Grindhouse Season 2

The Grindhouse film club returns with a dynamite programme of

four feats–of–strength double-bill evenings, with plenty of fun and weird things to watch at intermission.

Take a nostalgia trip into the mythic neighbourhood cinemas of the Parisian past, with their steady stream of exploitation films, westerns, sword and sandals and action films, plus a few juicy erotic flicks thrown in.

Relive as well their fun and bizarre intermission acts: live martial-arts demos, dog acts, burlesque and so forth, you get the drift. Even better, movie quizzes and the candy girls are back.

Season 2 hostilities kick off under the peace-loving banner of “knock his block off” on 27 June, with a Bruce Lee-Chuck Morris head bash in The Way of the Dragon, followed by Bloodsport, an apocalyptic combat at the Roman Colosseum.

Grindhouse Season 2 :

CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER !

Bruce Lee vs JCVD

Dracula vs Frankenstein

Badass Girls

Upcoming…

The Grindhouse cinemas – a brief history

Beginning in the 1930s, the local neighbourhood cinemas played a major role in the film industry. Unlike first-run cinemas, they showed previously released films at a reduced price, specialising in whatever kind of films were trending at the moment. For example, the El Dorado, the Far West and the Texas screened westerns. The Midi-Minuit began to show fantasy and erotic flicks. During the 1960s, the choice of films expanded. The Colorado and the Brady dropped westerns for horror and fantasy and the Styx, located in the Latin Quarter rather than outside of Paris, dipped into B movies.

In palatial dilapidated cinemas, with their colonnades and balconies, and occasionally in much smaller and far less attractive ones as well, screenings were based on a double-feature model that combined a new film with an older one. Films were dubbed in French. Some cinemas provided live-act entertainment, such as striptease shows, or dog and magic acts. The public were mostly regulars, who always laid claim to the same seat and who had no qualms about sounding off on the spot if the projection quality was not up to par, which was often the case.

Click here to see our previous Grindhouse evenings.