Directed by: Jason Lei Howden
Notable cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Samara Weaving, Natasha
Liu Bordizzo, Ned Dennehey
Occasionally a film asks a question, a question that
frightens you, cuts you to your core. Something that rattles your very
humanity. Guns Akimbo, the new
film by Deathgasm writer/director Jason Lei Howden, is brave enough to ask such a question. What if you woke up with pistols bolted to your hands? Truly,
haunting.
If the above thought didn’t make it immediately apparent, we
are diving into true grindhouse cinema. After the Tarantino/Rodriguez double-feature Grindhouse, a whole generation was exposed to the concept, sort
of. For specificities’ sake, a grindhouse theater was a cheap theater that
played, usually as double features, low-budget action, horror, and exploitation
films. Exploitation, as a genre, is any film that exploits some popular
thing, movement, or person and makes a low-budget (usually) horror or action
movie out of it. Women-in-prison, nunsploitation, and nazi-sploitation are all
prime examples of exploitation sub-genres. They also tended to be crassly
sexual and gory, basically the “gutter punk” of the cinematic world... and like
all counterculture movements, the quality varies wildly. A quick litmus test for
you: if what I just said sounds cool to you, you’re right and it’s probably for
you. If what I said sounds repulsive? You’re right, and it’s probably not for
you. Casting the brief aside aside now, let’s talk about Guns Akimbo.