When it comes to career expectations, Quentin Tarantino is an old hand at switch-ups and stakes-raising. “Pulp Fiction” outdid “Reservoir Dogs” for narrative scramble and left-field twists, and “Jackie Brown” threw a soulful change-up at audiences expecting something snappier. Then his cup overfloweth again — and exploded and gushed blood — with the “Kill Bill” saga, the ne plus ultra of obscure movie references and juicy genre kicks.

For his latest project, “Grindhouse,” which opens April 6, the director takes the next logical turn: back to the basics but with showmanship. Conceived and co-created with director and pal Robert Rodriguez, the release known as “Grindhouse” is in fact a double feature of faux B-movies, one by each filmmaker. The package is designed as a throwback to the 1970s heyday of dodgy “grindhouse” theaters and their back-to-back schedules of slasher, kung fu, and name-your-ownsploitation movies.

So in a time when home entertainment is eclipsing theatergoing, “Grindhouse” promises to reinvigorate cinema with a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk of sleaze — what Mr. Tarantino has called “more like a ride than a night at the movies.” Fake lurid trailers accompany the films, as well as simulated scratches and a missing reel midway through. The features themselves resurrect the tradition’s carnival-barker premises and bang-for-your-buck payoffs. Mr. Rodriguez’s “Planet Terror,” the first of the pair, is a zombie flick whose heroine has a machine-gun leg. In “Death-Proof,” Mr. Tarantino’s amalgam of slasher and car-chase films, a sadistic stuntman (a grizzled Kurt Russell) attacks young women with his car.

Of course, the nostalgia of “Grindhouse” can’t escape a certain quaint ring. Exploitation fare, after all, has arguably gone mainstream — with the lust for torture horror satisfied in the “Saw” series, among others — and prime time — with the terrorism thriller “24.” The scandal involving a policeman’s severed ear in Mr. Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” seems more like a generation ago than just 15 years ago, and Mr. Tarantino’s recognition of the new purveyors of shock was made clear when he hired Eli Roth of “Hostel” fame to direct one of the fake trailers for “Grindhouse.” (The other trailers come courtesy of Edgar Wright, another genre enthusiast and the director of the upcoming “Hot Fuzz,” and rocker Rob Zombie, whose fanaticism for horror created “House of 1000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects.”)

The difference with “Grindhouse,” as always with Mr. Tarantino, lies in the level of sheer movie love. Like the adoring detail that brightened every corner of “Kill Bill,” “Death Proof” comes straight from the heart. The elaborate execution of the climax bears the mark of many grindhouse nights spent in delicious anticipation, and the characteristic Tarantino chatter, present in abundance, provides its own buildup.

In Mr. Rodriguez, Mr. Tarantino finds a partner equal to his zeal and eye for revival. The director of “Sin City” originally conceived “Planet Terror” before the new wave of zombie movies was spearheaded by 2002’s “28 Days Later” (whose sequel, “28 Weeks Later,” arrives in May). Before that, his 3-D installment of “Spy Kids” in 2003 contributed to the renewed popularity of that venerable brand of movie thrills that has burgeoned on Imax screens across the country.

Whatever the box office take for “Grindhouse,” an evangelical cinephiliac like Mr. Tarantino might measure success in enthusiasm just as much as dollars. There’s something downright quixotic, or insane, about two filmmakers spending upward of $53 million to re-create the grit and grime of the 42nd Street cinemas that were succeeded long ago by monumental multiplexes. But as the enduring cult status and influence of “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction” attest, part of Mr. Tarantino’s knack has always been for transmitting his infectious mania for movies, both his own and that of others.

Amid all the hype for “Grindhouse,” Mr. Tarantino is also putting his celluloid where his mouth is, with a typically fanboyish touch. At the New Beverley Cinema in Los Angeles, he has programmed an eight-week series of fringe rarities with prints from his own private stash. Thus the Oscar-winning director ensures that another generation will not miss out on the essentials of a film education a la Tarantino: “The Blood Spattered Bride,” “Cry of the Prostitute,” “Chinese Hercules,” and, now and forever, “Slithis.”