Grindhouse NYC

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"The floors were sticky. The seats were worn down to the springs. The smell was a combination of buttered popcorn and bodily fluids. In the back row, someone might be in a heated argument with a fellow patron -- or getting a $5 hand job. Sometimes, a rat would scurry past your leg. Onscreen, any number of sordid acts, seedy pleasures or splatterrific gore played to a crowd that expected extremities at every turn." -- Time Out's David Fear on the 42nd Street grindhouses that are no more.

Speaking of which, a rat (or a very sizable mouse) crawled up my leg once -- at a private screening room on Sixth and 54th or 55th, when I was watching John Badham's Dracula, which means it happened...good God, 28 years ago. I felt a slight flutter sensation on my lower left pants leg, and then the sensation of sharp little claws heading north. I spat out some vulgarity and flinched and stiffened my leg and swatted whatever it was that was crawling inside. The mouse-rat fell onto my shoe, dead or stunned. I grabbed him by the tail and threw him against the curtained wall. I was furious, but I managed to joke about it later on with the publicist.

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on April 4, 2007 at 4:03 PM

comment #1

Dan Revill says ...

The epitome of grace under fire.

Posted by Dan Revill at April 4, 2007 4:50 PM

comment #2

JD says ...

So did you bite the rat's head off before or after you threw it against the wall?

Posted by JD at April 4, 2007 5:19 PM

comment #3

anti-sardine says ...

I hate to tell you this Jeff, but that wasn't a mouse or a rat, it was David Poland. He hasn't forgotten it either.

Posted by anti-sardine at April 4, 2007 6:38 PM

comment #4

christian says ...

someday a real rain is gonna come and wash away all the scum...

Posted by christian at April 4, 2007 7:19 PM

comment #5

Chris Willman says ...

I read all the Time Out New York stories, and... isn't what Tarantino and Rodriguez are spoofing more American International Pictures-type stuff, not the kind of super-super-low rent stuff in these stories?

Posted by Chris Willman at April 4, 2007 10:43 PM

comment #6

Terry McCarty says ...

Re Chris' comment:
Isn't at least the Rob Zombie-directed trailer supposed to be "super super low-rent"?

Posted by Terry McCarty at April 5, 2007 12:31 AM

comment #7

Mark G. says ...

I watched GOODFELLAS in a Times Square theater back in 1990 with a friend and we had to move seats because someone sitting two or three rows behind us started to pee...
I don't miss those theaters at all...

Posted by Mark G. at April 5, 2007 4:59 AM

comment #8

RoyBatty says ...

Mark G - the ones in Times Square aren't the theaters they are talking about. By 1990 they were all gone, what was left of them converted into a dozen porn shacks. Most of the marquees were torn down.

I used to work two blocks south of the Port Authority and I used to marvel at how the place must have looked in it's heyday (pre-grindhouse) with all the marquees blazing away with dozens of film offerings.

I haven't been back to New York since the Times Square makeover. While the place did have one too many porn shops and strip clubs, their complete removal in the name of Disney-fication took away some of the vitality, the "Hey, this is New Fucking York, deal with it, pal" aspect of the place.

Posted by RoyBatty at April 5, 2007 10:58 AM

comment #9

T. S. Idiot says ...

I saw The King of Comedy in either the Baronet or Coronet (both since destroyed) across from Bloomie's, and a woman screamed because a man put his hand on her leg. The unfettered eroticism of Sandra Bernhard has a lot to answer for.

Posted by T. S. Idiot at April 5, 2007 11:03 AM

comment #10

MarkEbner says ...

I haven't read the Time Out piece yet, but boy do I miss those Times Square grind houses. In the early Eighties I as part of a group (okay there were two of us) calling ourselves "The Violent Movie Club," or VMC. Every weekend, we'd catch a matinee, and the best in-house entertainment would inevitably come from the back row resident wino who would graciously narrate the movie for us in ebonics. Classic times for bored and broke New Yorkers...

Ebner
http://www.hollywoodinterrupted.com

Posted by MarkEbner at April 5, 2007 2:29 PM

comment #11