10 Films That Were Totally Changed For Foreign Audiences

6. Grindhouse Gets Chopped Up For Britain

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's first (and to date only) big screen collaboration was supposed to be a thing of beauty, not this abomination. From the off Grindhouse was designed to be both a faithful recreation of and love letter to the films each director grew up with and, more specifically, the circumstances under which they watched them. Grindhouse is both a shorthand term for a particular genre of film - otherwise known as exploitation, and all derivatives forthwith - and the types of cinemas that used to screen these grotty, violent and sexually explicit movies, often back-to-back in double bills. So, naturally, Grindhouse would do the same. As well as having plots befitting the sort of arousing, gross B-movies you'd be watching amongst a fleapit cinema or at a drive-in, imitating the low production standards and scratched film stock that plagued those very films, the directorial duo would make two grindhouse flicks that were designed to be watched back-to-back, with fake trailers in between breaking things up and making the whole experience much more authentic. In fact in some cases we kinda preferred the trailers to the actual films, with Edgar Wright's Don't! and Rob Zombie's Werewolf Women Of The SS - with Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu - being particular highlights. Unfortunately we never got to experience any of this in Britain, or any other country that wasn't the US. After a disappointing opening weekend (for what is, admittedly, a tough sell, even from the directors of Pulp Fiction and Spy Kids) the producers decided to split Death Proof and Planet Terror up for the international release, with Tarantino's former entry getting some screenings and Rodriguez's latter going straight to DVD in most territories. You can finally get the full Grindhouse experience on region free blu-ray, but it was designed to be watch in a cinema.