The Tuesday Night Grindhouse

<<<< (Left to right Standing: Elizabeth, filmaker William Lustig, Me pointing at Lustig, Leesa
Kneeling: Patrick, my sweetheart Bryna and Emily Elders)

I’d actually managed to save up a few bucks while working for Spike and Mike, but it was burning a hole in my pocket. I was now working at The Fish Company and doing aquarium maintainence on the side. I was looking for something of an artistic nature to do in my off time.

I’d gone to Old Ironsides, my neighborhood bar on movie night. They were showing Phantasm 3. The woman working the projector explained that her attempts to find a drive in that would show old b-movies or to get the films into The Crest Theatre’s midnight rotation had been unsuccessful.

I remembered that The Colonial Theatre was sitting empty and that I had set up an aquarium for the owner’s son at his restaurant. I went to find Jim Jr. immediately. Jim liked my idea of opening the theatre for a four dollar cult film show with live hosts and musical guests. He took me to talk to his dad. Jim Sr. liked the idea as well and would let me have the theatre for $200 a night allowing us to show whatever we wanted as long as it wasn’t porn. He’d even run the projector for us. This meant we’d need fifty people through the door just to pay for the building, never mind renting the films themselves. It was still worth a try.

I went to Cinemania, the video store owned by the lady I’d seen at Old Ironsides. I introduced myself to Leesa and her husband R.J. and pitched my idea. She gets the films, I get the theatre, we promote together and we’ve got a show. She agreed to the deal, and found a print of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ trash masterpiece 2,000 Maniacs to kick things off with.

I asked my friend Bunny Dave who was great in a dress, more of a pop culture transgender fashion model than a drag queen. I hear all the best transvestites are straight, but Dave sure was an unusual entity in Sacramento. We got about forty people out to the theatre. Not a bad start, on a tuedsay night, in the ghetto, but not paying the bills either. Regardless we were stoked and things got off to a swell start.

Erick Foemell, the suavest man in town, discovered the crying room upstairs. The crying room was meant for moms with noisey babies to sit in. A large window with a speaker over it let them see and hear the film. This became our VIP room, to thank our volunteers, and Erick built and stocked the most beautiful bar. He’d be up there in his vintage suit mixing up cocktails and charming the pants off the ladies (often literally.)

By the end of the night the film had frozen in the gate an melted and we had to drop the third reel beacause Jim Sr. had loaded it backwards. This meant dropping more than a quarter of the movie including the notorious barrel roll scene.

The audience had a great time regardless and they were back the next week. Jim Sr. was not. I had to find an hire a projectionist, a handsome young Mexican kid named Angel became our Angel in the booth.

Patrick was my right hand in getting things promoted and Bryna took care of making sure we had a volunteer staff, which turned out to be all female and all blonde. Bryna’s all blonde army was I’m sure part of the events draw. The Crying Room was a blast but downstairs was pure insanity; live chainsaws being weilded by humpbacks running through the theatre, a girl riding a motorcycle down the aisle, mud wrestling. Patrick had a habit of nay saying my ideas which worked to our advantage. Anything he said couldn’t be done, I had to do. Topping ourselves each week became a challenge and people we talking.

At the second or third show I got a report that some kids were smoking pot in the parking lot. I went to check it out an sure enough four guys and a girl were hot boxing a station wagon. They freaked when I tapped on the window.

“Oh, hey, um, yeah, we were just leaving.”

"What? The movie hasn’t started. You gotta stick around. But listen, smoking put out here is pure stupid. If the cops don’t get you the crackheads will. If I was going to smoke some pot I’d probably just do it inside the theatre. Unfortunately I run the place so I could never tell you to do something like that, but I’d probably be way too busy to notice.” This was an old Spike and Mike trick. Look the other way when the pot smokers come though and you’ll have one demographic firmly secured. Sure enough the kids all sat in the second to last row and that row was a bit more full each week, until eventually I could count on two rows of stoners at each show.

Our intermission entertainment often featured a masked mexican wrestler named El Flaco Loco. We were showing Canibal Ferox, a particularly gorey Italian film featuring a casteration scene. We decided to have El Flaco drive a nail through his penis on stage. Flaco was in the lobby with the large fake penis shoved down his tights and the blood pack loaded and ready. He went to the front door, intending to have a smoke and he noticed a crapload of cops facing their guns at the theatre. His first thought was of the penis and how they’d respond when they found it strapped to him. He backed away from the door while pulling it from his tights. This got the cops uptight as the combination of the mask and the reaching for something in his pants looked like a shoot out ready to happen.

Bryna found me and told me that we were surrounded by cops. I laughed and then I saw that she was serious and quite scarred. I went to the door, putting my hands where they’d be visible in the little round window.

