasn't a parody of anything--just a really unusual, interesting story unto itself. It starts off slow, but once it gets going, it's awesome...only problem is when you're making a short movie, I guess starting out reeeeeaaal slow is sort of a no-no. But ultimately it becomes as gripping and hair-raising as it is unconventional.
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Death proof starting off slow is the understatment of the century. It was girls talking for 45 minutes. Thats it. It was the first time ever for me where I had to go to the bathroom really bad and I actually got up and went confident I wasn't going to miss anything important or cool. The crash scene was cool tho.
 
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