Seth Goodkind is no Quentin Tarantino. He's not a millionaire with a massive budget to spend. He doesn't know any Hollywood types. Still, the Seattle artist and cinephile has managed to recreate the Grindhouse cinema experience more accurately than a blockbuster dream team ever could.

They do have a little bit in common. Both men are kind of funny looking, and both are really into bad movies. But while Tarantino and co-director Robert Rodriguez have resurrected an all-but-extinct tradition of cinematic smut by blowing it up onto the big screen with "Grindhouse," Goodkind has been quietly keeping the original Grindhouse reels alive and rolling in a tiny bar in Ballard for the last two years now.

His twice monthly movie night, the Kung Fu Grindhouse at the Sunset Tavern, shares a space that plays host to comedy shows, Elvis impersonators and profanely-named rock bands — not a far cry from the burlesque theaters and movie houses where low -budget B movies and exploitation films were originally shown. His Monday night screenings of cheesy Kung Fu, zombie and science fiction films are big on audience participation, with plenty of booze-fueled ad-libbing, drinking games and prizes for the best comment from the crowd.

Most importantly, Goodkind is screening the actual movies that "Grindhouse," the blockbuster, pays homage to. "I think it's kind of a shame," Goodkind says. "They make such a huge budget, gigantic tribute to these movies that is the complete antithesis to what they are."

"Planet Terror" and "Death Proof," Grindhouse's back-to-back double feature of zombies, scantily-clad women covered in blood, car chases and bad dialogue, were only "mediocre," Goodkind says — not bad enough to be truly good. "The best bad movies are accidental," he says.

Take, for example, movies such as "Robo Vampire," a 1988 film made on a $2 million budget that pits robots and vampires against each other on a backdrop of the Japanese drug trade. Plot lines approach ridiculous levels of absurdity, but you get the sense that the filmmakers take themselves quite seriously — and Goodkind thinks they deserve a certain level of respect.

"There are all these people who kind of toil in the darkness, and I think the real artists are the ones who die in obscurity," he says. "I think it's important to look at those people."

Tonight you can spend $10 to go see a very expensive imitation of Grindhouse cinema, but my advice is to save your money and to go experience the real thing at the Sunset.

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company