A grinhouse is an American term for a theater that shows exploitation films; it is also used as an adjective to describe the genre of films that would play in such a theatre. While just about any film that had too much sex or too much violence to play in a mainstream theatre was fair game for the grindhouses, the term has connotations of leaning more towards movies that were unacceptable by the terms of the mainstream: especially brutally violent films, films with bizarre or perverse plot points, etc. Frequent fare for such theatres were low-budget Japanese and Chinese movies, specifically kung-fu and samurai movies, usually known for being exceptionally bloody.