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50 free Grindhouse trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
In 2007 Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino built a three-hour love letter to the scratched, spliced, sleazy double features of 1970s exploitation cinema. Grindhouse paired Rodriguez's zombie splatter comedy Planet Terror with Tarantino's stuntman slasher Death Proof, wrapped them in fake trailers from Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright and Eli Roth, and then flopped so hard the studio cut it in half for the rest of the world. This quiz has 50 questions on the whole package: the two features and their casts, Cherry Darling's machine-gun leg, Stuntman Mike's death-proof cars, the missing reels, the box office disaster, the Cannes cut of Death Proof, and the fake trailers that later became real films: Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun and Thanksgiving. It also covers the original grindhouse theaters the film was named after. It runs from easy questions for anyone who has watched it once to production and reception details for the fans who own the theatrical cut on disc. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the source cited under each question, so if you argue with a result you'll at least be arguing with a citation. Play it solo or use it as the movie round at a horror trivia night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Grindhouse (2007) is a double feature made by which two directors?
Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino
Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino made Grindhouse as a double feature, an idea born at the vintage-trailer double-bill nights Tarantino hosted at his home.
Q 02Which director wrote and directed Planet Terror, the zombie half of Grindhouse?
Robert Rodriguez
Robert Rodriguez wrote and directed Planet Terror; he had begun its zombie script about nine years earlier, convinced zombie movies were due for a comeback.
Q 03Who plays Stuntman Mike, the killer who murders women with his modified cars in Death Proof?
Kurt Russell
Kurt Russell plays Stuntman Mike; Tarantino cast him because he wanted a younger audience to see Russell "be a badass again".
Q 04In Planet Terror, go-go dancer Cherry Darling loses a leg and eventually replaces it with what?
A machine gun
A machine gun replaces Cherry Darling's lost leg; in those shots the actress's real leg was digitally erased, first behind a wooden table-leg prop and then behind the weapon.
Q 05Which actress plays Cherry Darling in Planet Terror?
Rose McGowan
Rose McGowan plays Cherry Darling in Planet Terror and also appears in the Death Proof half as Pam, earning a Saturn Award nomination for the double bill.
Q 06Which studio released Grindhouse in the US on April 6, 2007?
Dimension Films
Dimension Films, The Weinstein Company's genre label, released Grindhouse in the US on April 6, 2007; the film opened in a disappointing fourth place that weekend.
Q 07Grindhouse grossed only about $25M in the US against a production budget in what range?
$53–67 million
Grindhouse cost an estimated $53–67 million to make, yet it opened to roughly $11.6 million, finishing behind the second weekend of Blades of Glory.
Q 08How did the studio handle Planet Terror and Death Proof outside the US after the domestic flop?
Released them separately as extended films
Outside the US the studio "Released them separately as extended films", each running longer than its Grindhouse cut; Death Proof went on to gross about $30 million on its own.
Q 09In what year did the full theatrical Grindhouse first appear on US home video?
2010
The complete theatrical cut first reached US home video in 2010 as a Blu-ray; earlier US discs had sold Planet Terror and Death Proof only as separate extended editions.
Q 10Which three fake Grindhouse trailers were later turned into full feature films?
Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun and Thanksgiving
The trailers "Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun and Thanksgiving" each became a feature, trickling out over the following sixteen years, the last in November 2023.
Q 11According to Rodriguez, whose idea was it to put fake trailers in Grindhouse?
Quentin Tarantino
Rodriguez credits Quentin Tarantino with the fake-trailer idea, saying he first learned of it by reading it in the trades and thinking, "There are?"
Q 12Rob Zombie said his SS werewolf trailer would be either a Nazi movie or which other exploitation subgenre?
Women-in-prison
Women-in-prison was Zombie's other candidate; he chose the Nazis, citing Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS as the most bizarre genre going, and shot enough footage for a half-hour short.
Q 13Which Hollywood star appears in Werewolf Women of the SS as Fu Manchu?
Nicolas Cage
Q 21Rodriguez first wrote Machete back in 1993 as a star vehicle for which actor?
Danny Trejo
Danny Trejo was the intended star; Rodriguez wanted him to headline his own line of "Mexploitation" films, the way Charles Bronson had his own vehicles.
Q 22Before Grindhouse, Machete had already appeared in which Rodriguez film series?
