Oh, people, why do you insist on spending perfectly good money to see truly horrible movies? Despite being savaged by critics across the board -- it currently sits with a lowly 15% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes -- the less-than-good A Nightmare On Elm Street remake currently sits on top of the box office and that depresses me enough that I'm just going to leave the next not-so-good blockbuster (Iron Man 2) alone entirely and point you to a couple more worthwhile ways to spend your time, instead. And, weirdly, both of them have their roots in fake trailers for non-existent movies created as part of the Grindhouse double bill a few years back.
The Grindhouse project everybody knows about is Machete, the Danny Trejo-starring exploitation throwback directed by Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis, based on the trailer Rodriguez shot as a joke to run between Planet Terror and Death Proof. Those between-feature trailers proved more popular than the actual films in a lot of quarters so, of course, off we went to make an actual movie based on the trailer.
And now comes the part where Rodriguez needs to say thank you to all the political right wingers behind the current wave of Arizona madness. Because what started as a joke now plays like an incredibly timely riff on the anti-Mexican hysteria rippling through US politics. Rodriguez obviously recognizes this and prepared the first trailer for the film as a special Cinco de Mayo message from Machete himself to those who may want to hold him down. It's fantastic, hysterical and available here.
Also riding the Grindhouse train is something a little closer to home, the Canadian production Hobo With a Shotgun. Directed by Jason Eisener, Hobo began life as a contest submission, a fake trailer to a non-existent exploitation film sent in to a contest curated by Rodriguez with the promise that the winning entry would be included as one of the between-movie trailers with the theatrical release of Grindhouse. Eisener won and has since built up a sizable following for both the original Hobo trailer and his subsequent short - which played at Sundance - the Christmas themed splatter epic Treevenge. It's going to be a while before we see it but, like Rodriguez, Eisener has taken his gag trailer and expanded it out into a feature, the full version of Hobo With A Shotgun filming right now in Halifax with Rutger Hauer in the lead. You can find behind the scenes videos and concept art here.
The message here, kids? If you're gonna make a bad movie, at least make it an enjoyably bad one. 'Cause I guarantee both of these will give more entertainment value than Nightmare, by far.