“Hi. I’d like to come out. I’m the manager of the theatre.” “Come out with your hands on your head.” I did so, and I was amazed. There was a swat team facing me with blindingly bright lights and a helicopter circling.

“On your knees.” As I got to my knees I looked at the cops, most younger than me, with their big scary guns trained on my head. They were frightened and their fingers were on the triggers. One backfiring car would mean my death. I dropped to my knees and two cops rushed me, one on each side. They patted me down and I explained why the gentleman was wearing a mask. I made up some BS about him being wired to a special effect box that didn’ allow him to walk out the first time without unplugging. They sent me into get Flaco.

They put the great masked one through the same routine they’d just put me through, only they were much rougher with him. The cops calmed down and by the time the surprised audience came out for their intermission cigarettes the cops were joking and laughing with Flaco and I.

From talking with the cops we pieced together what had happened. It seems a neighbor had called saying that a masked man and a man with a gun had entered the theatre. The man with the gun was my friend Michael who had come as a suicide victim. Small hole on one side of his head, big hole on the other. The cops refused to be a part of the intermission show.

El Flaco Loco drove the nail in and blood shot past the sixth row of seats. Business went on as usual. Leesa and RJ secured a copy of Fulce’s great italian gore fest Zombie. We had one of the guys from the band Rancid come to the show with a gaggle of other Berkley punks and we had plenty of Sacramento horror fans finally give in and check us out, giving us our biggest audience yet.

We were a lilly white crowd in a black and hispanic neighborhood and this bothered me. I wanted to see the neighbors enjoying the show. Two black girls were walking by and taking long strange looks at the goings on. I told them to go on in and check out the show.

We had a great dub band playing at intermission and then the Zombies showed up. Three of them and they made their way from behind the audience toward the stage. When the two black girls, who had no idea what to expect saw the shuffling ghouls they began screaming. When the ghouls climbed onstage and tore the drummers belly open and pulled out the bloody intestines and started eating them, both girls were on their feet screaming to high heaven. I should have paid them. They made the night. I was sure I could expect a house full of their guy friends once they spread their tale but maybe we did too good a job as we never did get the neighborhood folks through our dooor.

The gut eating effects worked great and were so simple. A ziplock bag full of chocoate and strawberry syrup and intestines made from condoms generously donated by the local free clinic was taped to the drummers belly. Slip on a shirt you don’t mind losing and let the magic happen. I felt a tinge of guilt at miss using the clinics condom so I passed a bunch out the next week with a good safe sex message.

Things were going good, but of course we still weren’t paying our rent. Despite press releases the papers ignored us completely. Television media paid some attention. The local Fox affiliate called and threatened to call the police if I kept sending them my pornagraphic press releases. This from the station that carries the Simpson and COPS, my two favorite shows. If your’re John Waters post Hairspray you get to be on NPR but when you’re an unknown scum bag you get jack.

I asked RJ to recommend a scary film for Bryna and I to watch and he sent me home with Maniac. I didn’t sleep that night and called RJ the next to see if we could get a copy on film. He made a few calls and rung me at work to tell me that Mr. Lustig, the director, wanted to come to the theatre and present the film. Again we got a wide draw and our live scalping was a hit. Lustig loved the audience who gave a standing ovation to the shotgun to the head scene and who actually asked him about his experiences in producing porn for the mafia. This was definitely his crowd. Our sound system sucked but he forgot about that once the aplause started. We rented him an expensive room with at the Vizcaya bed and breakfast and I took him to my favorite greasy spoon for breakfast where we had a great talk.

“Mr. Lustig, I’m thinking of going to film school.”

“No, no. Take that money you would have spent on film school and make a film. You’ll learn more in one film than you’d learn in a lifetime at some school listening to jerks that went to film school themselves and have never even made a picture.”

He climbed into my bus and I took him to the airport.

We continued struggling along and having a great time. Well, some of us were having a great time. Leesa and RJ were feeling like I’d promised them a bed of roses that I was failing to deliver. Tensions were rising.

We booked a woman in prison flick called Barbed Wire Dolls. I liked to screen the films before we showed them but mysteriously Cinemania’s copy of the film was out everytime I tried to watch it. Oh well, I trusted their taste. The night of the flick I was running around like a chicken with his head cut off, as usual. Then I walked into the theatre to see me some movie. There, on the screen, was a fifteen foot tall pussy staring me in the face, threatening to swallow the Tuesday Night Grindhouse whole if Jim Sr were to wander in at that moment. I walked back out into the lobby. El Flaco Loco was there laughing. “Surprise” he said.

“You knew about this?”

“Oh, yeah. Leesa and RJ said not to tell you it had porn scenes in it.”

“Yeah. Not exactly a harmless joke. We could lose this theatre.” I sat and watched the door for Jim Sr. or either of his boys who often came by to check things out. Luckily no member of the family visited tonight.