Spy Kids
Spy Kids introduced Uncle Machete in 2001; Rodriguez has said the kid-friendly gadget maker and the blood-soaked federale are, canonically, the same guy.
Q 23Which action star made his first theatrical release since 2002 in Machete?
Steven Seagal
Nicolas Cage turns up as Fu Manchu in the trailer's closing gag, alongside Sheri Moon Zombie and Sybil Danning as the werewolf SS sisters.
Q 14Edgar Wright's fake trailer, styled after a 1970s Hammer horror ad, has what one-word title?
Don't
Don't is Edgar Wright's trailer, a pastiche of 1970s British horror ads in which no actor speaks, mimicking how US distributors disguised a film's British origin.
Q 15Who provides the voice-over for Edgar Wright's fake trailer?
Will Arnett
Will Arnett provides the voice-over for Edgar Wright's trailer, whose on-screen cast includes Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jason Isaacs, Matthew Macfadyen and singer Katie Melua.
Q 16In the Thanksgiving fake trailer, the killer stalks his victims dressed as what?
A Pilgrim
A Pilgrim costume hides the killer, played by Roth's childhood friend Jeff Rendell; the two had dreamed up a whole Thanksgiving slasher as kids in Massachusetts.
Q 17The title design for the Thanksgiving trailer was based on a slasher parody in which magazine?
Mad
The parody was called Arbor Day; the trailer also borrows excerpts of the Creepshow score.
Q 18Whose fake trailer nearly earned Grindhouse an NC-17 rating?
Eli Roth
Eli Roth's Thanksgiving trailer nearly pushed Grindhouse to NC-17; Roth said the ratings board relaxed once they saw it with all the splices and scratches, and the film went out rated R.
Q 19Which fake trailer, shown mainly in Canada, came from a South by Southwest contest?
Hobo with a Shotgun
Hobo with a Shotgun won the South by Southwest trailer contest; made by Dartmouth, Nova Scotia filmmakers Jason Eisener, John Davies and Rob Cotterill, it was added to Canadian prints and became a feature in 2011.
Q 20Who plays the title role in the 2011 feature made from the hobo-vigilante trailer?
Rutger Hauer
Rutger Hauer plays the hobo in the 2011 feature, while David Brunt, who played the hobo in the original trailer, appears as a dirty cop.
Steven Seagal, playing the drug lord Torrez, made his first theatrical release since 2002's Half Past Dead in Machete; his films in between had gone straight to video.
Q 24The 2023 film Thanksgiving is set in which Massachusetts town, where a Black Friday riot turns deadly?
Plymouth
Thanksgiving is set in Plymouth, Massachusetts; the killer wears a John Carver mask, after the first governor of Plymouth Colony, and Patrick Dempsey plays the sheriff.
Q 25Grindhouse was born when Rodriguez and Tarantino found they owned the same poster for which 1957 double feature?
Dragstrip Girl and Rock All Night
Both directors owned the AIP poster for Dragstrip Girl and Rock All Night; Rodriguez suggested they each direct one half of a similar double bill, and Tarantino supplied the title Grindhouse.
Q 26Which recurring Texas Ranger, first seen in From Dusk till Dawn, appears in both halves of Grindhouse?
Earl McGraw
Earl McGraw is played by Michael Parks, who introduced the Ranger in From Dusk till Dawn; Parks's real son James plays McGraw's son Edgar in Death Proof.
Q 27Death Proof gave Tarantino his first screen credit in which crew role?
Cinematographer
Cinematographer was a new credit for Tarantino, who shot Death Proof himself; Rodriguez, long his own director of photography, likewise shot Planet Terror.
Q 28What device, borrowed from a beat-up Italian crime film, lets Grindhouse jump straight to the third act?
A "missing reel"
A "missing reel" card lets the film skip ahead; Rodriguez loved that a battered Italian crime print he watched could lose twenty minutes and work anyway, cutting the predictable late second act.
Q 29How long is the extended cut of Death Proof that competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2007?
127 minutes
Tarantino said there was half an hour's difference from the Grindhouse cut, which he'd trimmed "like a brutish American exploitation distributor".
Q 30Which stuntwoman plays herself riding a Dodge Challenger's hood in Death Proof?
Zoë Bell
Zoë Bell plays herself; she had doubled for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill and for Lucy Lawless on Xena, and performed the ship's-mast hood stunt for real.