He is the most influential director of his generation — a former video shop assistant whose films conquered Hollywood with a winning blend of violence, great dialogue and memorable soundtracks.

But where once the arrival of a new Quentin Tarantino film was a highlight of the cinema year, his latest work is languishing in limbo without a British release date.

For months Grindhouse, a $100 million (£50 million) double bill of nostalgic horror films made with his friend Robert Rodriguez, had been scheduled to arrive in British cinemas on June 1. After disastrous box-office takings in the United States, it has been withdrawn while Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the producers, try to formulate a rescue strategy.

A spokesman for Momentum Pictures, the film’s British distributor, said yesterday: “We are reviewing the release date and the release plans in the UK. It will definitely be released here but we don’t know in what form.”

Barry Norman, the veteran film critic, said that the decision to change the release date at such short notice was “almost inevitably” a sign that the finished product had disappointed its backers.

For Tarantino, who dazzled audiences with Reservoir Dogs, his debut in 1992, and who won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival with his next film, Pulp Fiction, it is a humiliating development. “This doesn’t often happen to a big-name director,” Norman added. “The omens aren’t good.”

Grindhouse was envisaged as a homage to the sleazy, low budget films that both Tarantino and Rodriguez grew up with and the seedy cinemas where they used to watch them in late-night double-bills.

Rodriguez, the director of El Mariachi, Spy Kids and Sin City, made Planet Terror, a gory zombie-flick with a ludicrous body count and a go-go dancing heroine who has a machinegun in place of a leg. Tarantino’s film Death Proof, which most critics have preferred, features a spectacular car chase and stars Kurt Russell as a serial killer.

Both films are artfully scratched and include “missing reels”, to evoke viewing conditions in the grindhouse cinemas of the 1970s.

Before the American cinema release this month, Bob Weinstein emphasised the ambitious scope of the package, which covers more than three hours. “The whole theatrical business is looking for something new, a little showmanship,” he said.

Grindhouse has proved too long and too obscure for main-stream audiences. It has taken only $23 million in three weeks in American cinemas, with half of that over the Easter weekend, and the Weinstein brothers are considering whether to slice it into two separate films.

Michael Gubbins, the editor of Screen International, the film industry magazine, said: “I can’t see them not releasing it [in the UK] but the size of the release will be interesting. The plan is to split it into two and hope that Cannes [where Tarantino will show Death Proof next month] gives it a push. But they’re running into blockbuster season, have two films on their hands instead of one and no evidence that either is going to be more of a hit than the original.”

Peter Rainer, the film critic for the Christian Science Monitor newspaper, said that many Hollywood insiders were delighted that Tarantino had finally had a flop. “A lot of people want him to fail because of his success and his abrasive, self-infatuated personality,” he said.

“I don’t think that this one failure puts him out of the game, but if he has another film like this then it will be a different story.”

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