Masters of The Grind

Years ago, it was the guilty pleasures of Video Nasties, the secret passed down knowledge by friends of a film sequence that makes you wince or go, “They can’t do that,” even though they did. All of this is part of the outrageous fun known as grindhouse. Writer-director Jason Rutherford’s Masters of the Grind is a brilliant visual and auditory encyclopedia extravaganza on par with some of the best incendiary cultural documentaries from the likes of Julian Temple and Don Letts.

The filmmaker shares a love of movies made with no budget. This three-hour and 42-minute odyssey highlights ridiculous situations and lots of tacky gore while also featuring gunfights galore, lantern-jawed heroes, and scantily clad women all doing outrageous, politically incorrect things. All these elements are flickering across screens in the name of entertainment. Titles like Invasion of the Blood Farmers, Shriek of the Mutilated, Hitch-Hike to Hell, Werewolves on Wheels, I Drink Your Blood, Bloodsucking Freaks and Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS are on streaming services or in pristine restored Blu-ray releases.

“…in the spotlight are the dumbest, most notorious exploitation films around…”

The film contains interviews, reminiscences, and memories with many of the writers, directors, cinematographers, editors, and actors; often, all these jobs were done by the same person. The participants include Jim Wynorski, Sybil Danning, Ray Dennis Steckler, Clu Gulager, Hershell Gordon Lewis, Larry Cohen, William Lustig, Lloyd Kaufman, Fred Olen Ray, Jamaa Fanaka, William Crain, Linnea Quigley, Ted V. Nikels and more. Dean Cundey, who began in grindhouse and ended up working for John Carpenter, Spielberg, and other Academy Award-winning directors, speaks affectionately of the experience of working on low to no-budget films.

Masters of the Grind travels to New York’s infamous 42nd Street and the seediest Los Angeles areas where these works played to what was called the “Raincoat audience.” Said viewership consisted of transients, bums, the unemployed, and, occasionally, fans who sought out these films. Playing at all hours in a string of theatres on one street, patrons would sleep, drink, fornicate, steal shoes (as one recollection goes), and scream. When things got too wild, patrolling ushers kept the peace with baseball bats, which just added to the atmosphere of odd images accompanied by the smell of urine. The link with the history of the drive-ins, the interest resurgence sparked by the home video market, and festivals are also explored.