The 20 Best Grindhouse Movies Ranked

In the film world, the term "grindhouse" gets thrown around a lot, but what does it actually mean? The term grindhouse is derived from a name given to movie theaters that would primarily screen exploitation films. Often these theaters had once been relatively upscale, but after years of neglect became run-down. Around the 1960s through the 1980s, new owners would take over these theaters and play low-budget independent films, often specializing in double (even triple) features featuring lots of sex, action, and graphic violence.

Grindhouse can be a bit of a nebulous category, as films that fall under that umbrella also tend to overlap with other genres such as horror, action, martial arts, science fiction, and many others. A good rule of thumb when identifying a grindhouse flick is to ask yourself these questions: Would this film be screened at midnight in a grungy, downmarket theater? Also, would this movie be unbearably awkward to watch with my parents in the room? Finally, does this movie feature one (or a combination) of the three G's: gore, grime, and genitalia? If you answered yes to all, then it's probably a grindhouse film. If you've never watched one of these movies and you're looking for a place to start, then look no further. Here are 20 of the best grindhouse movies ranked in all their full-frontal, visceral, blood-spattered glory. 

You've heard of horror movies. You've heard of action movies. You've heard of car chase movies. Now, what about a movie that's all three at once? Jack Starrett's 1975 film "Race with the Devil" combines cars, chaos, and cultists for one wild ride. After two couples taking an RV from Texas to Colorado on a cross-country vacation witness a Satanic ritual, they find themselves in the middle of a fast and furious fight for their lives. 

Roger Marsh (Peter Fonda) and Frank Stewart (Warren Oates) just want to take a break from running their successful motorcycle dealership. They pile into an RV with their wives Kelly (Lara Parker) and Alice (Loretta Swit) and unwind with a well-deserved ski vacation in Aspen. Unfortunately, fate and a devil-worshipping cult have other plans, and the skiing will have to wait until they escape from the apparent droves of Satanic cultists crawling all over 1970s Texas. "Race with the Devil" is alternately ridiculous and genuinely tense, with nonstop action, some effective scares, and car chase sequences on par with "The Road Warrior." 

Years before Michael Meyers was stalking his way through Haddonfield or Jason Voorhees was chopping up camp counselors, Billy was sending holiday chills down sorority girl spines in Bob Clark's "Black Christmas." If you're a slasher fan, you have this film to thank for the genre as we know it today. The Canadian slasher has the feeling of an urban legend told in the late-night hours of a sleepover or whispered around a campfire.  

It's a simple story on the surface: A group of sorority sisters receives a series of increasingly bizarre and threatening phone calls from an anonymous man, who begins picking them off one by one. The film offers some classic kills, including one very notable use of a ceramic unicorn. With a mix of inventive filmmaking (first-person POV shots from the killer's perspective) and some surprisingly progressive gender politics, the film is now considered one of the best horror movies of all time. "Black Christmas" is a gleefully grim reminder to always trace prank calls because you never know where they might be coming from.

If there was one thing that 1970s exploitation cinema couldn't get enough of it was young women doing crimes. Stories about women's prisons were a subgenre all their own, but there wasn't just interest in girls getting violent in jail. Audiences and filmmakers alike were also obsessed with the sort of behavior that could land them behind bars. Jack Hill's "Switchblade Sisters" is the story of a girl gang, made up of teenage high school students, and all of the danger and debauchery that comes along with that life. 

A portion of "Switchblade Sisters" does take place during one character's incarceration in a Juvenile Detention Center, but most of the action happens on the outside. Maggie (Joanne Nail) is a young girl who transfers to a new high school across town and finds the area dominated by a gang of young men called the Silver Daggers as well as their female counterparts the Dagger Debs. Maggie is unwittingly pulled into their world, growing close to the Debs' leader Lace in a friendship that later turns sour when Maggie takes over as leader of the pack. In case the summary didn't clue you in, "Switchblade Sisters" is not a particularly lighthearted or happy story. If you're looking for a film you can laugh along with between fistfuls of popcorn, this isn't the one. It explores violence, abuse, sexual assault, abortion, and the dangers of gang life.

In the 1970s America entered a "kung-fu craze," and an obsession with martial arts movies. Dominated by East Asian styles of hand-to-hand combat, most often Kung Fu, this craze centered around films coming primarily out of China. One such flick was "King Boxer," also known as "Five Fingers of Death," a 1972 Hong Kong film from director Jeong Chang-hwa starring established martial arts film actor Lo Lieh. 

Lieh plays a young, promising martial arts student named Chih-Hao, who has fallen in love with his master's daughter Ying-Ying (Wang Ping). In order to prove himself worthy of his beloved's hand, Chih-Hao must compete in an upcoming tournament against another martial arts school, headed by the corrupt Meng Tung-Shan. The film was released to an American audience by Warner Brothers in 1973, followed by "Enter the Dragon" later that same year. It is sharply directed, visually vibrant, and the elaborate fight scenes complete with slow-motion jumps and flurries of fists are fun as hell to watch.

"Pinky Violence" is a term used to refer to "sexed-up, bad girl action films" produced by the Toei studio, derived from the erotic and violent Japanese films known as "pink films." One of the best examples of this particular style of Grindhouse film is Norifumi Suzuki's "Sex & Fury." The 1973 film stars pink film queen Reiko Ike as Ochō Inoshika, a Meiji Era gambler and petty criminal searching for the gangsters that murdered her father when she was a little girl. The film also features an array of great supporting characters, including Christina Lindberg as a British spy (don't mind the heavy Swedish accent, just go with it). 

