On this day eight years ago, an odd double feature referred to as Grindhouse infiltrated American theaters. Lovers of all things sleazy and disreputable, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez teamed to create a multifaceted retro experience structured around their films Death Proof and Planet Terror. The two films mimicked the look and feel of the trash cinema that thrived in the ’70s and ’80s, with Rodriguez’s Planet Terror even going so far as to cut out a “missing reel” of saucy footage. The double feature also came packaged with a set of trailers for faux-movies such as Eli Roth’s holiday-themed bloodbath Thanksgiving and the slasher flick Don’t. The finest of those trailers starred Mexican man-mountain Danny Trejo as a south-of-the-border enforcer named Machete.
Machete struck a chord with viewers, or perhaps the need to hear Danny Trejo utter the phrase, “You just fucked with the wrong Mexican,” was too great. Either way, Machete eventually broke out and made it to featuredom. It wasn’t half bad, either! Rodriguez worked some timely commentary on America’s fraught border situation (and Cheech Marin doing that thing where you use each hand to pump a separate shotgun) into a gleefully over-the-top paean to the films of his youth. Crazier still, Machete was preceded by a trailer for a fake sequel called Machete Kills, which also became a real movie, albeit not nearly as good as Machete. Still crazier still, Machete Kills was preceded by a trailer for a fake sequel-to-the-sequel called Machete Kills Again …In Space. You guessed it—now that’s going to be a real movie, too.
Because putting the horse before the cart apparently works in this crazy business of show, Machete Kills Again… In Space will begin production soon. At least, that’s what star Trejo would have us believe. In an interview with Halloween Daily News, which I assume is the publication of record in the magical world from The Nightmare Before Christmas, Trejo was quoted as saying, “Robert and I are going to start to do Machete Kills In Space, so that’s going to be awesome. Absolutely. We’re going to be working on it this year.”
An exciting development, to be sure. Posterity has shown that franchises with multiple installments have only ever benefited from jettisoning their characters into deep space. Empirically speaking, Moonraker is the best James Bond film in that it spends the most time in space. The high-water mark of the Hellraiser franchise is the frame story of the third installment, which strands our heroes with Pinhead on a space station in the future. (Perplexingly, it is subtitled Hell on Earth. More perplexingly, the film features a young Adam Scott as a fancy Frenchman.) This writer can’t wait to see what kind of zero-gravity blood-spatter magic Rodriguez will work. Oh, and the space puns. The space puns will be magnificent. Off the cuff: “You just fucked with the wrong Mexican… in space!”