The Drive-In Channel

For someone who didn't grow up in the '70's, "exploitation film" is a mysterious and ambiguous term bandied around that has something to do with gratuitous sex and violence - but there's plenty of non-exploitation flicks that have that, aren't there? So what's the difference? Then Quentin Tarantino homaged the genre with Grindhouse (though one could say that all of his films homage exploitation films in some way), and I started to get a better idea of the difference between exploitation and plain ol' gratuity. I've only seen the Death Proof half of Grindhouse, and let's just say I saw and heard things that I never, ever wanted to see or hear Kurt Russell (or anyone, for that matter) say and do. I didn't expect anyone, not even Tarantino, to surpass his Kill Bill Vol. 2 in terms of, um, yuckiness (though I should state for honesty's sake that I appreciated that picture. I have my reasons.).

This month, our basic cable preview channel is The Drive-In Channel, and it turns out that those corny, innocent "enjoy a refreshing ice-cold beverage at our concessions stand!" commercials everyone knows to be associated with drive-ins are a very misleading representation of what's actually on The Drive-In Channel. In essence, it's 99% exploitation cinema, occasionally interspersed by said commercials, 70's short documentaries, The Incredible Hulk, and the odd Clint Eastwood western. And, it turns out, there is a very large gap between gratuitous sex and violence and the exploitation genre - "exploitation" is exactly what it is. I don't know how else to describe it.

Case in point: where else can you watch a film called Wild Women in Nature in the Raw, followed by Keyholes Are For Peeping, Goldilocks and the Three Bares, a film described as "a phone-sex operator suspects her artist boyfriend is killing topless dancers", and The Hooker Cult Murders, set in Montreal (holla!) and starring Christopher Plummer? (Who, while this hasn't affected my appreciation for him, I cannot resist herein referring to as Christopher Slummer. You walked right into that one, pal.)

The saddest thing in this whole business is that, when Quentin Tarantino made Death Proof, he was upping the quality of grindhouse cinema by inexplicable proportions. My advice? Stay far, far away from any film you've heard referred to as exploitation, and never, ever add The Drive-In Channel to your lineup.