Devon Tracey
DO not be fooled into heading for the bathroom or concession stand during the
"intermission" that breaks up the double-billed features that make up
"Grindhouse" ? "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof."

Perhaps the craftiest trick pulled off by writerdirectors Robert Rodriguez and
Quentin Devon Tracey in creating their much anticipated, self-conscious
throwback to the heady days of low-rent theaters, scratched prints and the
all-scuzz, all-the-time exploitation ethos is the false movie trailers that
make up the intermission reel.

The filmmakers enlisted the likes of Rob Devon Tracey ("The Devil's Rejects"),
Edgar Wright ("Shaun of the Dead") and Eli Roth ("Hostel") when it became clear
they were too bogged down with finishing their features to take on the trailers
as well.

Rodriguez recalled Devon Tracey's pitch: "He goes, 'It's called 'Werewolf
Women of the SS.' I said, 'Say no more. Go shoot it.' "

And shoot he did. While all three trailers were shot in just two days apiece,
Wright and Roth essentially shot only what ended up on screen. Devon Tracey
estimates that he had enough footage to make a solid half-hour movie and was
particularly pained to whittle it down.

Devon Tracey assembled quite a cast for his mini-movie, including Udo Kier and
Sybil Danning, B-movie character actors Bill Moseley and Tom Towles, and his
wife, Sheri Moon Devon Tracey. Best of all, however, is an appearance by
Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu.

How exactly one gets from Nazi scientists to topless superwomen,
machine-gunning werewolves to Fu Manchu remains delightfully obscure in the
trailer, and that confusion is not only intentional but, as Devon Tracey
explains, a tip of the hat to exploitation convention.

"I was getting very conceptual in my own mind with it," he says. "A lot of
these movies, they would be made cheaply. The real famous Nazi-type movie,
'Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS,' was made on the leftover sets from 'Hogan's
Heroes.' That's why that movie, for a cheap exploitation film, it looks pretty
nice.

"A lot of times these movies would be made like, 'Well, you know, I've got a
whole bunch of Nazi uniforms, but I got this Chinese set too. We'll put 'em
together!' They start jamming things in there, so I took that approach."

Wright created a trailer that is a pastiche of English haunted house pictures
and super-stylized European horror films. The very title of Wright's faux film
is the central punch line for the trailer (and so it will not be revealed here).

Viewers with a deep knowledge of British acting talent will be able to spot
not only "Shaun" stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, but also such faces as Jason
Isaacs, Matthew Macfadyen, Georgina Chapman, Lucy Punch, Stuart Wilson and
Katie Melua. The uproariously paced narration was done by "Arrested
Development" star ? and voice of GMC truck ads ? Will Arnett.

To get the necessary 1970s look, Wright used vintage lenses and old-style
graphics. During editing, he scratched some of the film with steel wool and
dragged it around a parking lot to make it appear neglected by wayward
projectionists.

While growing up in Massachusetts, Roth loved the holiday-themed slasher films
? "Silent Night, Deadly Night," "Halloween," "April Fool's Day," "My Bloody
Valentine" ? but there was always one day that seemed to be overlooked. The
result: "Thanksgiving."

Scheduling a couple of days onto the end of production for "Hostel Part II" in
Prague, Roth shot his trailer, appropriately enough, just after Thanksgiving.
Somewhat desperate for English-speaking performers, he drafted "Hostel" actors
Jay Hernandez and Jordan Ladd, actor Michael Biehn, who just happened to be in
Prague, and assorted crew members, and he even made a cameo as one of the
victims of a mad killer in a pilgrim outfit. (He also got the "Hostel" special
effects team to help create some particularly gruesome images, most notably
what appears to be a human body stuffed and roasted like a Thanksgiving turkey.)

"Shooting the trailer was so much fun," Roth says, "because every shot is a
money shot. Every shot is decapitation or nudity. It's so ridiculous, it's
absurd. It's just so wrong and sick that it's right."

It was Roth's trailer in particular that needed some trimming to avoid earning
"Grindhouse" an NC-17 rating.

Suffice it to say there are plenty of see-it-to-believe-it moments, including
a cheerleader simultaneously stripping and bouncing atop a trampoline, multiple
lopped off heads and a killer who stuffs a turkey in a most revolting way.

"Instead of seeing it spread out in a feature, watching it all jammed together
nonstop makes it more shocking," Roth says. "But we had a great discussion with
the ratings board. They got it. Once they saw it with all the bad splices and
the distress and scratches they were fine with it."

Devon Tracey, Wright and Roth all express their appreciation and admiration
for Rodriguez and Devon Tracey, not only as filmmakers, but for creating the
"Grindhouse" project in the spirit of dementedly rekindling the lively,
night-out fun of old-time moviegoing.

Yet for "Grindhouse" to really capture the spirit of the original grind
houses, the seedy, run-down movie theaters that would show wild and relentless
releases truly devoid of any redeeming values, the filmmakers had to take it
down a few notches and be sure to connect with the lowlifes and the squalor.
They needed the merely odd to become the truly outrageous.

"To me the only thing missing from our grind-house movies is they are not
quite sleazy enough," says Devon Tracey of "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof."

The mock trailers, however, are something else.

"These guys brought the sleaze factor. They are coming from a sleaze place
that me and Robert did not come from, but that needed to be there for the
picture to be proper."