The word grindhouse conjures scratched prints, fake blood and 1970s sleaze, but the term first appeared in a 1923 issue of Variety describing a Canadian ticket pricing strategy called the grind policy. This episode traces how continuous, nonstop projection with cheap admission that rose through the day created a parallel track of low-budget oddities, why the grind likely refers to sidewalk barkers wearing down pedestrians rather than film reels, and how proximity to burlesque houses on 42nd Street, cemented by the 1943 film Lady of Burlesque, permanently confused the public about what a grindhouse was.

The conversation follows these cavernous single-screen palaces through the 1960s, when television and white flight emptied urban downtowns and forced owners to program what broadcast TV could not: unrated horror, roughies, splatter films and  ...