"Sex & Fury" is shameless and stylish, mixing beautiful costumes and religious imagery with action and raw sexuality. There is some incredible fight choreography on display here, particularly in a bathhouse scene that features a naked Ike engaging in some truly impressive swordplay made doubly impressive by the inherent vulnerability of naked combat. Even the less elaborate fight scenes are a lot of fun, and the film is a lush, bloody treat for the senses from start to finish.

Not to be confused with Gene Wilder's "The Woman in Red," the 1935 film "The Lady in Red," or the Chris De Burgh song, Lewis Teague's 1979 crime drama "The Lady in Red" tells the story of a poor, sheltered farmer's daughter who moves to Chicago and stumbles into a seedy underground world best described by the film's alternate title: "Guns, Sin, and Bathtub Gin." 

Pamela Sue Martin stars as Polly Franklin, the small-town farm girl who falls in with the likes of Great Depression gangster John Dillinger (played by Robert Conrad) and brothel owner Anna Sage ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" star Louise Fletcher). Screenwriter John Sayles throws his protagonist in with real figures of Chicago's late-'20s and early-'30s crime scene, where she is pulled into sex work, a stint in prison, and bank robbery. Though the film performed poorly at the box office on its initial release (and again when it was re-released in 1980 under its alternate title), critics praised the strength of Polly as a character, Sayles' script, and the story's take on class dynamics in the United States. 

Four years before the first "Mad Max" movie tore onto the dystopian car-based action scene, we had Paul Bartel's "Death Race 2000" to tear up the road. Based on the short story "The Racer" by Ib Melchior, the film takes place in a dystopian version of America circa the year 2000. Following the devastation of the World Crash of '79, the United States is under martial law. The government has created the Transcontinental Road Race, a deadly high-stakes contest famous for themed cars, heightened personas, and a whole lot of senseless violence.

Competitors in the Road Race include Frankenstein (David Carradine), Machine Gun (Sylvester Stallone), Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov), and Nero the Hero (Martin Kove). A resistance group planning to rebel against the totalitarian regime wants to take Frankenstein — a national hero and repeated winner of the race — hostage, but as their plan progresses they learn that the event is even more complex and corrupt than they first thought. The film is pretty much nonstop high-speed hijinks, campy fun, dark humor, and tons of car-based violence.

A recent re-release has breathed new life into Lucio Fulci's 1977 "Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes," also released under the title "The Psychic." The sensational, lurid, melodramatic Giallo (Italian mystery thriller) tells the story of a psychic woman named Virginia (Jennifer O'Neill) whose visions lead her to uncover a murder. When Virginia unearths the skeleton of a slaughtered woman in the walls of a house she is renovating, all signs point to her husband Francesco as the guilty party. Virginia seeks advice from a paranormal researcher, who aids her in the investigation as she works to solve the murder and understand her increasingly terrifying visions. 

The film is impeccably stylish, with vivid colors and gorgeous fashions that are a treat to behold. It is a considerably more subtle film than much of Fulci's other work, and with a far more coherent plot that has a slow burn comparable to gothic storytelling in the Edgar Allan Poe tradition. Like Virginia, the audience is given tiny pieces of the puzzle one by one, and by the time they all fit together to form a clear picture, it is much too late. 

Speaking of Giallos crafted by Italian horror masters, this list would be incomplete without the technicolor terror of Dario Argento's "Suspiria." The first in Argento's "Three Mothers" trilogy, the film explores the potential for horror in the world of ballet, an art form as brutal and competitive as it is beautiful. Jessica Harper stars as Susie Bannion, a young American ballerina who has been accepted into Markos Dance Company, a prestigious German dance academy. When she arrives, however, she quickly realizes that all is not as it seems at this school. 

First, she sees another student running away from the building, terrified of something. Then, when she tries to enter the campus, she is refused. From there, the layers of artistic artifice fall away to reveal a world of witchcraft and brutal murder. As far as horror films go, "Suspiria" is one of the prettiest, using vibrant colors (especially red) to delight and unsettle all at the same time. It's thrilling from start to finish and is genuinely harrowing at times. Don't be fooled by the glossy exterior, though, as the various kills are as nauseating as the cinematography is gorgeous. 

There might be a 2022 entry in the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" story on Netflix, but nothing compares to the original Tobe Hooper flick. I say this as an earnest compliment: this movie looks like it smells bad. Every frame feels warm, sticky, and tinged with the smell of rotten meat baking in the unforgiving Texas sun. If you wipe your finger across the surface of a screen that "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" is playing on, I wouldn't be surprised if it came away with a layer of unidentifiable grime. That's what makes it one of the most enduring, effective horror franchises around. 

As the viewer sits down to take in the story of unsuspecting young people stumbling into the realm of Leatherface (his mask of human skin, his eponymous weapon of choice, and his twisted cannibalistic family), there are moments where one might feel they're watching something they shouldn't. There is no Hollywood gloss here, no sense of distance from the nastiness onscreen. The horror oozes out to touch you, its hands dry and cracked, congealed blood under its fingernails. The unpleasantness of the film is not an accident of unskilled craft, it's the result of careful filmmaking coupled with a willingness to let the movie be ugly when the time is right, and to sometimes just let it all hang out. When I think of grindhouse cinema, it's always "Texas Chain Saw" that I think of first.