Product Description

The Beach Girls - Look who just invaded Uncle Carl's Beach House A coming-of-age story about a bookish young woman who changes during her summer vacation from a bespectacled bookworm to a femme fatale. Starring Debra Blee, Playboy Playmate Jeana Tomasina, James Daughton (National Lampoon's Animal House) and Adam Roarke R - 91 minutes - 1982 Coach A young, blonde and beautiful woman is hired to coach a team of underachieving basketball players and against all odds, leads them to victory. Starring Cathy Lee Crosby, Michael Biehn (GRINDHOUSE) and Keenan Wynn R - 100 minutes - 1978 GRINDHOUSE is an American term for a theater that mainly showed exploitation films. Grindhouses were known for non-stop, triple-bill programs of B movies, usually consisting of a double feature where two films were shown back to back. Many of these inner-city theaters formerly featured burlesque shows which featured "bump and grind" dancing, leading to the term "grind-house." Beginning in the late 1960s and especially during the 1970s, the subject matter of exploitation films shown in these theaters often included explicit sex, violence, bizarre or perverse plot points, and other taboo content - biker films, horror films, martial arts films etc. By the 1980s, home video threatened to render Grindhouses obsolete. By the end of the decade, these theaters had vanished from Los Angeles's Broadway and Hollywood Boulevard, New York City's Times Square, San Francisco's Market Street and pretty much everywhere else in the United States. To salute this film revolution of a bygone era, BCI has developed a line of DVD double features that recreate the ephemeral experience of the Grindhouse theaters with a whole new, interactive DVD experience. Featuring back-to-back film presentations, complete with movie trailers, commercials and an intermission, you can now enjoy the exploitative nature of exclusively licensed, cult films in the comfort of your own home with "WELCOME TO THE GRINDHOUSE".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29712 in DVD
• Brand: Beach
• Released on: 2007-10-02
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 191 minutes

Customer Reviews

A disc full of bikinis, beaches, parties, and high school hijinks
More drive-in/grindhouse-style fun! A grindhouse, by the way, was one of those 70's & 80's-era theaters that usually showed the same kind of sexy, violent exploitation fare as your typical drive-in theater. Sadly, both grindhouses and drive-ins have mostly fallen by the wayside in our slick multiplex culture. But, fear not, you get a sharp taste of that bygone era with these terrific "Welcome to the Grindhouse" DVDs. So, what's in store when you pop this particular double-feature disc into your DVD player and kick back? Glad you asked.

First (well, after the cheesy, scratchy, yet colorfully hypnotic "previews of coming attractions" bumper that every theater seemed to show in those days), you get a short trailer to something called "The Van" (randy guys cruising for chicks in their specially-outfitted-for-love vehicle) and a longer trailer for something called "Jocks" (randy guys on some vague high school or college sports team who party and chase girls a lot). Do you sense a theme here?

Next up, our first feature, "The Beach Girls". In a nutshell: one long party, frequent nudity (skinnydipping in the pool, skinnydipping on the beach, and just an overall casual attitude about the importance of clothing in general), and lots of pot smoking. With its lenient attitude about drug use and sex, along with the way it ridicules men in uniform (especially the poor U.S. Coast Guard, whose officers are portrayed as ascot-wearing dopes), I can't imagine that "The Beach Girls" was very popular with PTA groups, law enforcement, and other organizations that usually sport a sour attitude about those kinds of things. But you're not among those groups, are you, so all you need to know is this: the girls are sexy; the jokes are stupid but undeniably chuckle-inducing; and there's a general, upbeat "sun & fun" flavor that keeps things bopping along. The result: 90 minutes of silly, clothing-optional fun.

Next up: more sexy previews. "Malibu Beach" looks like the official sister film to "The Beach Girls". In fact, many of the visual gags performed by the extras in "The Beach Girls" (dog stealing the bikini top from the gal sunbather, for example) are seen again- the exact same footage, I mean- in the trailer for "Malibu Beach". I guess Crown International Pictures was an economical operation. There's also a trailer to a film called "My Tutor", featuring that classic theme of the exploitation era, the student/teacher liaison (more on this later). Oh, and be sure to remember: in order to see all these high-art previews and trailers, you need to hit the "grindhouse experience" icon on the DVD's menu screen, not just select an individual movie. The "grindhouse experience" means you get all the goodies discussed here.

Next we have our second feature, entitled "Coach". Of the handful of "Welcome to the Grindhouse" movies I've seen so far, this one is the most like, well... a real movie. It's a nice little story about a female high school basketball coach winning over her detractors (the high school's old boy network, the skeptical team members, etc.) and eventually making her underachieving team into winners. It's nothing groundbreaking, but this polished movie, with its recognizable actors (Cathy Lee Crosby, Keenan Wynn, etc.) was clearly an attempt by Crown International Pictures to break into more mainstream markets. Fear not, though, exploitation fans... in many respects, Crown still couldn't help being Crown, so you still get the following from "Coach": occasional female toplessness (by the girl students, but not, alas, by Ms. Crosby... except for one short, teasing shot); lots of male butt views in the team shower for gal viewers; a hot affair (unfortunately, discreetly filmed) between Cathy Lee Crosby's coach character and one of her teenage charges (a very young Michael Biehn, who went on to play the time-traveling Reese a few years later in the first "Terminator" film); a surprisingly benign view of that teacher/student liaison on the part of the film makers (no 11th hour punishment or tragedy to break up the illicit lovers); and the usual goofy but fun jokes.

The prints used for the two films are both very, very good. They're sharp, clear, and bright, and free of scratches and other glitches. That, coupled with the fact that the films themselves rate a couple of notches higher on the production quality scale (especially "Coach"), made these goofy, sexy comedy/dramas (well, "dramas" might be too strong a word) a pleasure to watch. After all, there's nothing wrong with a little polish and professionalism with one's exploitation fare.

Well, enough with the sun, fun, and bikinis. Now it's time for me to check out some of those "Welcome to the Grindhouse" DVDs that feature martial arts double features. Everything can't be about girls and hedonism, you know.

The Beach Girls/Coach
I really liked Beach Girls--Debra Blee was a real cuteeee. Not much of a plot--a lot of frivilous fun--nothing wrong with that. I think Debra Blee made the movie for me. I thought Coach was just OK, just so so. I'd recommend the movie just because Debra Blee was in it.

BEACH GIRLS
Lots of sexy women in this movie. The music is great too. I found the plot to be clever and most of all funny! There is a Playboy Playmate in this movie. I had this movie on Beta and finally got it on DVD. This is one of my favorite movies of all time. I must have seen it at least 10 times and never get tired of it. There are lots of topless scenes too.