Leesa had moved to Sac from LA and pulled this LA is the center of hip and Sacramento is a cow town attitude. I’m ashamed that I let it work on me. “Dude, don’t get all bent because there was a fucking pussy on your screen. This is supposed to be this trashy show and you’re gonna fret because we showed a pussy.”

I was totally in favor of pussies, on screen and off, but I was not okay with failing to respect the deal we’d made with Jim Sr. I wasn’t ready to fight though. I just made sure to screen the rest of the films.

RJ took a trip to LA to pick up a Harry Novak flick, from Harry Novak himself. RJ was loading Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman into the trunk of his car when Novak happened to wander out of his office heading for his own car.

“Oh, RJ, I forgot to mention, I spiced the film up a bit, for the nineties!”

“What do you mean. How’d you spice it up exactly?”

“I just added some stuff to bring it up to date you know, for the nineties. I mean, what was hot then, it’s like kid stuff now. You’ll like it’s hot, for the nineties.”

RJ called me and I arranged to meet him at the theatre with Angel to see what Novak’s secret spice was. We spent the night cutting porno out of the film. Oh how I wish we could have left it in. It was hillarious. Two aliens named Private Dickhead and Sargeant Asshole or some such silliness are walking down the street talking very dirty and then, suddenly, the screen is filled with faded pink footage of seventies hard core porn, the speaker blairing fusion jazz. After a minute or so of this, we’re back to the aliens, getting a soda. Harry Novak’s nineties edit was a thing of beauty.

We needed a Russ Meyer film and when Leesa saw a 35mm print of Super Vixens for sale in The Big Reel she nabbed it. We put posters up around town and did our futile press releases. Two night before the screening I got a phone call.

“Keith! Russ Meyer just called us. He knows we’re showing the film and he’s furious and I gave him your number.” Leesa was freaking out.

I was skeptical that the real Russ Meyer had called and when my phone rang not twenty seconds later I was ready to talk to a joker. “Hello, Keith Lowell Jensen.”

“Mr. Jensen Russ Meyer. I understand you have my film.”

“How am I to be sure this is actually Russ Meyer?”

“Reasonable. Call Hollywood information, ask for Russ Meyer Films.” And click, he hung up.

I got the number from hollywood information and dialed. “Satisfied?”

“Mr. Meyer. Wow. I’m a big fan, and I intended to show your film through what I assumed were legal means. I’m ready to work this out with you.”

“Mr. Jensen, I own every print of every film I’ve ever made, struck the prints myself and never sold one, nor did I ever authorize other prints to be made. My lawyers are always ready to prove this.”

“No need sir. I’ll send you the film immediately.”

“Mr. Jensen you’re a gentleman.”

“I try to be sir. I’m a big fan of your films and I’m hoping we can help each other here. I’m sending you the film, as I said, but I can send it now and you’ve got one more print, or you can let 40 or so of your biggest fans see the film and I can send it to you with a small royalty check and a world of thanks from your Sacramento fans.” I’d gotten really good at talking the shit.

“I like you Jensen. Show the film.” This was an amazing event. Russ Meyer did not allow his films to be shown except for Faster Pussy Cat Kill Kill. We showed Super Vixens to a crowd of sixty or seventy trash film lovers. The print sucked, but nobody complained. Cal came over from the restaurant next door. He was muslim and had once told me not to refer to Bryna as my girlfriend in front of his children. I was worried how he would take this ultra violent sex farce. He loved every frame of it.

After Super Vixens we went right back to losing money and Leesa and RJ decided they’d had enough. They wanted out which I understood but they wanted me to pay them back their investment in the show thus far! I did my best to make sense of this one.
“No fuckin’ way. You guys stay with the investment, risking more loss, or you cut your losses now. You can’t bail and still get back your investment. Who the hell pays me back when I bail. Forget it.”

It was the first time I’d stood up to the cool kids and they were okay with me for a bit. But, after I pissed off one of their contacts getting a movie back weeks late they suddenly wrote me off. I was added to their long list of enemies. They never did say a word against me to my face, but I heard from our mutual friends that they had plenty to say when I was not around. They packed up and headed back to LA where they ended up working with Lustig, so something good came out of their grindhouse experience.

I plugged on. I tried everything including working with Jim Sr. to get the theatre open seven days a week showing second run action films on the days when we weren’t wallowing in filth. People were beginning to notice us. I worked with some promoters who brought a big ska festival to the theatre. The theatre being up and running caught the eye of other pomoters and, as I had no lease, Jim Sr. rented the place out from under me.

He got his just deserts when the new renters got raided durring a live sex show featuring and under age “actress.” Gossip spread that I had been busted for hosting a live sex show durring a grindhouse intermission and I did little to discourage it. It was way cooler than the truth of our demise.

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