Twitch Film  has word that Smash Cut, Lee Darmarbre's tribute to Herschell Gordon Lewis's brand of didactic schlock, will be released DTV on March 23rd by Media Blasters' "Fresh Meat" imprint. The film stars Sasha Grey, who most people will remember as the prostitute protag in Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience while other people (you know who you are) will know here as a real-life porn star. She won the Adult Video News (AVN)'s Female Performer of the Year (2008) and Cross-over Performer of the Year (2009). Which is saying something, right?

It's especially strange considering that she's the sex symbol in Darmarbre's tribute to Lewis. A college professor turned drive-in king, Lewis was dedicated to giving his audience what he knew they wanted: tits, ass and gore. Season it with a hefty dose of pseudo-intellectual provocation, as in The Wizard of Gore, essentially a manifesto on how Lewis considered himself to be a hypnotist lulling the masses into complacence, and voila, you've got Lewis's style in a nutshell.

Judging by the trailer for Smash Cut, it looks like Darmarbre's got that formula down pat, although thankfully he's treating it as a formula and not anything more artistically vital than that: "We've got to show them the suffering and the hurt!" Right. As trashy as Lewis's cinema is, Smash Cut may have found a way to soften its cringe-worthy provocations into mindless grindhouse nostalgia. That's no mean feat. Check out the trailer and judge for yourself.