According to Acrobat Research, one of the leading companies that monitors tracking numbers for upcoming Hollywood releases, "Grindhouse," the new picture from Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, is the most anticipated film of the spring among the all-important demographics of 15-year-old boys, movie store clerks and anti-social, basement-dwelling shut-ins. We could talk for a long time about the relative social merits of a movie where a serial killer stalks his victims in a tricked-out Chevy Nova and a stripper fights off zombies with a machine gun that also serves as her prosthetic leg, but really, who has the energy anymore? I'm certainly not the one to lead the discussion about the artistic responsibility of resurrecting old-school exploitation cheese, seeing as how I own an autographed poster of "Ms. 45." Tarantino and Rodriguez's goal in making "Grindhouse" is to capture the experience of going to an exploitation theater during the 1960s and 1970s — commonly referred to as grindhouses because of the extracurricular activities of certain patrons and the fact that the prints of the movies were frequently so worn down, one could hear the gears of the projector grinding throughout the movie. Each man made his own (just barely) feature length B-movie — Tarantino's "Death Proof" is about a deranged stuntman (played by Kurt Russell) who hunts down his victims with his car, and Rodriguez's "Planet Terror" is the story of a stripper who has to fight off an army of zombies — and put them together on a single bill as a kind of magnum opus of sleaze. The two features are buffered by trailers for fake movies, including the tantalizingly titled "Werewolf Women of the S.S." If this project sounds moderately awesome, you are, in theory, correct. I have little doubt that both movies are going to be fun to watch in the kind of self-conscious "Are you hip enough to get this joke" style that Tarantino and Rodriguez employ in order to ingratiate themselves to, and distance themselves from, their audience. Yet, something about this project feels amiss and a bit shortsighted. Obviously, the point is to lionize B pictures from late 1960s ("Planet Terror") and the early 1980s ("Death Proof"), along with the overall movie-going experience from these respective eras. But what Tarantino and Rodriguez seem to have forgotten (or at least chosen to ignore) is that exploitation movies are alive and well. The underbelly of Hollywood has not lost the will or the capacity to produce movies that cheekily trade on sex and blood. Obviously, there have been two important changes when it comes to the production of these kinds of movies. The first, and probably most distressing to Tarantino and Rodriguez, is the rise of the home theater in American households during the early 1980s, which rendered grindhouses obsolete. Home video and cable meant producers could directly market their product to consumers. You know that bin of DVDs at your local video store that is marked three for ten dollars? That's the new grindhouse. The second, and arguably more interesting, change has been mainstream Hollywood embracing the principles of grindhouse entertainment. Tarantino and Rodriguez have had something to do with this, as both "Pulp Fiction" and "El Mariachi" reminded mainstream filmmakers about the financial and artistic lure of exploitation. Nobody understands the changing realities of exploitation moviemaking more than Jerry Bruckheimer, who has built an empire trading on the principles of grindhouse filmmaking. Bruckheimer's bombastic, hard-sell marketing campaigns are not all that far removed from the lurid enticements that were used by the gang at American International Pictures. "Top Gun" is a direct descendant of the gung-ho military pictures from the mid-1960s, "The Rock" (which Tarantino extensively rewrote) is a lovingly tricked-out prison movie and "Gone in 60 Seconds" is a remake of a 1974 H.B. Halicki picture, which also lionizes his entire ragged filmography. Tony Scott — a favorite of both Bruckheimer and Tarantino and also one of the most financially successful directors of the modern era — has made himself the go-to director for thinly disguised grindhouse entertainment. "Man on Fire" was cut squarely from the fabric of every down-and-dirty revenge movie from the early 1970s. "Days of Thunder" is also a celebration of Halicki's formula of fast cars and fast women. "Domino" is a goof on "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" and "Switchblade Sisters." In placing "Grindhouse" so squarely in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, Tarantino and Rodriguez have inadvertently validated every accusation of film-geek snobbery that has ever been leveled against them. Both men have devoted time and energy to making sure under-seen exploitation pictures get their due, but excluding the modern incarnations of B-movie fluff in this, their most ambitious celebration of the genre, seems conservative and reactionary. Allow me to explain this last claim — anybody can get mileage out of goofing on low-budget movies from the 1970s. The sex, violence and melodrama in the original grindhouse pictures are over the top enough to make the movies easy targets. Tarantino and Rodriguez claim to un-ironically love these movies, and I am sure to a certain extent that is true. But subconsciously, both men have to realize these movies have certain demented aspects to them that appeal to post-modern hipsters who view these pictures not as cinematic milestones, but rather as indicators of how America lived during these eras. Tarantino and Rodriguez claim to not be in on the joke, but at some point they have to realize they are shooting fish in a barrel. It's a lot easier to riff on the cultural mores of 1970s filmmaking than it is go out and make an honest-to-goodness incarnation of grindhouse cinema in the modern movie market. This is why the likes of "Cherry Falls," "Jack Frost," and "Ginger Snaps 2"– the three best direct-to-video exploitation movies of the last decade — are infinitely more impressive than anything Tarantino or Rodriguez could come up with for "Grindhouse." What Tarantino and Rodriguez seem to have forgotten is that exploitation filmmakers were serious about their product. They may have been making movies designed to score a quick profit, but they certainly were not aware their projects would have any sort of camp value. The problem with "Grindhouse" is that both directors are in on the joke. The question is: Will anybody remember to laugh? Ray Gustini is a sophomore majoring in English and journalism. Are you laughing with Tarantino and Rodriguez or at them? Send your comments to Ray at [email protected].